Following on from Football’s Principles Of Play I have been growing enamoured with a notion of my own making. Narcissism could indeed be setting in. The concept is that of “organic football” or perhaps “naturalistic football”. A style of play and football philosophy that may actually be akin to genuine philosophy rather than being a set of preferences selected by a coach or manager from their observations and experiences. Of course, conceptually organic football would have to be based on observations and preferences but rather than being a distillation of the thoughts of observer into a strategy, organic football would be a reaction to the game.
Reactive sounds negative. We are told to be pro-active rather than reactive. Reactive has the appearance of having no plan, no direction. To my mind an organic football style would have a plan, but this plan would be constructed around the players at the disposal of the coach. Their nature dictating the game. Some managers and coaches do this, but in modern football it has become far more common for a game model to attempt to dictate the actions of the players on the pitch, almost dehumanising them, less live action and more CGI.
The actors attributes shape the team, bringing it to life. Moulding the organism of the team into the environment of the game. In an organic football philosophy training and practices need to be focused on developing the connections within the group while focusing on the strengths of the individuals. As cohesion grows the capabilities and attributes of individuals may also evolve opening up greater possibilities for the group.
Organic football is a quest for football in it’s most free form. Allowing it to flow and move rather than being poured into a bottle, a lid clamping down on natural flow. Organic football is a term reflective of an ever developing, growing and changing environment or ecology. What is the ecology of football? What is the minimum structure required for football? Goals? A ball? Players? Boundaries? Much of this will depend on what we call football. A football vs the game of football is a distinction that seems obvious. Playing with a football is not playing football. Can we play a game of football without boundaries? Can we play a game of football without goals?
The cage provides a boundary for playing football but the cage is clearly unnatural. Nothing of the city is natural, the concrete jungle with it’s concrete football provides other avenues of exploration, but not organic avenues. However, the cage does an environment of football freedom that is not always found on the grass.
The action of striking an object with the feet seems to be almost innate. So much so that the ownership of inventing the game of football is pointless. Kicking big, kicking small. Kicking huge, kicking tiny. Passing, shooting and dribbling. Humans taking an object and aiming at another object is an extension of hunting or practicing for the hunt. It doesn’t take a gargantuan leap of the imagination to create goals and scoring from this. A game of scoring can be extrapolated from this idea.
Another natural idea is that of keeping a precious object from a rival. Even without a target or goals a game can be played for ownership of the object of desire. It is possible that ownership is even more naturalistic than that of striking a target. A game of ball ownership is less of a spectacle than that of scoring, the laws makers chose scoring as the way of deciding the game, selecting one aspect of human nature over another to create the football ecology. Scoring trumps all.
It is here that organic football becomes an extension of the principles of play. The environment is the football pitch, the actions upon the pitch are geared towards winning. Football at it’s most fundamental is competitive. To succeed in this competition the actors need to be combative and creative. The organism needs to balance these two ideals to achieve victory. The organism requires structure in order to be recognisable as an organism. An organism with too much structure loses it’s life and turns to concrete. The organism needs enough to structure to have form, but not so much structure that it becomes a statue.
The football environment is one of swirling chaos. The game model seeks to limit and control the chaos, imposing the will of man upon nature. Organic football seeks to embrace the chaos and then negotiate a pathway through the chaos. The will is imposed but only within the moment and utilising the skills of those acting. The game model will attempt to use the same solutions time and time again, but it may attempt the footballing equivalent of drying a rain forest with a thunderstorm, just because the thunderstorm solved the desert problem.
To succeed the actors will need high levels of understanding of the facets of their environment and equal levels of understanding of their organism. Players will need to be able to respond to the chaos and act accordingly, without relying on side-line instruction. No two environments will ever be identical because the flow of chaos within the football ecology is ultimately driven by the inhabitants.
Organic football seeks to be driven by the fundamentals of the game and the individual players. Gameplay driven by universal principles over personal preferences. The players driving the in game adjustments and having autonomy over those. Organic football might sound like a quest for Utopia. Perhaps it is. Once I understand it better I will let you all know.