The Beautiful Number 10, The Ugly Number 10...
Clint Roper
Ten is the number that is usually worn by the most exciting attacking player on the pitch. Some may disagree, but if you look over the years you will find this number on the backs of the likes of Pele, Maradona, Platini, Messi, Baggio and Jomo Sono, and the list goes on and on. In soccer there is no more beautiful a number and that is usually why the artists wear it. It's the reason kids want to wear it. It represents goals. It represents genius. Sadly, as we head into the final few games of the PSL season, 10 is unbelievably the number of league goals that the top scorer in the PSL currently has! It's an ugly 10. 10 goals, that's it. And people wonder why football stadiums in SA are empty. If I'm a club owner, I'm pulling in my head coach to find out why my striker, a player that for most clubs probably cost millions in transfer and salary fees, cannot score more than 10 goals at this stage of the season. How is it that Ronaldo is on 28, Messi is on 25, Costa is on 26, Suarez is on 29, Sturridge on 20 and Bernard Parker is on 10, yet they have all played practically the same amount of games? People say SA soccer is going forwards – I think we're going backwards. We might be getting better at playing, but we're getting worse at winning. We talk about how the game has improved, how modern football requires modern coaching methods, but the truth is we're being left in the dust. 10 is the number a coach should be setting as a scoring target for an attacking midfielder or even an advanced winger perhaps. We talk about Parker as a lethal striker and wonder if he is ready for European football. You go to any European club worth their salt and offer them a striker who has scored just 10 goals in his current campaign, they are going to laugh at you. Hell, even those that have scored a good number of goals in a season – Mbesuma and Musona for instance – have failed to crack the grade abroad, so what hope does our current crop have of ever being world beaters. The funny thing is we wonder why our national team can't score goals. If we can't score goals against PSL defences, what chance do we have against opposing national team defences? So if we are not scoring goals, a huge part of what makes the game beautiful for supporters, then what are we doing for them? In the name of modern football, some coaches will tell you that the game has changed. That defences are a lot tighter and teams take fewer chances. That there is more structure and the lack of proper cohesive game plans in the past is what resulted in strikers getting more goals. Why are we not calling Bull *#@! on that? In the EPL, a league idolised by many of our football fraternity here in South Africa, there are goals galore pouring in. The league has big score margins and strikers scoring goals for fun in what is meant to be one of the toughest leagues in the world with some of the best defensive players on the planet. Everywhere you look in the EPL there are so-called 'modern coaches' … This brings me to my final point. What a breath of fresh air it is to see the re-introduction of Jabu Mahlangu to the PSL. Massive-ups to Cavin Johnson for throwing a lifeline to a player who specialises in entertaining people, because with goals clearly absent from South African football, it's time to bring the entertainers back! If kids don't have goals to take home from the stadium and talk about at school the next day, then lets at least give them moments of magic. Let's give them the shibobo, the tsamaya and the heel extension. And if we going to tell our players to keep it simple, then let's give them pass counts of 44 simple passes in a single flowing move. There is even magic in that. I'm all for 'stealing' with your eyes, but we've stolen the worst parts of football from other parts of the world and made it our own. We've fooled ourselves into thinking we are playing modern football. We've stolen the breakneck pace of the English game where there are not very many passes, and the ball changeover of possession is quite quick. In doing that we've sacrificed our unique ability to keep the ball at a slower pace and, what's worse, at least in the EPL there is a quality end result at the conclusion of a direct move. There is a shot on target or a goal. That is usually not the case with teams in the PSL. Essentially we just have a high turnover of possession at an incredible pace. Some teams do attempt to keep the ball, ala tiki-taka, but we do it in our own half, so there can never be a penetrative pass that results in a shot at goal. Good teams set up camp in their opponents half. It's why when Bafana plays we look like we are dangerous when we have the ball for extended periods, but what use is it on the edge of our own box? It needs to be on the edge of the opposition's! 10... Reminiscent of 2010, the last time we took part in a World Cup, and unless something drastic changes, I fear it could be another 10 years before we ever get close to taking part in another. That's my 10 cents for the week. Shapa, Clint
