Opinion A gilded few
In football,excellence is measured in goals alone
FIFA is yet to announce the official nominee list for its Ballon dOr,but the debate over who should win it has already begun. Last week,Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho,sage and impartial as ever,plumped for one of his own players. If (Lionel) Messi is the best on the planet,(Cristiano) Ronaldo is the best in the universe, he said,after a fortnight spent poring over stats from the first division of the Corona Borealis constellation. It would be a crime if Ronaldo did not win the Ballon dOr.
Ronaldo last won it in 2008. Since then,Messi has won three in a row. Last season,both racked up frankly ridiculous goalscoring records. Ronaldo scored 60 goals in 55 appearances for Real; Messi 73 in 60 for Barcelona. In the face of such numbers,its hard for anyone else to argue a case for themselves. Goals,unfortunately,are footballs only time-tested statistical measure. Its only from subjective judgement that we know Franco Baresi was one of the greatest defenders of all time. Statistically,his career output simply reads 719 games for AC Milan,33 goals.
Its only recently that stats nerds began counting assists and interceptions and blocks and clearances. Even so,how many interceptions equal a goal? Because of this,there is little chance of other players superseding Messi and Ronaldo when the votes are counted. Take,for instance,Vincent Kompany,the centreback who was probably Manchester Citys most important player when they were on the road to their first English league title since 1968,or Sergio Busquets,the holding midfielder who is a fulcrum for both Barcelona and Spain,a reference point for all his teammates,or even Andrea Pirlo,the regista who played a crucial role in Juventus going unbeaten through their Serie A campaign and in Italys journey to the final of Euro 2012.
History provides ample proof of this. Unless you are an attacking player,you stand almost no chance of winning world footballs top honour. The Ballon dOr has been awarded every year since 1956. In all those years,only one goalkeeper Lev Yashin,and three defenders Franz Beckenbauer,Matthias Sammer and Fabio Cannavaro,have won the award. Of the three defenders,Beckenbauer and Sammer were rather different in style from the traditional centreback. Both began their careers in midfield,before dropping deeper and becoming liberos creative players stationed in the defensive third to afford them space and time to better utilise their vision and passing.
If we ignore the likes of Hristo Stoichkov,Zinedine Zidane,Pavel Nedved,Luis Figo,Kaka and Ronaldinho,who were either wingers or playmakers occupying that grey area three quarters of the way up the pitch (the Italian word trequartista defines the role pretty well),the last midfielder to win the Ballon dOr was Lothar Matthaus in 1990. And he won it for scoring four goals in a victorious world cup campaign.
This infantile view of footballing merit has had its effects elsewhere. At the 1998 world cup opening ceremony,a panel of 250 international journalists chose a World Team of the 20th Century. The team had a three-man midfield that contained Alfredo di Stefano,Michel Platini and Johan Cruyff. You could imagine the reasoning. Weve already filled the forward line with Pele,Maradona and Garrincha. Where do we fit in all these other immortals? Why,in midfield,of course! Heartfelt apologies,no doubt,were forwarded to Jozsef Bozsik,Gerson,Johan Neeskens and the like.
Cricket,with its statistical complexity,has found room for all kinds of players in its pantheon of greats. Ken Barrington and Kevin Pietersen have equal claim on a middle-order slot in an all time England XI.
This isnt the case in football. Its possible,if you are a young fan with an interest in the sports history,to dig up footage from the past online. But you will soon discover that posterity has little room for anything other than goals; plenty of room for Best and Cruyff and Platini,but little for Bill Foulkes and Ruud Krol and Luis Fernandez.
Even players of more recent vintage arent spared this erasure. On YouTube,the career of Roy Keane,who only retired in 2006,is reduced to the handful of goals he scored and the moments when he lost his temper and lashed out at opponents on the field and in the tunnel a poor caricature of a player who was so much more. Having watched him play not too long ago,most of us know that Keane was a great player,greater than his Manchester United teammate David Beckham,who has a longer highlights reel and a runner-up finish in the 1999 Ballon dOr race. Football fans growing up in the 2020s will have no way of telling.
karthik.krishnaswamy@expressindia.com
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