In his latest article for the Fancast, Nick Stroudley has discussed the disappearance of the traditional hard men in football.
Ah, the good old days. An afternoon of kicking lumps out of each other, teeth flying out of mouths, off-the-ball stamps… followed by a shake of hands and a pint of mild in the Players’ Lounge. It’s safe to say that football has changed enormously, and in a world where top-level VAR is imminent, the traditional hard man may have butted his final head.
One thing that’s clear about the current Chelsea side is that we’re not the scariest bunch. Having grown up in an era of big scary/shouty nutcases, their gradual disappearance has always been somewhat concerning for me.
But, when you take a step back and look at it through a modern footballing lens, it doesn’t really matter.
For what we lack in bare-knuckle fighting potential this season, we’re making up for in spirit, heart and most importantly, footballing ability. Yes, there’s a few members of the current squad that I wouldn’t want ‘next to me in the trenches’, but I’m absolutely delighted to have them in my football team.
On Saturday we went up against 11 big Championship oafs, who pride themselves on their physical style of play. At no stage did I feel we were missing an old-school midfield enforcer (I did question that when we went one nil down though…).
Although we were clearly a much better side, I was particularly taken by the shoulder-to-shoulder strength of Kante, the big sliding tackles from Dave (that simultaneously took both the ball and the man) and even Luiz putting his boot through it on multiple occasions.
Perhaps English football has reached a stage where the best reaction to being kicked is not to kick back (or roll about), but simply dribble around the rest of the team, slot it into the back of the net and run the length of the Shed while pumping your chest with your fist. It’s fair to say that I enjoyed that moment immensely.
One of the strengths of Sarri’s ‘New Chelsea’ is that we don’t seem at all bothered about what the opposition will do. We line-up with eight men on the halfway line, we look to keep the ball for as long as possible (with no suffering in sight), and we couldn’t care less about a team turning up to kick us. I’m loving the lack of moaning about any issues (take note Wilfred Zaha), it’s refreshing to see us dust ourselves off and get on with it, somehow finding a way of getting the job done. We’ve spent too many years obsessing on how often Eden gets fouled; this could be the year that the only stat we’re looking at is how many goals he scored and how many games he won for us.
The hard man is dead. Long-live the cheeky, little genius. KTBFFH.
Written by Nick Stroudley – @NickStroudley
