Perhaps Wim Wenders should update his 1972 film, The Goalkeeper’s Fear of
the Penalty. It was a cult classic but now its title seems dated. With
scoring levels, before yesterday, at a 41-year high, how about The
Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Premier League? Consider the poor
keepers. In August and September 6-1 was as common a Premier League result
as 0-0 and for the first time in 10 seasons there was more scoring per game
than in La Liga and Serie A. It is not quite 1960-61, when a team
(Newcastle) could be relegated despite scoring 86 times, but strikers
haven’t had it so good since before man landed on the moon. Welcome to the
goal-rush — but why is it happening?
IS IT THE DEFENDING?
Ibrahima Sonko is a journeyman who arrived in the Premier League via Grenoble
and Brentford. Fernando Torres would be one of the greatest strikers of any
era. When Hull went to Anfield last week, wasn’t Torres’ hat-trick inside 47
minutes almost inevitable?
Many see the scoring explosion as the product of mediocre defenders unable to
handle Torres, Wayne Rooney and the rest of a prodigious generation of
attackers. “Most teams play without two up front but we are scoring more
goals so I think it is a lot to do with defending,” says Everton manager
David Moyes. Blackburn’s Sam Allardyce agrees, saying: “Poor defending has
been some of the reason and we’ve been guilty of some, so you can criticise
managers and coaches.” Paul Jewell says a lot has changed since his Wigan
side, newly promoted and with a squad largely from the lower divisions, sat
second in the Premier League in mid-November 2005. “It’s difficult for
managers to sign good defenders now. There are still ‘proper’ centre-backs
like John Terry, Nemanja Vidic and Jamie Carragher, but they seem a dying
breed.
“The academies breed almost non-tackling football. Youngsters play on lovely
pitches in their coloured boots or whatever else Cristiano Ronaldo is
wearing, but how many want to do the hard, ugly things, the tackling and
heading and getting hurt, that you need from defensive players. At Wigan I
had Arjan De Zeeuw, signed from Portsmouth for £90,000, and Matt Jackson,
who cost £450,000 from Norwich, but where can smaller clubs get quality like
that nowadays?”
However, it isn’t just the journeymen who have struggled. Carragher has had
some difficult moments, while Rio Ferdinand committed one of the howlers of
the season in gifting a goal to Craig Bellamy in the Manchester derby.
Another factor is that it seems that everywhere on the pitch defenders are
expected to attack. “Many full-backs seem better going forward than
defending,” says Jewell, while Roy Hodgson, the Fulham boss, predicts
centre-half (because defenders are the only players in the modern game with
space to weigh up passes) is going to become a creative position in future.
IS IT THE BALL?
Gary Pallister, the former England centre-back, stands up for his trade. “I
don’t think defenders are getting worse or attackers cleverer,” he says.
“It’s the ball.” Nike produces a new ball for the Premier League every year
— next season’s ball is already being tested — and, fittingly, this season’s
model, the Total90 Ascente, is advertised as “lab-tested for strikers, a
nightmare for keepers”.
“It’s got such lively movement in the air it’s like watching a cricket ball
swinging or seaming,” Pallister says. “Look at those dipping Ronaldo free
kicks. You couldn’t do that with the old Mitre Multiplex we used to use.”
David Coles, Portsmouth’s innovative goalkeeping coach, has changed his
training methods because of the way the ball has changed. “When I played you
looked to come to the edge of the six-yard box and set yourself for the
save,” he says. “At Portsmouth I now put a three-yard line. Keepers have to
give themselves a little bit more reaction time because of how the ball
moves. The new boots allow players to shoot with more power and spin and
there’s a different coating on the new ball. It adds to the fear about
trying to catch it. It’s more difficult for keepers and their coaches, but
that’s the challenge.”
Though modern balls have made scoring easier, many doubt whether the Total90
Ascente has magnified the trend. The same ball has been introduced at the
same time to La Liga and Serie A without a similar hike in scoring and Moyes
is among those who doubt it is a factor. Coles says: “I think this year’s
ball is good compared to others like the [Mitre] ball used in the Carling
Cup. It’s great for kicking, which is a big part of the keeper’s job now,
and though it moves, its movement is true.”
IS IT TEAMS HAVING AN ATTACKING MENTALITY ?
If the goal glut has been one remarkable trend of the season, a second one is
the extraordinary lack of draws, just five so far, of which only two have
been goalless. Arsène Wenger says the change is down to the clubs’ approach.
Those lower down are taking risks in pursuit of wins, having seen how
“three-pointers” are key to surviving: Burnley and Wigan have enough wins to
be sitting pretty despite losing heavily in other games. At the top,
Liverpool have changed to a more open game because too many draws thwarted
last year’s title challenge. All of which tends to end up with more goals
being scored. No one settles for nil-nil any more. “Teams are having a bit
more of a go,” says Moyes.
IS IT THE GREAT DIVIDE?
Burnley and Wigan beat Manchester United and Chelsea but generally 2009/10 has
followed the trend of recent seasons, where “lesser” clubs have found it
ever more difficult to get results against top ones. Add in the progress of
Manchester City, Tottenham and Aston Villa, who have all spent heavily, and
some large beatings for the little teams is inevitable.
IS IT REFEREEING?
All our experts agree rule changes in favour of attackers have had an impact.
The interpretation of what constitutes a reckless tackle has been tightened
and the offside rule gets ever more generous to strikers. “For me, offside —
giving attackers benefit of the doubt, classing play in phases where a
player can be deemed to be ‘not active’, “is the most significant reason for
the increase in scoring,” says former Premier League referee Jeff Winter.
“You see goals scored where under the old system the flag would go up. You
have the silly situation of a guy standing in front of the keeper but ‘not
interfering’ because he’s not trying to play the ball. But those are the new
laws and those who make them want to see attacking play encouraged.”
The number of offsides per game has fallen in each of the past five seasons in
the Premier League. No manager has his defence pushing up, George
Graham-style. “Everything’s taken away from the defender and placed at the
striker’s feet,” Allardyce mourns. Goal-giddy spectators say “hear, hear”.
How balls have become more lethal by design
When the Premier League launched seventeen years ago any team losing at home
could have picked up their ball and run home for tea but football technology
and product marketing have come along way since August 1992. In that first
season, the home team had to provide their own balls. Now the latest
incarnation of the Premier League’s match ball – the Nike T90 Ascente –
retails for £85 and promises that, “wherever you are on the pitch, whoever’s
in front of you – the shot’s on.”
With [2.95] goals a game swerving past hapless keepers this season, compared
with an overall Premier League average of just 2.59, there may be something
in Nike’s puff. Thanks to a panel design that distributes energy evenly
throughout the ball on contact, Nike claims to have produced a ball with a
truly consistent touch that greatly enhances shooting accuracy. In addition,
their designers have borrowed from golf ball technology to create a casing
that equalises airflow to improve the ball’s flight.
To illustrate the point, Nike’s head of communications Leo Sandino-Taylor
recounts a tale from last March’s testing session with the Arsenal squad.
“We were on the training ground watching balls fly in when Arsene Wenger
turned to the testers and simply said, ‘you always know you are doing your
job properly when the keepers moan as much as they are’”, he said.
The T90 Ascente is the seventh different ball used in the top division since
the Premier League signed its first deal with Mitre in 1993 but four new
balls over the last five seasons suggest the rate of innovation is
accelerating. It is certainly a long way from the post-war balls of the
fifties, according to Dr. Andy Harland, a senior member of Loughborough
University’s Sports Technology Research Group.
“The requirements then were vastly different; manufacturers needed to produce
robust and durable balls that had to last a club throughout the season,
unlike today when there’s a limitless supply of pitch-side balls”, he said.
“That durability meant excess weight as the leather was thicker and, unlike
today’s balls, absorbed surface water, making the ball even heavier and that
meant less deviation and less speed through the air.”
Dr. Harland believes that the structural design of footballs – as opposed to
the cosmetic – has advanced very little since American architect Richard
Buckminster Fuller developed his revolutionary 32-panel ‘Bucky Ball’ in the
late sixties while trying to find a way to construct buildings using a
minimum of materials. Instead he suggests that “the biggest change in
football design technology since 1970 has been the improvement in the
standard of football boot.”
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