Anti-football: will "killing the game" kill the game?

Due to the wonderful world of night shift, I missed Rangers' backs-to-the-wall effort that earned them a valuable point at Ibrox against Barcelona in the Champions' League. In the aftermath of another smashing result for a Scottish team on the European stage, it also earned them the wrath of little Leo Messi (which is probably akin to being savaged by a pigeon), who, after finding a swarm of blue shirts surrounding him from the first second, branded Walter Smith's tactics as "anti-football", effectively accusing them of playing pretty much for a goalless draw, interested in nothing but stopping the other team from scoring. Any football fan can think of many a game such as this. Inevitably, if this gameplan succeeds, it tends to make for a rather drab spectacle - who can ever remember a 0-0 draw described as a classic?

To see the threat posed by "anti-football", one needs only look back to the 2004 European Championships. Four years earlier saw undeniably the best international football tournament of our generation - Spain's incredible 4-3 win over Yugoslavia, the attacking abandon of Portugal, and, almost unheard of, a magnificent final, where a Zidane-inspired France came from behind to defeat Italy in extra time. Four years later? One word. Greece. Only once in the tournament did they score more than one goal in a game. Six matches, seven goals scored, four conceded. They packed the midfield and kept nicking goals on set plays, defeating the far more entertaining and offensive French, Portuguese (twice) and Czechs in the process. If it were ever possible to win a football match by boring your opponent to death, this was it.

Guiltily, however, I in turn recall a certain event in Paris about two months ago, where a team went away from home, shut up shop, and nicked an incredible upset win through a stunning goal from distance. I jumped up and down in absolute ecstasy, and on this blog itself I hailed the game-winning tactics of Alex McLeish as Scotland stifled the French at almost every turn.

As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it.

But is there another way for the underdog to win? Back at the World Cups of 1990 and 1994 respectively, the unheralded, unfancied Cameroon and Bulgaria waltzed deep into the knockout stages while playing open, attacking football. But that was then, and this is now. Every weekend at domestic level, teams travel to Ibrox, Celtic Park, the Emirates, Old Trafford, the Bernabeu, Camp Nou etc. and, to quote Jose Mourinho "park the team bus in front of the goal." Mostly, thankfully, it doesn't work; the top teams fashion a goal somewhere, and often get more when the visitors are forced to chase the game and allow it to open up. But occasionally it does work, and the minnows nick a point or even a McFadden-esque 1-0 win.

Once in a blue moon, though, a side plays away against one of the big guns, plays two strikers and goes for it. Do they ever get a result? I can't remember any obvious ones, and certainly in my experience that tactic will ultimately be less successful than just packing the defence and midfield and trying to hold on for grim death. So we get more and more games with fewer chances and fewer goals.

Inevitably, at the Nou Camp on Wednesday night, Rangers will once again deploy a defensive midfielder, play with a lone striker, and try deperately to hold out against Barcelona. If they somehow manage it again, then I'll be the first to say "well done, that's a tremendous result." But there's a rather large part of me which would rather see Rangers go 4-4-2, try and play a bit, and ultimately lose 4-1 or something, because then we would see some of the world's best doing what they do best; entertaining.

And in the long-term, we must never lose sight of the fact that football is ultimately about entertainment, not results.

L.