Philosophy in Football

When Middlesborough were relegated to the Championship at the end of last season, The Times’ chief football correspondent Patrick Barclay was not worried for their long-term future, reminding us that “they have a philosophy, and that’s the most important thing in football.” More recently, the Bayern Munich full-back Philipp Lahm said: “if you want to measure yourself with Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester United, you, as Bayern Munich, need a philosophy. That must be the aim of the club.”

What’s interesting is that in both these cases, the idea of a club having a “philosophy” is actually a slightly inadequate reference to the club’s transfer or tactical policy. Whereas Lahm was bemoaning the fact that his club has been signing world class players (such as Arjen Robben) and subsequently changing their tactics to suit them, Barclay was praising Middlesborough chairman Steve Gibson’s commitment to investing in promising young English players.

Are there better examples of clubs who succeed by sticking to a philosophy of how the game should be played? The paradigmatic example is that of Barcelona, with its long-standing commitment to playing football “the right way,” certainly one of the leading exponents of the “beautiful game” (as opposed, presumably to Stoke or Bolton’s “ugly game.”) There are other great managers (see Helenio Herrera, Jose Mourinho, Valeriy Lobanovskyi, even Roy Hodgson) famous for adopting far more adaptable, pragmatic, conservative approaches.

Quite aside from philosophical questions about whether anything can really be intrinsically “beautiful," there is an interesting tendency in modern football to define clubs by their values, rather than their tangible success. Certain “philosophies” are more popular than others, too. In a game between Barcelona and Real Madrid, most neutrals would favour the former, and out of Chelsea and Arsenal, the latter.

Indeed, even the idea of “playing football” has certain values attached to it, and, sometimes, to talk about “good football” is to talk about “attacking football.” Particularly defensive teams get criticised for “not wanting to win,” while Daniel Agger has been criticised as a defender who “likes to play football” too much.

There are endless examples of cod-philosophical mantras and statements that have been asserted by various footballing personalities over the years, by players, coaches and especially pundits. An Arsene Wenger press-conference will probably provide the mainstream press with varyingly digestible chunks of food for thought. Even Big Sam Allardyce waded in with his views on spirituality. What can be funny, although often exasperating, is that football pundits in particular don’t have the most enviable grasp of language, nor do they have advanced logical capacities (this blog will run a regular feature analysing footballing clichés and idioms).

The aim of this blog is not to pedantically belittle or embarrass ordinary, humble football fans. Nor does it intend to suggest that football can be reduced to logical, philosophical contemplation, ignoring spontaneous and dramatic moments which make the game so entertaining (as Johan Cruyff once said, “coincidence is logical”). RPO doesn’t exist to claim that football is some kind of intransient, high-art (that much is obvious), but to provide hopefully fascinating insight into aspects of the game beyond immediate events, coverage of which understandably saturates the mainstream sports media. Trying to look at certain football games as philosophical debates can be quite entertaining, as well as providing an insight into the assumptions and norms that the game we love consists of.