World Cup: Has beauty ever tamed the beast?

Holland’s journey to the final, Uruguay’s surge to the semi-final and Spain’s clinical progress have all been met with an air of grudging acceptance. Few could argue that they haven’t deserved their success, but the manner in which it’s been achieved has been met with disappointment.

Where’s the beautiful football (or the total football in Holland’s case)? Where are the team goals and individual flashes of brilliance that we consider part and parcel of a World Cup? It seems that they’ve been replaced with chess board precision tactics, a defensive mind set and an all-too considered approach.

But has the World Cup ever been about beautiful football? Has it really featured performances, both individually and from a team perspective, of true brilliance? Or do we simply romanticise past tournaments?

Let us look back. Italy would win the tournament in 2006 – but the football that got them there wasn’t a joy to watch, it was simply clinical. They defended superbly, that is true (and as such we’ve romanticised the role of their captain and most prominent defender Fabio Cannavaro). But who really admires the defensive arts except Alan Hansen? At the last-16 stage they needed an injury time penalty from Francesco Totti to progress past Australia – that’s not the stuff of beauty.

When France won on home soil in 1998, the revisionists have painted Zinedine Zidane as an inspirational and unstoppable force. The truth is, in the final his two headers against Brazil were crucial, but earlier in the tournament he was sent off and would miss France’s next two games. How could he have been pivotal to their tournament while sitting on the sidelines?

Because England did so well, we look back on Italia ‘90 fondly, and in doing so make the mistake of thinking it was a classic World Cup. It wasn’t. Swathes of games were negative – so much so that Fifa introduced the back-pass rule.

It would be possible to continue, and illustrate that the beautiful game has rarely tamed the beast that simply wins matches, no matter how. Of course there have been moments of the highest calibre, moments of inspiration. Brazil in 1970, Maradona in ‘86, Cruyff in ‘74, Ronaldo in 2002. But even these performances are the thing of myth, over analysed and distorted to an extent that whatever artistry we see during South Africa 2010, it doesn’t stand a chance when it’s held up to the beautiful illusion of the past.

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