since the blog needed some updating, i decided to post this from GOLDEN PAST RED FUTURE----by Paul Tomkins


Footballers differ from many other athletes and sportsmen, in that, exhibitionist ball-jugglers aside, they exist exclusively in the realms of a team sport. Golfers may join together for the Ryder Cup, tennis players may unite for the mixed doubles, and the fastest men and women on the planet may exchange (or in Britain’s case, drop) batons in the 4x100m relay, but otherwise they exist in isolation, loners in their chosen sport, pitting their wits one-against-one, or one-against-all comers, to be crowned the best, it is highly instructive to watch how golfers, for example, visibly wilt under the pressure of other golfers, not to mention their country/continent, but that’s once every 2 years, and the rest of the time they just have to concentrate on their own game.

Consider the lot of a top footballer who trains his heart out from a tender age, leads an abstemious life away from the pitch, and generally attempts to do all he can to get the most from his God-given talent. Whatever his destiny in the sport, he is beholden to his teammates. Still judged as an individual, but part of a collective. Diego Maradona aside, a footballer cannot win games single-handedly, he can make winning contributions. Modern-day footballers are trained, with almost nauseating predictability, to thank their teammates at every opportunity—after all, they cannot do it alone. Even Maradona would have struggled in a match of 1 vs 11. It is a team sport, and as the annoying phrase confirms, there is no I in team. But if the best players need the assistance of their teammates, it’s equally true to say that their teammates can also hold them back. There’s no point being the best striker in the world if your keeper cant catch a football and concedes 5 in every game,, similarly, there’s no point being the best keeper in the world if your strikers cant even hit a barn door, and never score a goal. No one should be in any doubt that whatever the power of the team, football revolves around individuals. They are the ones who make the telling contributions. However great a team moves, it needs one person alone to finish it off. A team is always a collection of disparate, autonomous human beings who come together for the cause, it is not 11 conjoined people, like a freak of nature. A team will always need someone to move above and beyond teamwork, and to take responsibility to be the individual who makes a difference, Not in a display of irresponsible showboating, or the reckless abandon of trying to shine while not caring about the fact that it might be counterproductive winning the game. Someone—a single player—has to make it count. These are ‘match winners’



match winner of real madrid vs mallorca; JOSE ANTONIO REYES