Arsenal And The Beautiful Game
Three points and a welcome dose of uncertainty
Sometimes you just know what’s going to happen. There’s a monotonous inevitability about certain events. Which can be wonderful. From knowing the timing of migratory reindeer herds to predicting the dynamics of the solar system for planting and harvesting, humans need to divine the order of things to survive. But we need unpredictability and chaos too. We need the uncertainty and beauty of bewilderment and surprise. That’s why we have poetry and literature and painting and theatre. And it’s why we evolved play into sport.
Some sports, take pool for example, are utterly dependent on monotonous inevitability. In fact, the entire game relies on predicting the outcome of the cue ball’s effect on the other balls. To be a brilliant pool player you need to intuitively master Newtons laws of motion and apply exactly the right forces through the cue to create your desired outcomes.
Golf is similar, but there are more imponderables thrown in to raise the stakes. Unlike a pool table, golf courses vary, which presents a range of dynamic problems. There’s the weather, the wind, the humidity and the grass itself all affecting the calculations for getting that little golf ball into that small hole 300 yards down the fairway.
Then there’s individual sports like tennis that raise the stakes further by introducing a dynamic opponent to increase the uncertainty and baffle their adversary with unpredictable actions. Every tennis player brings their own tiny universe of chaos to the game in a head-to-head duel. Individual sports like pool, golf and tennis have a hierarchy of complexity. Golf is essentially played alone with the opponent along for the ride, but not actively interacting. Pool is played taking turns with each turn affecting the opponent’s environment. Tennis is played with each individual in direct head-to-head combat, each continuously affecting the opponent’s environment.
Then you’ve got team sports, where the hierarchy of complexity is increased to a whole new level by throwing in a bunch of extra dynamics. Of course in team sports players need to master the required skills and be able to make the requisite Newtonian predictions, but they also need to master a more complex labyrinthine social dynamic. Team members need to understand their fellow players and their strengths and weakness. They need to predict the physics of the sport and the personality and skills of their teammates. And they need to master the ever-evolving tactical dynamics made possible by this added elaboration.
Which brings us to the beautiful game. “Beautiful” because football is a wonderful blend of physical, mental and social artistry played out within its own dynamic and unpredictable universe. We love football because you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Football is the opposite of monotonous inevitability. Football, like life, is an attempt to tame chaos, a physical and psychological test played in a capricious climate of perpetual unpredictability. It’s like trying to domesticate the wildest of animals and knowing you’ll never succeed. And that’s how we want it to be. Always.
So I’m already loving Arteta’s unpredictable line-ups in what I imagine will continue to be an ever swirling constellation of changeable roles and players. No more predictable first eleven for Arsenal, because Arteta is now trying to master two problems, one on the pitch and one off of it.
What unsettles me about the current period of football’s evolution is the whittling away of football’s core beauty. There’s an attempt by the Mega-Owners of clubs to reduce the unpredictability, to dismantle the competitiveness and to establish a new world of monotonous inevitability. Huge clubs backed by astronomical wealth are trying to stabilise the instability. They’re taming the wildness and trying to simplify the complexity. And it’s not ok. We want a chaotic environment where every participating club has a competitive chance to triumph. That’s the essence of sport.
Yes of course there are historically successful clubs with huge fan bases that attract the best players through their prestige and history (and wealth). And of course there are the inevitable fickle cycles of success and failure that seem to happen for the most unfathomable reasons, causing clubs to rise and fall through the decades. But when you throw a kings ransom at clubs in order to skew the basic nature of the beautiful game, then we’re all in trouble. Because then your messing with the beautiful and you’re left with just a game. And worse its a game played off the pitch by billionaires whose motivations have very little to do with football.
So, let’s thank Arteta’s vision and the chaotic universe for fighting back in this opening game of the season against Forest, a game that (thankfully) managed to throw all the best and the worst of modern football at us in 90, er I mean 98 minutes. Yes I know that Arsenal are spending enough money to make the Pharaohs of Egypt look impoverished, I know that we’re not innocent in this current attempt to remove the beauty, but let’s acknowledge that this is inevitable in today’s footballing arms race and hope for less inequality in the future.
Back to the game, where for the most part there was a peculiar inevitability looming over The Emirates. At times it felt like a practice match where Arsenal had been allocated attack and Forest, defence. Arsenal were clearly superior in every department, perfectly illustrated by Forest’s new first choice keeper being the very same guy that Arsenal jettisoned because he wasn’t good enough to be their second keeper. Arsenal dominated possession and even though both teams were obviously feeling their way into the new season, Arsenal just had too much for Forest to cope with.
There were long periods when it was more dull than beautiful, interspersed with crystalline moments of extraordinary artistry. The Blur, a spirit-like storm of whizzing interchangeable elements that make up the front line showed flashes of the future but also plenty of knocking on a locked door. Until Martinelli’s gorgeous pirouetting back-heel reaching Nketiah who, like a carefully crafted old-fashioned, hand-made striker, ping-panged the ball past Turner. Then Starboy exploded into a constellation of brilliance by ushering the ball past a few bewildered onlookers and firing what’s become a trademark goal from the right corner of the box into the top left corner of the goal: The Sleek Oblique? Saka’s Swerving Serving? Havertz pressing, chasing and holding-up the ball, creating chances for himself and others, which as the season progresses will deliver goals. And the outside backs inverting in a continual swirl of confusing positional trickery. All good stuff.
But then the Beautiful Game started fighting back. The wild beast began to growl and buck and domestication seemed like a ridiculous hope. The barbarians were storming the citadel. The wonder of uncertainty returned. There was a gasp in the first half when Forest’s Johnson pounced on a loose ball and was offered a glorious opportunity to reverse the tide, but he’d seemingly jotted down his Newtonian calculations on the back of a beer mat and scuffed the chance. And unfortunately Jurrian timbered himself against a forest worker and eventually had to be replanted with Tomiyasu which allowed Forest to suddenly remember that Football is by nature unpredictable and chaotic as they carved a fast two-man goal through five Arsenal players.
Now I want to be clear here. This is Arsenal Wonderland we want Arsenal to win everything. But we’re also football lovers and we need the tantalising, excruciating, superb beauty of unpredictability. I want Arsenal to win but I don’t want a foregone conclusion. I want the full gambit of emotions that remind me of my humanness. I don’t want the ongoing ManCitification of football. I want to be engaged and invested and thrown from my seat precisely because anything can happen. I don’t want football to be played in a deterministic universe. I want football to have free will so I can applaud the artists making a million choices in a theatre of wonder and not be ploughed under by Newtonian inevitability.
Luckily for us there’s a massive territory of uncharted improvement for Arsenal to discover throughout the coming season. And there’s Arteta’s Ta-Da approach to baffling opponents with uncertainty in the pursuit of points. And that’s what we got. Three points and a scare. Arsenal are showing some signs of the return of beautiful flowing football and football is clinging onto the beauty of the beautiful game. Long may it continue.
So there you go dear reader. I hope you enjoyed this light-hearted musing through the first game of the season and if you’re enjoying AW don’t forget to share it far and wide. Have a great week and keep walking on the wild side!