Re: Mesut Özil (10)
Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2020 12:23 pm
Pat Rice in Short Shorts wrote:theHotHead wrote:ag6789 wrote:As long as you've good technique and ability to keep the ball, you'll have advantages over the other, like Sanchez and Aguero, Messi etc. These are all small people but they get the better of tall and stronger guys w/ their technique and ball control. Been that way forever in football. I'm sure we'll continue to see skilled players showing up and dominate the game again and again. Just a matter of time.
I hear you but not really. Small technical players had a hard time in the era of your Glenn Hoddles and before that, footballers tended to be bigger. If you were small you struggled to get trials, you had to be a standout player technically. which is why I think, from that era, 70s, 80s and even 90s, the perception was small players were the skillful players when in reality its just the cream of the crop of the small players only got through.
To an extent yes. I got slot in Millwall's youth team set up when I was 14 because I was tall and had some speed yet had no technical ability compared to most. They put me at the 4 and as a 9 as they did a couple other guys who were also taller than most. In the early 70s as you say they were starting to think about bigger players because it was long ball and winning headers in the center of the pitch made sense...and anyone six foot was big then. But in the end it was ability and a football brain that won out in the end. As such I failed! The thing about Arsenal in say 1971 was that we had Radford at the 9 who was not huge, Ray Kennedy at the 10 who was about 5' 10 as recall and not exactly a speedy man but could function as a 9 or even an 8 until we bought Alan Ball who was a small proper 8. We used to all go down to parking area at Highbury after matched to get out programs signed by the players as they left and it was a revelation to me that very few of them were larger than I was. Even Mclintock was a under 6 foot. Footballers that have a low center of gravity, speed and power do have advantages over taller guys and always will have save in the air. That is obviously why historically the 9 is big hold up man and the 10 is a technical player in the old 4-4-2 and the CBs are big men while the fullbacks and wingers were always the little speed guys.
We also need to consider that in the 70's through the early 90's there were no real "academies" nor any proper development of youth players. Clubs had extensive networks of free lance scouts and rather informal youth set ups that basically were in and out operations with only the most naturally gifted players promoted to being apprentices and were expected even required to leave school at 16. Many a very talented player ended up as brick layers rather than footballers because they were never really trained or educated in the game at club level. A friend who did make it to the reserve team squad at Millwall just got mauled as it was his first real football education and older fringe players would simply run rings around the kids. So it was not so much about size in the end at all.
When I was 20 I didn't know what position I wanted to play, in the school playground I played all over, I was the organiser. For the school team I played up front because I was big (6ft at 13) With my mates in the manor I would play central mid. I went to Brimsdown at 20 and the manager told me outright, you are big and can hold the ball up for us, so centre forward it was, I hated it. I went to Walton & Hersham after that and they said exactly the same . Then I went to Wembley and they started me in defence then let me play in the middle. After I left them I went back to Brimsdown and played Central mid, then on to Cockfosters and played central mid. Central mid was definitely my position, box to box.
I endured all the negatives of being a big black bloke in football at that time, "you're big, we put you up front and get the ball to you quickly", "run into the channels and hold the ball up", "none of that here, you are not playing for Brazil"
I remember one game against Enfield Town during my second stint at Brimsdown, they had some link up with Barnet FC and Barnet's recovering first teamers were playing for them - a couple of which were in midfield. They ran rings around me. I later found out one of them, black guy, was released by a Premier League club and found his way to Barnet, he ran the game, I couldn't get close to him. Never saw or heard his name ever again.