Showbaiting

What do you think of footballers showboating? I ask because there have been a couple of well publicised instances from Premier League players this season which have confirmed the disdain that most fans and pundits seem to hold for such antics.

The more recent case was when Manchester United's Brazilian, Antony, executed a 720 degree spin in their Europa League match against Sheriff Tiraspol. Pundits called it embarrassing. Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville - not the most gifted, silky skilled players I note - weighed in and Paul Scholes (a player to be fair) called him a "clown". According to the BBC Antony said he was "not going to stop doing what got me where I am" while his manager Ten Hag said he will "correct" the Brazilian if the player is unnecessarily showboating.

It seemed pretty pointless as the score was 0-0 in the first half and there was no defender near him: the nearest just stood off him and watched, presumably expecting him to fall over or something. Antony then attempted a pass under no pressure which went directly out of play. You can see it here together with his manager's reaction.

The earlier example was when Richarlison, also Brazilian, played keepy uppies near the corner flag after coming on late in the game as a sub in Tottenham's 2-0 Premier League win at Nottingham Forest in August. Richi was unceremoniously booted up in the air by Forest's Brennan Johnson who got booked.

After the Richarlison incident I came across a football themed youtube channel, HITC Sevens and listened to a fascinating analysis by the presenter; I think it's Alfie Potts Harmer. It's a good listen but 23 minutes long so let me give you the headlines. Potts argued that the reaction to Richi's keepy-uppies, which included lots of comments on the lines "deserves to get his leg broken", was not only not logical but rather deranged, speaks to some emotional problems in the British psyche and revealed more about modern Britain than any focus group or opinion poll could. Only "an over-emotional man-baby" would think it ok to resort to violence in such a situation. 

Harmer noted that the Brits have a very strange view about fairness and entertainment. We still resent Maradona's "hand of god" cheating but we'd been kicking ten bells out of him all match up to then. We also seem to think showboating is something foreigners do, but he noted that the English, as well as inventing football, probably invented showboating. Going back to the 1930s and 40s Len Shackleton stood over the ball pretending to comb his hair and Raich Carter would stop and invite opponents to try to get the ball off him, like a boxer holding his fists down and saying "try and hit me". The powers that be didn't necessarily take to such antics even then. An England selector asked why Shackleton had been left out of the team once said the game was being played at Wembley, not the London Palladium. Shackleton was nicknamed the Clown Price of Football. Towards the end of his career Carter was quoted as saying "I used to be arrogant but I've matured and grown more tolerant; now I'm just conceited".

Moving in to the era of players I've seen, George Best would beat a player, let him get back, then beat him again. That was an era when many British players would still deploy their skills that way. Tony Currie, Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington and my favourite, Alan Ball. I remember watching Ball on quite a few occasions pretend to sit on the ball if defenders stood off him, inviting them to lunge for the ball whereupon he would stand up and take it away from them. He also liked a "Rabona", a Spanish word used to describe the act of crossing the kicking leg behind the standing leg to play the ball. The first recorded deployment of this trick was by an Argentinian player, Ricardo Infante, in 1948 (says Wikipedia).

I only heard the term "rabona" many years later; as far as I was concerned it was an "Alan Ball" and called the similar dance step in the tango such when Mrs H and I first learned it. Ball would only get up to such antics when Everton were at least two or three goals ahead in a match. After all, the team's manager was the rather pragmatic Harry Catterick. And he may well only have done it in home matches.

Another Everton favourite from just a few years later was a notable exponent of showboating: Duncan Mackenzie. You can watch him keeping the ball off an increasingly irritated Stoke team in an F A Cup tie in 1977 here. The crowd loved Mackenzie but the utilitarian manager Gordon Lee sold him. I recall reading Mackenzie saying that perhaps the final straw was when he rounded a goalkeeper and, with the goal at his mercy, waited for a defender to get back so he could nutmeg him to score.

That probably is taking it a bit far. As a player I was with Ten Hag: I didn't like to see my team  mates doing "unnecessary" showboating. If we're winning several to nil, then fine. It can demoralise an opposition. But it can also motivate them, which is why you don't do it in a close game, or unless there's a point to it. Which there was in Richarlison's case. Richarlison's showboating was fully justified and it worked. He was down in the corner in stoppage time wasting time and it drew a foolish foul from the opposition, wasting a lot more time. Very effective. And entertaining. Though I could also identify 100% with the Forest player who booted him up in the air.

Tricks can sometimes be absolutely the right thing to do in some situations and amount simply to a skill, like Cruyff's exquisite trademark turn. I played with a young forward who practised this until he could pull it off to order and used it to very good effect in many matches. Which isn't showboating, though it could still get you kicked in those days. And I wasn't so happy seeing John Stones do it in his own penalty area playing for Everton.

Ball's rabona was normally played with his right foot to pass from inside right out to his right winger, not in a pressure situation, just to show off. But sometimes it's the right skill for the moment. I was never much impressed by Erik Lamela, one of the "magnificent seven" that Andre Villas-Boas acquired for Spurs with the Gareth Bale transfer money. (I'm fairly sure ex Spurs chairman Alan Sugar said something like "we were told we'd sold Elvis and signed the Beatles but actually it was the seven dwarfs". However, Lamela remarkably scored twice with outstanding rabonas in his time at Spurs, once against Arsenal, the other in a Europa League match. They are both stunning goals and were arguably the correct skill to get the ball into the net most quickly in the particular situations while also deceiving the defenders and keeper.  The goal against Arsenal won the 2021 Puskas award (no, I'd never heard of it either). You can see them here (v Arsenal 2021) and here, Europa League 2015. Super stuff.

Of course Antony and Richarlison are both Brazilians, but I understand that, even in Brazil, showboating can be frowned on. Football has become so serious! But since the days of Bally, Curran, Bowles, Mackenzie etc English footballers have pretty well totally cut out the fancy stuff - more professional, yes but at the same time not seemingly able to express themselves and deliver performances on the big occasions. I can't help thinking that these things are linked. Confidence bordering on a hint of arrogance is necessary to deliver on the big stage; just look at the England men's cricket teams. When Kevin Pietersen started executing reverse sweeps many were horrified (and I thought it far too risky). But now it's a standard shot, along with the outrageous ramp shot which Buttler and Root are so good at. There's a point to those shots of course - they access areas of the field that aren't protected and make it even harder for opposition to know where to bowl and how to place their field.

And for me that's the key thing. You pull out the tricks to reinforce your superiority over the opposition, so you only do it when you're winning, not like Antony. But it also depends which side of the showboating you're on: you like to see your own team doing it but not when it's done against them. So I quite like seeing a bit of showboating Richarlison style, not so much Antony style. That's possibly because, as a player with a very limited skill set, I admired those with the skill and bravery to pull off tricks like step overs (not that they count as showboating). Though I did beat a man with a Cruyff turn once in a practice match and I practised rabonas to the point where I could take penalties that way in five a side, usually successfully unless the keeper is very alert because your foot movements bamboozle him. 

But if anyone tried a Cruyff turn on me when I'd converted from a schoolboy forward to a defender in men's football then I felt they were asking for a kicking. And Mrs H can confim they sometimes got it.

P. S. I realised I typed "showbaiting" in the title and decided that, per Brian Eno's dictum, I should honour my error as my true intention. It works quite well, don't you think?

PPS here are some pictures of players executing rabonas:

You can see Antony's daft 720 degree spin and Ten Hag's reaction at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxphfufptdI. The BBC item is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63432024

You can hear the fascinating (but 23 minutes long) piece on HITC Sevens at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCqePRonP78

You can see Duncan Mackenzie playing keep ball all on his own at https://youtu.be/kpZ6og5QjSg and read an impassioned tribute to him at https://taleoftwohalves.uk/columnist/favourite-player-cult-hero-football-genius-duncan-mckenzie-everton

Erik Lamela's fabulous rabona goals: see  the one against Arsenal over and over again at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTidIMc9VPE and the 2015 Europa league effort at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=420906038995112. Amazing he could do this so well but not be very good at much else!