Winds of Change, By Rahul Ponodath @rahulponodath

The world of football has been a fascinating one. A world that has seen a large number of transformations on the technological, technical and the financial front. But through all this, the game is still, in all its purity, about one team putting the ball in the back of the net more times than the other. Somehow, in the midst of all this change and “development”, it feels like the focus of the game has shifted from the very roots of the objective of the game.

Yes, it is true that every team that sets foot on the pitch goes out there to win, well, atleast more often than not. However, winning is a process and somehow, a large number of teams seem to have forgotten, or just fail to understand the importance of building up to a victory. You win matches by building a team, not individuals.

Let’s roll back the years, say the 1950s leading right up to the modern football era of the 1990s. There were many a classical teams that played a form of football as a unit, as a single entity that was determined to win their matches. Some of the teams that come to mind are Benfica in the 1960s, Ajax in the 1970s just to name a few. Yes, these teams had their shining stars, the Eusebios, the Johann Cruijffs and many others. But the beauty of these teams was the fact that they were a cohesive unit. A team with 11 players on the field that understood, the pride and honour of the jersey they were wearing and played for the betterment of their club above everything else.

Today, the beautiful game has changed in so many ways. It could be the increased media coverage that each player and team gets or it could be something else all together, but somehow, football does not seem the same. Every second day there are reports of “the next Wayne Rooney”, “the next Zinedine Zidane” so on and so forth. What is the point of all this? The ultimate goal of a team is to win matches and trophies, not to have the “next big thing” in their team. There are very few teams left that actually go about building their “team” in a methodical and logical way. Until and unless you have 11 players who understand each others football and appreciate the values and tradition of the club they play for, you are never going to win anything.

Winning is a process, where you build a team filled with players that are in sync with each other. Possess the same will and determination to win so that as a team you are always playing to win. Today, there’s a large emphasis on clubs purchasing established superstars for ridiculously large sums of money. Yes, everything looks good on paper, but when you buy a team rather than build a team, the chances that you’ll get consistent good football are pretty slim.

That is why, teams like Barcelona and Manchester United, with their emphasis on home grown players are much more effective and consistent. These are teams where players are taught a brand of football, and once you have a bunch of footballers who have been ingrained with a certain style of football, the quickness, the cohesiveness and the unity of the team is clear for everyone to see.

The money, glitz and glamour has made it too easy for young footballers to lose track of their priorities as a footballer. Partly why the world will probably never ever see another Duncan Edwards or a Sir Bobby Charlton. Yes, it is unfair to compare the current and past eras, but we’ve made the situation incomparable, it wasn’t a natural transition to where football is now.

It’s still a beautiful game, and it still excites the living day lights out of me, but some caution must be thrown to the winds if we want to stop the game from free falling to depths that might make it very difficult to crawl out from.