Pep Guardiola.
Close your eyes and imagine a Guardiola team. What did you see?
My expectation is that your mind’s eye generated the image of a ball being zipped around at high speed, with minimal touches most of the time but on occasion an individual producing moments of stunning dribbling.
Beautiful football.
As the commentator says within the first 20 seconds of the first video, spectacular simplicity.
One of Johan Cruyff’s many quotes is about playing simple football and how difficult it is to do so.
There is a great difficulty in writing anything about modern football without referencing Cruyff. His Barcelona side, containing Pep Guardiola, was the first modern football team. Not the first beautiful team, but the incorporate so many of the key principles which are predominant in the upper regions of football today. Pressing, positioning and possession.
Legends of the game, Laudrup, Romario, Stoichkov, Koeman and more combining with beautiful passing football. Simple play at high speed and with precision to create and use space.
At the same time beautiful pictures were being painted in Cruyff’s spiritual home. At Ajax Luis van Gaal had his own wonder team.
While Cruyff and van Gaal were great foes their teams had a commonality. Both played good football. Both played beautiful football.
The human eye demands to be pleased. Although the cliche states that beauty lays in the eye of the beholder, it is fairly clear that there are common attributes that we find to be beautiful. A certain elegance, style, balance and poise that embodies beauty.
Dennis Bergkamp is beautiful.
The passing and assists of Bergkamp are all that is beautiful. His precision. His vision. His style. Elegance. Generosity. That generosity is a piece of the beauty puzzle.
When Liverpool’s four forwards combined with breathtaking beauty it was not just the speed that made people gasp, it was their generosity. Each wanting the other to score. Their gift of giving was far more significant than what each was taking.
Within the beauty was also magic. The little magician Philippe Coutinho. A player capable of doing the unexpected and inexplicable. Dennis Bergkamp also had magic in his game. His passes gloriously gorgeous, but his goals, particularly his most famous goals, were as magical as you could imagine. In fact their magic came from the fact that they were beyond your dreams, beyond your imagination. The ball dropping over the shoulder, cushioned with the right foot, flicked inside with the same right foot and then fired into the top corner with the little toe of that same foot. Brilliance.
For a player to score that goal against Argentina is amazing. To top it is unbelievable, but Bergkamp did. The goal he scored with Newcastle is the purest of magic. Extraordinary to even think of it, let alone pull it off. Orientating his body to have the defender behind him and then spin the ball with the inside of the foot and around the defender. At the same time Bergkamp spin his body the opposite way around the defender. Nikos Dabizas is left in a state of confusion. Which spinning object to go for? Dennis then has the beautiful balance to position his body to the left side of the ball, opening his hips out and gliding a right footed pass into the corner.
Only because I have seen that goal so many times do I know exactly what happened. Even now I have to watch the replay to comprehend it. Magic indeed.
Perhaps the most magical player on the planet is Lionel Messi. The statistics of Messi are difficult enough to comprehend before we even attempt to analyse his goals. A thousand words may not be enough. For just one goal. The man has 550 for club and country at the age of 30.
There is a complex simplicity to the moments of Messi. He is not a player of dozens of step overs and intricate dribbling moves. The magical question is “how does he do it so quickly?” Touches and turns performed with supernatural balance and speed. The “how” is a deeply complex question that digs deeply into the subjects of player development, agility, balance, coordination, ball manipulation, one vs one play, decision making, environment, awareness and games for understanding. Or a very simple question about a boy and his love for a ball.
Many players have consistently provided magic moments. Moments that have brought jaw dropping joy. Great names like Ronaldinho sprinkling their performances with magical touches, juggles and tricks. The magic isn’t only limited to those who have hit the very top. Jay Jay Okocha may not have played for the biggest clubs or won huge numbers of trophies but his magic won him many admirers.
Perhaps the ultimate in magic moments is a signature move. Something so wonderful that everyone wants to spend hours firstly to break the moment down and then hours rebuilding it in their own image.
The Maradona turn.
The Berbatov spin.
The Littbarski move.
The McGeady spin.
The Cruyff turn and many others.
The term magic tends be attached to singular moments of brilliance from individuals while beauty is applied to the larger picture of a group performing in a certain manner.
Though magic could extend to a particular group of players.
I chose the title Beautiful Bergkamp and Magical Messi purely for alliteration. Though they do offer fantastic examples of the magical and the beautiful.
The Hungarian team of the 1950s was known as the Magical Magyars manly for the purposes of alliteration. Much like Danish Dynamite. Brazil have had truly magical national teams. The 1982 World Cup side was probably the most magical, so much so that not winning the tournament has done little to tarnish their legacy.
Beauty and magic. There is a difference. A very fine and very subtle one. Beauty is always going to be aesthetically pleasing but will largely be explicable. Magic will also be easy on the eye, but far more difficult to explain and understand.
There is beauty in the build up to Serginho’s header against Argentina. The beguiling curve of the outside of the foot pass. The beauty of the pass that opens up the space to cross. There is beauty in the build up to Falcao’s low near post finish, an exchange of passes that a Klopp or Guardilola team would be proud of. Then we see the magic too. The magical touches, flicks and back heels. All of which wraps itself together in the final strike against the USSR, the magic of stepping over the ball, flicking it up and volleying from distance.
Magic and beauty wrapped together, intertwined yet distinguishable from the each other. Although what exactly is magical and what exactly is beautiful and why they differ can not truly be defined. What is for certain is the moments of magical and beauty have little to do with winning and losing. The beauty of 1970s Dutch football has not been lost because they failed to win a World Cup. Manchester City are no less beautiful because they lost 4-3 at Anfield. In many ways they are all the more beautiful because of it. The skills of players like Georgi Kninkladze and Juninho are no less magical because their teams were relegated. Other great magicians won few trophies. The magic of Matt Le Tissier remains despite his lack of international caps or major trophies. We still marvel at how he reached out behind him to draw the ball in and rapidly lifted it over the advancing defender against Newcastle. Or how he scooped up the free kick rolled to him before dipping the volley over the wall.
Magic and beauty create indelible memories. They transcend jewellery and pots. Inspiring awe and imitation. These moments can be the hook that beguiles the young fan who goes on to become a superstar, perhaps even creating their very own signature move.