I love the way the pundits try to make football a more complicated game than it really is by regularly inventing new phrases to describe stuff that all good teams have always done as a matter of course. Last year it was “pressing” that was dropped into every possible conversation, and this year its “playing through the lines”, which we were already referring to as a through ball, fifty years ago.
Computer graphics now allow all sorts of measurements of patterns and performance, including those lines that connect encircled back-four players “look at the straight line across the back - playing as a unit”. We used to refer to it as pushing up together to catch opponents offside. I don’t think that anything much has really changed, in spite of the technology now used to illustrate it. It’s a simple game, however you want to dress it up. Some of this over-analysis enabled by fancy graphics belongs in Pseud’s Corner.
Playing through the lines was what we were doing at the engine sheds. They were dangerous places, though we never took unnecessary extra risks. We could, however, have easily been undone by a momentary lack of concentration, such was the buzz that those places offered, so you had to concentrate on what you were doing. We approached them with the happy confidence of youth. Now, concentration and confidence are things that makes a difference - in football, too!
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