The Football Men: Up Close With the Giants of the Modern Game by Simon Kuper

Author:Simon Kuper [Kuper, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Soccer, Football, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780857201614
Google: pvz-sbWtMrIC
Amazon: 0857201611
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2011-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

Andrés Iniesta

May 2009

It rarely happens, but sometimes a footballer stops to savour the moment. On Wednesday night Andrés Iniesta was twenty-five years old, in Rome, at his peak, and part of a Barcelona team that was passing rings around Manchester United. This was as good as it gets. So for a second during yet another attack he just rolled the ball around under his foot, as if tickling its belly. In Rome, Iniesta showed his sport the way forward.

Iniesta, his teammate Xavi and Barcelona’s coach Josep Guardiola possibly don’t share DNA, but in football terms they are brothers. The first brother, Guardiola, emerged twenty years ago as the definitive Barça playmaker: effectively the side’s quarterback, who launched almost every attack with a perfect pass. The second brother, little Xavi, was better. Finally, almost a decade ago, a tiny white-faced teenager showed up at Barça’s training. Guardiola studied Iniesta for a bit, turned to Xavi, and said: ‘You’ve seen that? You’ll push me towards the exit, but that guy will send us both into retirement.’

It took a while. In 2006, when Barcelona last won the Champions League, Iniesta appeared only as a substitute. But inside the club, everyone knew he was coming. Last year I asked Barcelona’s then coach Frank Rijkaard to name the player with the perfect personality for top-class football. Rijkaard hummed and hawed, but finally, in triumph, shouted out the right answer: ‘Andrés – Andrés Iniesta! He’s always there in training, always tries, and is just a wonderful football player.’

Iniesta’s magical year began in Vienna last 30 June. In the final of Euro 2008, his Spanish team passed rings around Germany. Vienna prefigured Rome. Both times, Iniesta, Xavi and their buddies seemed to be playing piggy-in-the-middle against Europe’s second best team. Germany and United chased ball in the heat. It wasn’t fair.

Barcelona have to play like that. ‘Without the ball we are a horrible team,’ says Guardiola. ‘So we need the ball.’ Barça are too little – perhaps the shortest great team since the 1950s – to win the ball by tackling. The unofficial minimum height for top-class football is about 5 feet 8 inches, and Xavi, Iniesta and Lionel Messi are below it. The minimum for central defenders is about 6 feet, and Carlos Puyol is below that. So Barça defend either by closing off space through perfect positioning, or by keeping the ball. Johan Cruijff, Dutch father of the Barcelona style, teaches: ‘If we have the ball, they can’t score.’

Modern football is supposed to be manlier. Managers talk about ‘heart’, ‘grit’, ‘bottle’ and kilometres covered. What Iniesta showed in Rome is that these are secondary virtues. Football is a dance in space. When everyone is charging around closing the gaps, you need the technique of Iniesta to find tiny openings. In Rome, he barely mislaid a pass. Sometimes he’d float past United players, his yellow boots barely marking the grass. Occasionally he hit little lobs, a sign that he knew this was his night.

We know how good United are.

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