Comments
Excellent essay sir. Wish I'd seen yr talk at Aula. BUT! Welcome to the play ethic... you'll never turn back. Nice Cage quote - will get added to the pile.
Foe found this for me: "these are all the influences that made parkour born here in lisses, in half urban, half-natural space where David and Seb could do what they wanted. the parkour, is then a children games that become an art, an art of living, of moving. what is shameful is to believe that, once grown up, we shall stop playing. like Bruce lee said: “play, but play seriously”. we could talk about art of jumping, art of overcoming obstacles, art of moving." http://www.parkour.ir/eindex.aspx
Posted by: Matt June 20, 2006 at 04:18 PM
Argentina's celebrated goal made me think about writing something on the notion of beauty in football, mathematics and architecture - in each field (among others) there are certain methods of achieving a given objective that are subjective and debatable, while simultaneaously generally recognised as beautiful by even non-football fans, non-mathematicians and non-architects. While the objectives usually aren't subjective (or necessarily beautiful), the methods can be nevertheless.Anyway, congratulations & thanks for writing this excellent piece.
Posted by: Norman Blogster June 22, 2006 at 01:08 PM
Thanks Norman. Interesting.
There's a great deal in Winner's book on different - subjective - sense of beauty in Dutch football.
"Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Modern Art Museum in Amsterdam and also one of the country's most influential art critics and historians, argues that every country and culture has its own way of seeing. 'The psychologists deny these differences exist, but it's there in the [Dutch] art and culture. Ask any Dutch person to draw the horizon and they will draw a straight line. If you ask someone from Yorkshire or Tuscany or anywhere else, it will have bumps and hills. A Scandinavian blue is cold and steely, completely unlike a blue in Italy. Italian painting is rich in warm reds, but when red appears in the work of a northern artist like Munch, it's blood in the snow.' Furthermore, these climatic and geographically shaped aesthetic differences are inevitably reflected in football. 'Catenaccio is like a Titian painting - soft, seductive and languid. The Italians welcome and lull you and seduce you into their soft embrace, and score a goal like the thrust of a dagger. The Dutch make their geometric patterns. In a Vermeer, the pearl twinkles. You can say, in fact, that the twinkling of the pearl is the whole point of Vermeer. The whole painting is leading to this moment, the way the whole of football leads to the overhead goal of Van Basten. The English like to run and fight. When Gullit tried to transplant this Dutch art to Newcastle, he was trying to do something impossible. He was bound to fail.'"
Which does explain Ruud Gullit neatly. Winner goes on to explore how Dutch landscape has influenced the art and football in the Netherlands. Fuchs goes on to suggest this is why:
"The Dutch instinctively revere the 'architect' on the pitch, the one who has a grasp of the overall picture and every detail in it ... There is a Dutch way of seeing space, the landscape. Cruyff sees in that Dutch way and he is admired for his innate understanding of the geometry and order on the pitch."
Linked to this is a particular sense of beauty. Winner quotes artist Jeroen Henneman here:
"Perhaps it is to do with the sense of beauty that goes with the football in Holland. The beauty is in space and in the pitch. It is in the grass, but also in the air above it, where balls can curl and curve and drop and move like the planets in heaven. Not only on the field. The folding of the air above it also counts. The Dutch prefer to work out how to beat someone with intelligence and beauty rather than power."
Additionally, a particular kind of beauty, based around the pass and the collective space contained within the overall shape of the team on the pitch at that point, rather than individual brilliance. Henneman again:
"Open the pitch by crossing the ball with a curve: a simple pass to the other side and suddenly the team have all the room in the world. The idea is quite Dutch I think. I was so disappointed when I went to Brazil. I thought: finally I will see the great Brazilian football! I expected to see a very 'roomy' football. But they play in the most boring way, on technique, only to show off. A personal beauty is of course also valid. But the passing was very short all the time and the game was slow. Not slow in a Dutch way. The progress was slow, like gridiron football. So slow! They go forward, they go back. Some do little tricks, nice little things. But it is not football."
A little harsh perhaps, and a generalisation. The great Argentine goal mentioned earlier is a wondrous passing move, finished by a defensive midfielder, Cambiasso, which shares something with this Dutch sense of beauty. European-based Brazilian players like Ronaldinho are amongst the great passers in the game, and have a highly-developed sense of space in particular. But there is clearly something in the differing styles here. The Argentine goal above is based on short passing and revolving movement around the number 10; not the curved space-creating passes Henneman covets. The dribble is a part of the South American sense of beauty in football; it isn't in Dutch football (despite Arjen Robben etc.)
The great Argentine striker Jorge Valdano writing in Thursday's Guardian, about his colleague Maradona's classic 1986 goal against England, his slalom through the entire English defence:
"If he had passed me the ball as it seems Plan A called for, I would have grabbed it in my hand and applauded. Can you imagine? But let's not deceive ourselves, I am convinced that Diego was never going to release that ball. Throughout those 10 seconds and 10 touches, he changed his mind hundreds of times because that's how the mind of genius in action works. That celebration that put intelligence, the body and the ball in tune was an act of genius - but also in the most profound way, in footballing terms, of being Argentinian. What Maradona was doing was making Argentinians' football dream a reality: we love the ball more than the game and, for that reason, the dribble more than the pass."
The Argentinians see beauty in the player with the ball, hence the dribble; the Dutch in the space the ball and players move through, hence the pass. The sense of beauty - whilst recognisable in both - is different across these places, thus the football is valued differently too.
Posted by: Dan June 23, 2006 at 08:20 AM
An excellent post and comment. On my flight over to Amsterdam a few weeks ago the KLM in-flight magazine had an article on Dutch football by Jane Szita, "Great balls of fire" that made similar references to the Dutch use of space in football, art, and land use. There is creativity in the teamwork and the use of space. This article had me thinking of Total Football and the use of space in art and society that whole trip and beyond.
At university I took a tutorial on the early Northern renaissance painting (Flemish, Dutch, and Northern Germanic), which began working through perspective, symbolism of objects and space, detail (both foreground and background), light, and texture. The final paper was a comparison of the Northern renaissance and Italian renaissance, which showed vastly different light, colors, detail, and use of space.
Football, as in art is about space and options. What can be done with the space and the options. Closing space opens other options. The more objects in the space the more variables, but also the more limitations to when one object occupies a space. With art and a painting of St. Jerome we need a medium (paint, ink, woodcutting, etc.), a lion, Saint Jerome, books, and writing implements as important elements of depicting that the subject is in fact Saint Jerome. Other objects, such as windows, doors, tables, etc. are not essential, but are common objects to an artists depiction of Saint Jerome. Saint Jerome is often painted or etched in a library, but he is also illustrated out of doors, which make the books and writing implements less probable, but not as improbable as a lion in a library.
In football the use of space makes a defender, much like a lion indoors not as probable. But it is the improbability that makes for beauty and art. Shifting of roles and expected uses makes a components quite valuable. It is still about limitations to space, central objects, and the other options for the remaining objects in that space. In football it is players and the ball that create options. The player with the ball is the focus, but the beauty comes in creating the options with the remaining space as to where the ball can go next. As artist move the lion into a library, a defender can move to the offensive space in the wide open to create options that were unseen before.
The tensions between expected and other options, use of space, adding and subtracting variables, creating balance out of imbalance, and shifting of roles that create the ability for people to express themselves and to innovate. Seeing alternate uses of the familiar surroundings, as Matt states, is the heart of play. Play is as much a part of art as it is sport. The rules are defined. The space is defined. But the use of the objects and all the variables is what separates the player/artist from the spectator.
Posted by: vanderwal June 25, 2006 at 06:22 PM
It seems appropriate to mention Labanotation: The Archie Gemmill Goal.
Posted by: Harry June 29, 2006 at 06:43 PM
Seems like you might want to consider jazz musicians rather than Cage. They train like athletes do and have an arsenal of tricks knowledge and experience that comes to bear in the context of a performance. Especially the musicians whose improvisations are not based on a pre-existing song. They are simply enjoying a musical conversation with their peers. Isn't that what the truly great soccer players are doing?
Posted by: visitor November 11, 2006 at 12:59 AM
Great essay.(Apologies for opening old threads, but I came across your site whilst doing research for a dissertation on the Tricorn)
Do you think it would benefit English football if the Academy system was to deal with more non-football subjects? For example, drop one of that weeks tackling drills and ask the football scholars to write an essay on 'notions of space in civic design', 'charlie parker and miles davis', or other such subjects?
Maybe this is something that should be encouraged within all schools? I am a firm believer in moving away from the current system of quanitifiable, standardised assessment as I feel it takes us ever closer to a society populated by what Durkheim would have called 'technicians' - specialists in a given area with no perception of the wider world, or any appreciation of actions not ruled by pre-ordained logic. If schools changed, then perhaps England could win the world cup again.
Posted by: Jonathan S. Bean September 03, 2007 at 05:11 PM
That is one of the greatest ways of football logic I have ever heard and yes there seems to be a way of thinking that has to do with how we play !and Countries vary
Posted by: Paul Rodriguez November 03, 2007 at 09:12 AM
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Design. Architecture. Football.
The World Cup is everywhere, so what better time to thread a series of theoretical passes together into a sinuously flowing move? On why football is so compelling for so many people, and what can that tell us about the practice of design and architecture. (I'm thinking of playing John Cage in the hole behind the front two, flanked by Johann Cruyff and Aldo van Eyck. And if this piece doesn't guarantee my season ticket for Pseud's Corner, I don't know what will.)
To set the scene. I'm writing on a sunny day in London, that same sun bestowing itself upon European cousin Germany to the east, ensuring a radiant glow under the eyes of most on the planet. Yes indeed, World Cup 2006 is ablaze with individual talent, peerless team performances, intrigue and torment, instant-classic games, and goals goals goals.
And what glorious goals: a barrage of ball-technology-assisted long-range screamers and thumping headers; swishing flurries of one-two'd parries followed by a deadly rapier thrust; and, well, one of the best goals the game has ever seen.
Argentina's second goal, in their ruthless destruction of Serbia and Montenegro (an almost callous act, as that country ceases to exist after this World Cup), was instantly being lauded in such terms. The awe-inspiring sight of the entire Argentina team moving fluidly as if to some pre-ordained ballet - "a symphony of collaboration" according to The Guardian - was simply Liquid Football (™Alan Partridge). 24 passes throughout 8 of the 10 outfield Argentines, utterly bewitching the Serbia & Montenegro team. But this apparent perfection, whilst honed by endless individual and collective drills of technique and teamplay in training, was also largely improvised in real-time, entirely determined by the context of the opposing team - which cannot be accurately predicted at all.
This emphasis on unpredictable, interpreted creativity being performed within formal systems actually suggests interesting parallels to me, reminiscent of those discussed in my recent 'Architecture and interaction design' summary. I talked of 'the social process of design'; of the interaction between a system of space, articulated by designers or architects, which is then interpreted and adapted by users with individual creativity and agency.
Progressing this, at my Aula 2006 talk last week, I described a further parallel - that of examining composers of contemporary music, such as John Cage et al, as they might provide useful metaphors for thinking about participative media - given the interplay between composed and vernacular, chance, improvisation and interpretation. Little is deterministic - only a trajectory towards a goal or scenario, articulated via a score, which can be interpreted during performance.
Actually, to pause on mapping systems of possibilities, I also discussed the idea of co-opting such graphical notation or scores from music, with respect to my 'Lost' article. Now look at the potential similarity between The Guardian's daily infographics describing the narrative of games and goals (annoyingly not online). A graphical score developed for football may be an appropriate way of describing coordinated movement through time and space. I don't know of any developed to this end (anybody know what the pre-eminent information system in football, ProZone, uses for this?). I imagine it could also be similar to the notation of dance collected and discussed by Tufte.
Leaving aside the possible use of scores as design tools, look at the relationship between these ways of thinking about music and design - systems which cannot be perfectly engineered, but instead provide suggestions, interpreted and performed. This turns out to also have some parallels, however tenuous, with a certain kind of thinking about football. In David Winner's superb book 'Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football', we find many of these concepts carefully harmonised around the football intellectual's favourite ever thing: the 'Total Football' concept of the early '70s Dutch national team and Amsterdam-based Ajax (in which highly-drilled players freely switched positions during a game and improvised attacks from every angle. Interestingly, the Argentina goal described above was finished off by a defensive midfielder.) Winner describes how a previously unwritten yet tangible unified theory of 'a Dutch sense of space' influenced this approach to football, drawn from the Netherlands' modern history of architecture, design, art, planning and politics. (The image above left is artist Jeroen Henneman's sketch of a Dennis Bergkamp pass, taken from Winner's book and captioned "One moment the pitch is crowded and narrow. Suddenly it is huge and wide".)
Daringly tracing a line between the work of Rinus Michels and Johann Cruyff at Ajax, the Amsterdam school - a 'Total City' approach, based around the ideas of architects Michel de Klerk and H. P. Berlage - the mid-60s Provo movement, Wim Crouwel's Total Design studio, numerous artists and photographers, and the topography and environment of the Netherlands itself, Winner describes how Dutch football's pervasive and serious discussion of space and systems is an entirely predictable product of its culture.
"All systems should be familarised, one with the other, in such a way that their combined impact and interaction can be appreciated as a single complex system,' said key structuralist Aldo van Eyck, talking about modern cities but sounding uncannily as though he might be laying down a template for the Ajax football system. Herman Hertzberger, the last of the great structuralists still living, says of the need for flexible buildings, 'Each form must be interpretable in the sense that it must be capable of taking on different roles. And it can only take on those different roles if the different meanings are contained in the essence of the form' ... It was not until 1974 that the word totaalvoetbal entered the Dutch language, used as it was to describe the Ajax-style football played by Holland's national team in that year's World Cup. Also in that year J.P. Bakema, colleague of Herzberger and Van Eyck in the influential Team 10 and Forum magazine, passionately advocated a 'Total' approach: 'Total Urbanisation' and 'Total Environment' and 'Total Energy'. A man has three life questions: What am I? Who am I? Where am I? In this period of Total use of earch and space, balance between use and care can only be given by Total Architecture.'" ['Brilliant Orange', David Winner, pp30-31]
Read the book for more. But my tentatively-made point is that in designing for adaptation - in designing for participative media in particular - there may be something in these parallels. In effect, changing ends with Winner and looking instead from football to design and architecture.
I'll write up the Aula talk, which will further develop these ideas with respect to Cage and contemporary composition, but in both cases, I'm interested in the balance between creating systems which describe possibilities but enable individual improvisation and interpretation.
(And if the composer or orchestrator figure, such as Cage, provides a metaphor for a form of design for participation or adaptation, it may be that the equivalent figure in a football team - the quixotic 'number 10' - also provides a useful analogue. Someone who pulls the strings; imagines the space and time that a move might be conducted in; who provides direction for the team flowing around him; who doesn't necessarily finish or resolve the move - the number 10 is not necessarily prolific scorer, but provider instead - one who describes the arc of the move through his own movement, or through shaping the ball's movement through the intersection of players and space. One of the greatest English writers on sport (and music), Richard Williams, has a new book out exploring this particular position and profiling some of the greats who have defined it. No English players feature, perhaps tellingly.)
So I think one reason people find football aesthetically and formally appealing - leaving aside other obvious reasons - is to do with this see-saw balancing act; when the fragile beauty of design can be denied so effortlessly by the combination of chance, improvisation, circumstance and irrational passion. It's the call-and-response tension between these forces that makes the game at the highest level so thrilling. And it's this tension which is reminiscent of adaptive design ideas discussed here previously; that design isn't the end of the process, but the beginning; that interpretation and improvisation will define the end-product, not the original design - in architecture, in music, in football.
This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, merely yet another way to trigger interesting angles within old discourse; to find the Bergkampian killer through-ball, reversed through a thicket of defenders' legs whilst looking the other way ... Yet there may be something in these analogies with music and football. Play and gaming is often discussed in new media circles of course, but usually confined to the relatively bloodless worlds of massively multi-player online games (with some honorable exceptions). Until video games become either genuinely physical and genuinely economically-productive, why not look at the greatest massively multi-player game the world has? Something truly globally popular as well as physical, participative, tangible, impassioned. It's right under our noses ... And if you think this is all a bit too frivolous, last words go to John Cage, ironically:
"Purposeless play (is) an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord."
Posted by Dan Hill in Adaptive Design, Architecture, Cities & Places, Information Design, Sports Permalink
The World Cup is everywhere, so what better time to thread a series of theoretical passes together into a sinuously flowing move? On why football is so compelling for so many people, and what can that tell us about the practice of design and architecture. (I'm thinking of playing John Cage in the hole behind the front two, flanked by Johann Cruyff and Aldo van Eyck. And if this piece doesn't guarantee my season ticket for Pseud's Corner, I don't know what will.)
To set the scene. I'm writing on a sunny day in London, that same sun bestowing itself upon European cousin Germany to the east, ensuring a radiant glow under the eyes of most on the planet. Yes indeed, World Cup 2006 is ablaze with individual talent, peerless team performances, intrigue and torment, instant-classic games, and goals goals goals.
And what glorious goals: a barrage of ball-technology-assisted long-range screamers and thumping headers; swishing flurries of one-two'd parries followed by a deadly rapier thrust; and, well, one of the best goals the game has ever seen.
Argentina's second goal, in their ruthless destruction of Serbia and Montenegro (an almost callous act, as that country ceases to exist after this World Cup), was instantly being lauded in such terms. The awe-inspiring sight of the entire Argentina team moving fluidly as if to some pre-ordained ballet - "a symphony of collaboration" according to The Guardian - was simply Liquid Football (™Alan Partridge). 24 passes throughout 8 of the 10 outfield Argentines, utterly bewitching the Serbia & Montenegro team. But this apparent perfection, whilst honed by endless individual and collective drills of technique and teamplay in training, was also largely improvised in real-time, entirely determined by the context of the opposing team - which cannot be accurately predicted at all.
This emphasis on unpredictable, interpreted creativity being performed within formal systems actually suggests interesting parallels to me, reminiscent of those discussed in my recent 'Architecture and interaction design' summary. I talked of 'the social process of design'; of the interaction between a system of space, articulated by designers or architects, which is then interpreted and adapted by users with individual creativity and agency.
Progressing this, at my Aula 2006 talk last week, I described a further parallel - that of examining composers of contemporary music, such as John Cage et al, as they might provide useful metaphors for thinking about participative media - given the interplay between composed and vernacular, chance, improvisation and interpretation. Little is deterministic - only a trajectory towards a goal or scenario, articulated via a score, which can be interpreted during performance.
Actually, to pause on mapping systems of possibilities, I also discussed the idea of co-opting such graphical notation or scores from music, with respect to my 'Lost' article. Now look at the potential similarity between The Guardian's daily infographics describing the narrative of games and goals (annoyingly not online). A graphical score developed for football may be an appropriate way of describing coordinated movement through time and space. I don't know of any developed to this end (anybody know what the pre-eminent information system in football, ProZone, uses for this?). I imagine it could also be similar to the notation of dance collected and discussed by Tufte.
Leaving aside the possible use of scores as design tools, look at the relationship between these ways of thinking about music and design - systems which cannot be perfectly engineered, but instead provide suggestions, interpreted and performed. This turns out to also have some parallels, however tenuous, with a certain kind of thinking about football. In David Winner's superb book 'Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football', we find many of these concepts carefully harmonised around the football intellectual's favourite ever thing: the 'Total Football' concept of the early '70s Dutch national team and Amsterdam-based Ajax (in which highly-drilled players freely switched positions during a game and improvised attacks from every angle. Interestingly, the Argentina goal described above was finished off by a defensive midfielder.) Winner describes how a previously unwritten yet tangible unified theory of 'a Dutch sense of space' influenced this approach to football, drawn from the Netherlands' modern history of architecture, design, art, planning and politics. (The image above left is artist Jeroen Henneman's sketch of a Dennis Bergkamp pass, taken from Winner's book and captioned "One moment the pitch is crowded and narrow. Suddenly it is huge and wide".)
Daringly tracing a line between the work of Rinus Michels and Johann Cruyff at Ajax, the Amsterdam school - a 'Total City' approach, based around the ideas of architects Michel de Klerk and H. P. Berlage - the mid-60s Provo movement, Wim Crouwel's Total Design studio, numerous artists and photographers, and the topography and environment of the Netherlands itself, Winner describes how Dutch football's pervasive and serious discussion of space and systems is an entirely predictable product of its culture.
"All systems should be familarised, one with the other, in such a way that their combined impact and interaction can be appreciated as a single complex system,' said key structuralist Aldo van Eyck, talking about modern cities but sounding uncannily as though he might be laying down a template for the Ajax football system. Herman Hertzberger, the last of the great structuralists still living, says of the need for flexible buildings, 'Each form must be interpretable in the sense that it must be capable of taking on different roles. And it can only take on those different roles if the different meanings are contained in the essence of the form' ... It was not until 1974 that the word totaalvoetbal entered the Dutch language, used as it was to describe the Ajax-style football played by Holland's national team in that year's World Cup. Also in that year J.P. Bakema, colleague of Herzberger and Van Eyck in the influential Team 10 and Forum magazine, passionately advocated a 'Total' approach: 'Total Urbanisation' and 'Total Environment' and 'Total Energy'. A man has three life questions: What am I? Who am I? Where am I? In this period of Total use of earch and space, balance between use and care can only be given by Total Architecture.'" ['Brilliant Orange', David Winner, pp30-31]
Read the book for more. But my tentatively-made point is that in designing for adaptation - in designing for participative media in particular - there may be something in these parallels. In effect, changing ends with Winner and looking instead from football to design and architecture.
I'll write up the Aula talk, which will further develop these ideas with respect to Cage and contemporary composition, but in both cases, I'm interested in the balance between creating systems which describe possibilities but enable individual improvisation and interpretation.
(And if the composer or orchestrator figure, such as Cage, provides a metaphor for a form of design for participation or adaptation, it may be that the equivalent figure in a football team - the quixotic 'number 10' - also provides a useful analogue. Someone who pulls the strings; imagines the space and time that a move might be conducted in; who provides direction for the team flowing around him; who doesn't necessarily finish or resolve the move - the number 10 is not necessarily prolific scorer, but provider instead - one who describes the arc of the move through his own movement, or through shaping the ball's movement through the intersection of players and space. One of the greatest English writers on sport (and music), Richard Williams, has a new book out exploring this particular position and profiling some of the greats who have defined it. No English players feature, perhaps tellingly.)
So I think one reason people find football aesthetically and formally appealing - leaving aside other obvious reasons - is to do with this see-saw balancing act; when the fragile beauty of design can be denied so effortlessly by the combination of chance, improvisation, circumstance and irrational passion. It's the call-and-response tension between these forces that makes the game at the highest level so thrilling. And it's this tension which is reminiscent of adaptive design ideas discussed here previously; that design isn't the end of the process, but the beginning; that interpretation and improvisation will define the end-product, not the original design - in architecture, in music, in football.
This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, merely yet another way to trigger interesting angles within old discourse; to find the Bergkampian killer through-ball, reversed through a thicket of defenders' legs whilst looking the other way ... Yet there may be something in these analogies with music and football. Play and gaming is often discussed in new media circles of course, but usually confined to the relatively bloodless worlds of massively multi-player online games (with some honorable exceptions). Until video games become either genuinely physical and genuinely economically-productive, why not look at the greatest massively multi-player game the world has? Something truly globally popular as well as physical, participative, tangible, impassioned. It's right under our noses ... And if you think this is all a bit too frivolous, last words go to John Cage, ironically:
"Purposeless play (is) an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord."
Posted by Dan Hill in Adaptive Design, Architecture, Cities & Places, Information Design, Sports Permalink
There are two kinds of people in the world, Notre Dame lovers and Notre Dame haters. And, quite frankly, they're both a pain in the ass. ~Dan Devine, former Notre Dame football coachThe Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean. ~Erma BombeckBeer and Rugby are more or less synonymous. ~Chris Laidlaw, 1973Mud in Your Eye: A Worm's Eye View of the Changing World of Rugby, 1973; CDC-->Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squalch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellowman which, if done elsewhere, would result in fourteen days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench. ~P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves, 1930I have seen women walk right past a TV set with a football game on and - this always amazes me - not stop to watch, even if the TV is showing replays of what we call a "good hit," which is a tackle that causes at least one major internal organ to actually fly out of a player's body. ~Dave BarryI like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault. ~Jack TatumHe was the only man I ever saw who ran his own interference. ~Steve Owen, about Bronko NagurskiTrying to maintain order during a legalized gang brawl involving 80 toughs with a little whistle, a hanky and a ton of prayer. ~Anonymous referee, explaining his jobThere are several differences between a football game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also, there are usually more casualties in a football game. The object of the game is to move a ball past the other team's goal line. This counts as six points. No points are given for lacerations, contusions, or abrasions, but then no points are deducted, either. Kicking is very important in football. In fact, some of the more enthusiastic players even kick the ball, occasionally. ~Alfred HitchcockMen are clinging to football on a level we aren't even aware of. For centuries, we ruled everything, and now, in the last ten minutes, there are all these incursions by women. It's our Alamo. ~Tony KornheiserSpeed is not your fastest, but your slowest man. No back can run faster than his interference. ~Jock SutherlandWhen it comes to football, God is prejudiced - toward big, fast kids. ~Chuck MillsAustralian Rules football might best be described as a game devised for padded cells, played in the open air. ~Jim MurrayFootball players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers. ~Merle KesslerSpeed, strength, and the inability to register pain immediately. ~Reggie Williams, when asked his greatest strengths as a football playerRugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen. Soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts. Football is a beastly game played by beasts. ~Henry Blaha, 1972What about football? Is it a sport or a concussion? ~Jim Murray, Los Angeles TimesThe tactical difference between Association Football and Rugby with its varieties seems to be that in the former the ball is the missile, in the latter men are the missiles. ~Alfred E. Crawley, The Book of the Ball, 1913
Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of your aggressions without going to jail for it. ~Heywood Hale BrownAcademe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: [from academe] A modern school where football is taught. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's DictionaryMost football players are temperamental. That's 90 percent temper and 10 percent mental. ~Doug PlankLet's face it, you have to have a slightly recessive gene that has a little something to do with the brain to go out on the football field and beat your head against other human beings on a daily basis. ~Tim GreenYou have to play this game like somebody just hit your mother with a two-by-four. ~Dan BirdwellFootball combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings. ~George F. WillPro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors. ~Frank GiffordThanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence. ~Erma BombeckIf a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead. ~Erma BombeckIf you're mad at your kid, you can either raise him to be a nose tackle or send him out to play on the freeway. It's about the same. ~Bob GolicAt the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact. ~George PlimptonBaseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field? ~Jim BoutonOne of the great disappointments of a football game is that the cheerleaders never seem to get injured. ~Author UnknownAmerican football makes rugby look like a Tupperware party. ~Sue Lawley, 1985Football is not a contact sport. It's a collision sport. Dancing is a good example of a contact sport. ~Duffy DaughertyWhen I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team. ~George RavelingThe reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public. ~Phyllis DillerBaseball is what we were. Football is what we have become. ~Mary McGroryFootball is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbalized, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time. ~Arnold MandellI do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me. ~Anna Quindlen, Living Out Loud, 1988College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture. ~Elbert HubbardWatching football is like watching pornography. There's plenty of action, and I can't take my eyes off it, but when it's over, I wonder why the hell I spent an afternoon doing it. ~Luke Salisbury
The game of football is a contact sport. The whole field contains 22 players ( including offense and defense.) At the beginning of the game there is a kickoff. There are 120 yards from the end of the endzone to the other end. A touchdown is worth 6 points. After the touchdown, you get the choice of the 2 point conversion or kicking for an extra point.
A player wears 10 to 12 pieces of protective equipment . A professional football weighs 14 to 15 ounces. The quarterback has control of the football at the begining of the play. A safety is worth 2 points and the team that got the safety gets to return the kick.
A player wears 10 to 12 pieces of protective equipment . A professional football weighs 14 to 15 ounces. The quarterback has control of the football at the begining of the play. A safety is worth 2 points and the team that got the safety gets to return the kick.
The Divide Route in the Multiple Smash Concept
The "smash concept" is extremely popular for a reason: It's a great route. And it is simple to teach. The concept is designed to defeat Cover Two in its many forms. As Cover Two has evolved (Tampa 2, "Tough Two" with the corners retreating to ten yards and jumping routes, and Cover Two-Man), the Smash has become more and more popular.A word here about verbiage. I refer here to the "Smash concept" or the "Smash route." Both refer to a two-man combination with the outside receiver on a 6 yard hitch and the inside receiver on a 12 yard corner route. Some coaches and teams go further and actually refer to either the corner route or the hitch route as a "smash" route. Again, "smash" to me is the combination - i.e. the concept - rather than any individual route.In any event, the quarterback has a progression read: (1) corner, (2) hitch underneath. In his progression read he will "key" the cornerback: If the cornerback sinks back to stop the corner route, throw the hitch; if he comes up for the hitch, throw the corner. The best way to describe this to a QB is that you have a progression read and you "read" your receivers. You simply "progress" from one to two. In doing this though you have to understand what guys you are "keying," as their reactions should determine your progression. A Quarterback must understand defenses and defender reactions, but at the same time there is no telling where those 11 guys on defense will go, and as long as he knows where his receivers are and if the QB and the receivers are all on the same page we can run a successful play. We tell him his general rule is to throw the corner route until they take it away (though by gameplan or defense you can tell him to always throw the hitch until they come up for it).I won't belabor the details of coaching up the "smash" portion of the route itself. If you want to understand all the details in depth, I suggest this. See here too for more on the "multiple smash route." (Registration required) Broadly, the inside receiver will run a 12 yard corner route. He has no "reading" on the play, but he must know his techniques. First, he should identify whether it is man or zone. Against man he will need to close his defender's cushion, push or lean him slightly inside, and plant and break hard away from the defender. Against zone he wants to see who he is running the route off of. If there is a deep defender over him he must set this man up inside and jab at the post at 10-12 yards and break for the corner. If there is no one head up on him he will roll cut his route so he loses no speed. It's worth mentioning though that even if he jabs or plants and breaks we want this closer to a "speed cut," as we don't want him to lose too much speed. A receiver can do this best by "jabbing" while having his toes actually pointed where he wants to go and having his "plant" foot not outside the framework of his body. Young receivers too often step way outside their body frames with their toes pointed in the wrong direction.The corner route will be caught between 22-25 yards downfield. The QB's job is to "throw him open": throw the ball into the open grass. The receiver must react to the ball and go and get it. Against man to man defense to the short side of the field the depth of the route will be 18-22 yards.See the above linked article for more specifics, but we tell the outside guy he has two portions to his route. First, run a six-yard hitch route (five-steps - three big and two small), and (2) the "option" or "get open" part of his route. We simply want him to find the open spot. If the corner comes up in Cover 2 zone he will push to 6, turn inside, and work inside to the next zone hole.If the corner is off and he turns and there is a flat defender inside, he just wants to get space from that guy. If that defender hangs the hitch receiver will drift away from him at his 5-6 yard depth as an outlet for the QB.If the flat defender flies out to cover him he will break inside this player. We'd like him to actually climb over this flat defender because he will better be able to find the zone hole created but if the flat defender hangs back too far he will come inside slightly and settle underneath.The Divide RouteThis is all fairly straightforward stuff that most people do. The point of this article is to talk about adding a bit more of a big-play dimension to theSmash by using the "divide route," which in other coaches terminology may be a "seam read" or a "tube-read." Both the route and the "read" are simple.The divide route involves a MOFO or MOFC read by the inside receiver. MOFO simply means "middle of the field open," or no deep middle safety. MOFC means "middle of the field closed," or is there a deep middle guy. The nice thing about this read for the "divide route" as opposed to some other contexts is that the route, hence the name, is simply about "dividing" the deep coverage and the receiver has a lot of freedom to find the downfield open grass. It's a deep stretch and it is designed to strike safeties who overplay the smash or simply get out of position.Obviously the immediate strength of the divide route as shown is that if a two-deep safety to the smash side overplays the route, one can hit the post route for a big play. If you keep the go route on the backside (as diagrammed) and both safeties overplay the Smash side then the "Go" might be open for a big play. The simple reality is that a Cover 2 team really cannot cover this concept effectively.Against a Cover 3 zone the QB's "peek" is the seam backside. Before the smash part of his progression, he wants to get the F/S moving and hit the seam.Running the divide to the trips side is even more dangerous. Any team that tries to play Cover 2 to the trips side will struggle mightily. Many defensive coaches instruct their kids to simply check out of Cover 2 against a trips look. Observe that the "divide" principles governing that inside receiver tells him that he will run more of a "skinny" post here inside the Cover 2 safety to break the deep coverage but avoid the safety on the opposite hash. If there is no deep safety the receiver has lots of freedom.This is because, again, the governing principle of the "divide route" (one reason I like to call it this instead of a "seam-read") is that you can largely just tell the receiver that he has the area between the hashmarks to work to find the deep open vertical grass. A more advanced technique applies if the defense drops super deep so that he cannot effectively "divide" defenders. This will be done by gameplan, but if that is the case we will essentially let him "throttle" down a bit in the voids and the QB will still look to throw it in the open grass, but simply in the open grass in front of those deep dropping safeties.In any event, see below for how the divide route will work against MOFO and MOFC defenses.Cover 2:Cover 3:Now, what if it is a MOFC defense but that free safety is flying over too much? Well now it's time to be a good Ball Coach and tag the inside receiver on a "middle-read" route. I have previously explained that route here. The similarity with the divide is a post route against MOFO. The difference is a square-in or cross against MOFC. So if that free safety flies over, he will cut inside that guy. Observe that this is the exact same principle we used for that outside hitch receiver.Backside hitchHere is a last aspect to the play that I am a big fan of. I think the play is very effective if you keep the backside player on a hitch, particularly in trips. This gives you a great look against any soft coverage. When you do this you ask your QB to be a ball player and get the ball to the backside receiver if the defense gives it. (In other words, it's probably soft Cover 3.) If it's not there he looks over to the smash side and works his normal progression: Peek at the divide route, then work the smash combination.ConclusionThis is a simple, well designed play that is both a ball-control, high percentage play, but with the divide route and the corner route it has great big-play potential. If the defense plays soft you will take what they give you, but if they play any kind of two-deep or if their safety gets out of position you will make them pay.
Labels: blitz, divide route, mike martz, mouse davis, passing, passing concepts, play selection, reads, run and shoot, smash, strategy
The "smash concept" is extremely popular for a reason: It's a great route. And it is simple to teach. The concept is designed to defeat Cover Two in its many forms. As Cover Two has evolved (Tampa 2, "Tough Two" with the corners retreating to ten yards and jumping routes, and Cover Two-Man), the Smash has become more and more popular.A word here about verbiage. I refer here to the "Smash concept" or the "Smash route." Both refer to a two-man combination with the outside receiver on a 6 yard hitch and the inside receiver on a 12 yard corner route. Some coaches and teams go further and actually refer to either the corner route or the hitch route as a "smash" route. Again, "smash" to me is the combination - i.e. the concept - rather than any individual route.In any event, the quarterback has a progression read: (1) corner, (2) hitch underneath. In his progression read he will "key" the cornerback: If the cornerback sinks back to stop the corner route, throw the hitch; if he comes up for the hitch, throw the corner. The best way to describe this to a QB is that you have a progression read and you "read" your receivers. You simply "progress" from one to two. In doing this though you have to understand what guys you are "keying," as their reactions should determine your progression. A Quarterback must understand defenses and defender reactions, but at the same time there is no telling where those 11 guys on defense will go, and as long as he knows where his receivers are and if the QB and the receivers are all on the same page we can run a successful play. We tell him his general rule is to throw the corner route until they take it away (though by gameplan or defense you can tell him to always throw the hitch until they come up for it).I won't belabor the details of coaching up the "smash" portion of the route itself. If you want to understand all the details in depth, I suggest this. See here too for more on the "multiple smash route." (Registration required) Broadly, the inside receiver will run a 12 yard corner route. He has no "reading" on the play, but he must know his techniques. First, he should identify whether it is man or zone. Against man he will need to close his defender's cushion, push or lean him slightly inside, and plant and break hard away from the defender. Against zone he wants to see who he is running the route off of. If there is a deep defender over him he must set this man up inside and jab at the post at 10-12 yards and break for the corner. If there is no one head up on him he will roll cut his route so he loses no speed. It's worth mentioning though that even if he jabs or plants and breaks we want this closer to a "speed cut," as we don't want him to lose too much speed. A receiver can do this best by "jabbing" while having his toes actually pointed where he wants to go and having his "plant" foot not outside the framework of his body. Young receivers too often step way outside their body frames with their toes pointed in the wrong direction.The corner route will be caught between 22-25 yards downfield. The QB's job is to "throw him open": throw the ball into the open grass. The receiver must react to the ball and go and get it. Against man to man defense to the short side of the field the depth of the route will be 18-22 yards.See the above linked article for more specifics, but we tell the outside guy he has two portions to his route. First, run a six-yard hitch route (five-steps - three big and two small), and (2) the "option" or "get open" part of his route. We simply want him to find the open spot. If the corner comes up in Cover 2 zone he will push to 6, turn inside, and work inside to the next zone hole.If the corner is off and he turns and there is a flat defender inside, he just wants to get space from that guy. If that defender hangs the hitch receiver will drift away from him at his 5-6 yard depth as an outlet for the QB.If the flat defender flies out to cover him he will break inside this player. We'd like him to actually climb over this flat defender because he will better be able to find the zone hole created but if the flat defender hangs back too far he will come inside slightly and settle underneath.The Divide RouteThis is all fairly straightforward stuff that most people do. The point of this article is to talk about adding a bit more of a big-play dimension to theSmash by using the "divide route," which in other coaches terminology may be a "seam read" or a "tube-read." Both the route and the "read" are simple.The divide route involves a MOFO or MOFC read by the inside receiver. MOFO simply means "middle of the field open," or no deep middle safety. MOFC means "middle of the field closed," or is there a deep middle guy. The nice thing about this read for the "divide route" as opposed to some other contexts is that the route, hence the name, is simply about "dividing" the deep coverage and the receiver has a lot of freedom to find the downfield open grass. It's a deep stretch and it is designed to strike safeties who overplay the smash or simply get out of position.Obviously the immediate strength of the divide route as shown is that if a two-deep safety to the smash side overplays the route, one can hit the post route for a big play. If you keep the go route on the backside (as diagrammed) and both safeties overplay the Smash side then the "Go" might be open for a big play. The simple reality is that a Cover 2 team really cannot cover this concept effectively.Against a Cover 3 zone the QB's "peek" is the seam backside. Before the smash part of his progression, he wants to get the F/S moving and hit the seam.Running the divide to the trips side is even more dangerous. Any team that tries to play Cover 2 to the trips side will struggle mightily. Many defensive coaches instruct their kids to simply check out of Cover 2 against a trips look. Observe that the "divide" principles governing that inside receiver tells him that he will run more of a "skinny" post here inside the Cover 2 safety to break the deep coverage but avoid the safety on the opposite hash. If there is no deep safety the receiver has lots of freedom.This is because, again, the governing principle of the "divide route" (one reason I like to call it this instead of a "seam-read") is that you can largely just tell the receiver that he has the area between the hashmarks to work to find the deep open vertical grass. A more advanced technique applies if the defense drops super deep so that he cannot effectively "divide" defenders. This will be done by gameplan, but if that is the case we will essentially let him "throttle" down a bit in the voids and the QB will still look to throw it in the open grass, but simply in the open grass in front of those deep dropping safeties.In any event, see below for how the divide route will work against MOFO and MOFC defenses.Cover 2:Cover 3:Now, what if it is a MOFC defense but that free safety is flying over too much? Well now it's time to be a good Ball Coach and tag the inside receiver on a "middle-read" route. I have previously explained that route here. The similarity with the divide is a post route against MOFO. The difference is a square-in or cross against MOFC. So if that free safety flies over, he will cut inside that guy. Observe that this is the exact same principle we used for that outside hitch receiver.Backside hitchHere is a last aspect to the play that I am a big fan of. I think the play is very effective if you keep the backside player on a hitch, particularly in trips. This gives you a great look against any soft coverage. When you do this you ask your QB to be a ball player and get the ball to the backside receiver if the defense gives it. (In other words, it's probably soft Cover 3.) If it's not there he looks over to the smash side and works his normal progression: Peek at the divide route, then work the smash combination.ConclusionThis is a simple, well designed play that is both a ball-control, high percentage play, but with the divide route and the corner route it has great big-play potential. If the defense plays soft you will take what they give you, but if they play any kind of two-deep or if their safety gets out of position you will make them pay.
Labels: blitz, divide route, mike martz, mouse davis, passing, passing concepts, play selection, reads, run and shoot, smash, strategy
I Win! College Football Blogger Awards: Best Post
So I won a "College Football Blogger Award" for "Best Analysis: Best Post" for my article on the "Divide Route in the Multiple Smash Concept." I'm also up for an award for "Best Analysis" for the site as a whole, but I likely don't update with enough frequency to pull that one down.I'm flattered to have won. The site is designed to contribute that kind of analysis with each post, so hopefully I am succeeding in my own slow and incremental way. I'm also happy with my readership: a combination of football professionals and intellectually curious football fans.In any event, I also wanted to use the opportunity to thank the loose consortium of great college football blogs that have shown me a lot of recent support. A special hat tip too to Dawg Sports, which predicted that I'd win this particular award, and to Peter from Burnt Orange Nation, for whom I did one feature and honestly still owe him more.To read more about the College Football Awards, check out this index from Every Day Should Be Saturday.Last, here is a brief, nonexclusive list of some great college football blogs (each made even greater by having supported me in the past).- Burnt Orange Nation- Dawg Sports- MGOBlog- Sunday Morning Quarterback- Every Day Should Be Saturday- Rocky Top Talk- Double-T Nation
posted by Chris at 3/03/2008 02:39:00 PM 5 comments
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Constraint Theory of Offense
A common question is: what kind of offense do you run? Often someone – both fans and coaches – respond and say: I run a system with bubble screens, play action passes, screens, and draws. This person – coach or not – would be completely wrong. These kinds of plays are not your offense; your offense consists of the zone-read, the dropback passes, or your base runs and passes. Those other plays are sort-of conditions precedent to your offense; they work as constraints on the defense. What do I mean by this? At least in the most abstract sense, your “offense” is that bread and butter stuff you can draw on the whiteboard that should always work in a perfect world. It is the pass play that always works against Cover 3, it is the run that will always burst free against a “Bear” front. Yes, it is what works on paper. But we don’t live in a perfect world, right? Well the “constraint” plays are designed to make sure you live in one that is as close as possible.For example, the safety might get tired of watching you break big gains up the middle, so he begins to cheat up. Now you go play action and make him pay for his impatience. The outside linebackers may cheat in for the same reason. You throw the bubble screen and the bootlegs to make them pay for their impatience. The defensive ends begin rushing hard upfield; you trap, draw, and screen them to make them pay for getting out of position. If that defensive end played honest your tackle could block him; if he flies upfield he cannot. So you have to do these “constraint plays” to keep them in check. Once they get back to playing honest football, you, in essence, go back to the whiteboard and beat them with your bread and butter.Now, in a given game your offense might look like it is all “constraint” plays: all gimmicks, screens, traps, draws, fakes and the like. Maybe so. If the defense plays too aggressively, so what. But a coach must not lose sight of how his offense is truly structured. A great offense is structured around a core idea or a few core ideas that puts the players in position to succeed every time. The triple option can be this for some teams, a well designed dropback pass game for another. The constraints are alternatively given too much and not enough weight. But they nevertheless are what make an offense go.So the better you are at dropback passing, the more you need these constraint plays because teams will go out of their way to prevent you from chucking it all over them. Similarly if you’re a great run team. Safeties and linebackers will all cheat by formation and post-snap effort to stop your run game. You must have the counters, the screens, the bootlegs, and the quick passes (because quick 3-step passes, at core, are most effective when used to simply take advantage of a loose defensive structure). All this comports well with a game theory approach to football. Similarly, these constraint plays will be even more important against the best teams because they will put the biggest premium on stopping your primary threat.The upshot of all this is that when you are designing an offense you must (a) find those one or two things which you can hang your hat on and beat just about anything doing when the defense is playing honest, and (b) get good at all those little “constraint” plays which keep the defense playing honest. You won’t win championships simply throwing the bubble screen, but the bubble will help keep you from losing games when the defense wants to crash your run game. Same with draws and screens if you’re a passing team. You find ways to do what you want and put your players in position to win and score.ADDENDUM: Fair question from the comments: Does the theory work in the other direction? What if your offense is based only on bubble screens and then you just run the ball or throw the ball as a counter to your bubble screen offense?Response: The difference is that the bubble screen is a play that really only works when the defense has made a structural choice or is out of position. Most commonly, you'll run when the bubble only when the defense has but two defenders to cover three receivers. You thus block the two defenders and the receiver has free yards. If the defense puts a third defender there they can take the play away, intercept it, or make the tackle.Conversely, a well designed dropback pass play, a triple option play, or certain base runs will work every time you face a normal defense. The only time the play stops working is when certain defenders cheat on their assignments, either by alignment or aggressiveness.Here's how they fit together: You're an option team. You come out running the option, you read the defensive end and the linebacker, and you tear them up. Now the safety or outside linebacker cheats in. He blows up your play. But, voila, now they are not covering your outside receivers, so you bubble screen them.Similarly with a play action pass. You send a receiver deep down the middle or the seam. If the safety plays honest he should drop back and take it away. But if he comes up for your run play you use his aggressiveness against him.The distinction is subtle, but important. It relates to the idea of base plays and counter plays. The bubble is simply not a base play. It will not work against a simple and sound defense, but works great against defenses that aren't structurally sound or balanced. On the other hand, "base plays" defeat balanced "whiteboard" like defenses, but can get blown up by defenses that cheat or play games. Thus the relationship between "base plays" and "constraint" plays (or "keep-em-honest plays). The bubble, while limited in use, will have a profound influence when the defense gets out of position.
Labels: football techniques, game theory, gameplanning, spread, theory
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