Physicality In Football

I used to love watching someone like Stuart Pearce making a fair tackle which usually left the winger in Row C of the stand, but try that today and it's probably a red card.
Do you prefer the modern game where skillful players are free to dazzle us with their skills, or would you rather see physical challenges make a comeback?

There's plenty room or both in the game

Exactly, the likes of Best and Maradona and even Gascoigne used to get scythed to pieces, yet they still got up and went again. I used to love seeing Keano get really wired into someone, it got the crowd going too. I have more respect for a striker who rides a challenge and tries to finish in the box - than someone who flops as he's brushed for a penalty.

The antics of modern players is embarrassing at times.

To me, technicality is far superior to physicality. No questions in my eyes. Take a team like Barca as a prime example. Almost every single player except for Pique and Busquests is very small in terms of height and body strength. But when you have the technical brilliance with the ball, physicality merely becomes a footnote.

I find Barcelona sterile and boring at times though. There's an awful lot of time spent keeping the ball while the other team just keep their shape. I agree with what Arsene Wenger once said regarding their 'sterile domination' when they played Arsenal at the Nou Camp... basically they had the ball the entire half, but managed about 1-2 shots. So it was absolutely dire to watch.

Not saying they're not wonderful to watch also at times, which they can be, but sometimes they're just too superior at keeping the ball I guess.

Better to have the ball and dictate play for 90 minutes than to defend and have to concentrate endlessly for 90 minutes. Yes, it is sterile and most of the time pedestrian, but it is very effective and most teams have immense difficulty dealing with it.

A degree of physicality is good for the game. I don't think there's as much of it as there was a decade ago. It's fair to say that players like Keane, Vieira and Davids are a bit of a dying breed. It can add greater drama to a game and excitement for fans to see crunching tackles going in. . . That said, those aformentioned players were all footballers too. What I don't like is the players like Ben Thatcher or Michael Brown who compensate for skill with thuggery. . . Players like that have the capability to shorten the careers of far better players and that's sad for the game. I'm just glad that those kind of players are also a dying breed. . . Van Bommel is another dirty cunt but I wouldn't lump him in with the likes of Thatcher and Brown because he does have merit as a footballer too (although his thuggish tendancies surpass his footballing ones.)

Win the ball first and keep your studs down. Simple as that, referees need to let more go, imo. The pussification of sport must stop.

I think that will eventually drive me to invest in a sniper rifle.

For me, it's the worst thing (on pitch) about football - grown men dropping to the floor holding their faces from being touched on the chest... Beginning to think that if one was actually punched in the face, they'd die from it....

But players aren't even coached on how to tackle now. There's a world of difference between a fair crunching tackle executed correctly, and a reckless lunge, studs up. But players aren't taught the skill anymore.

There's absolutely a difference, I agree. If the refs stopped calling clean tackles fouls there would be a lot less players feeling the need to dive.

Referees should be allowed to use common sense too though, if someone's gone for the ball a little late, then just have a word. It seems these days they're under pressure to flash the cards immediately. Watching some old matches on ESPN classic and MUTV you'd see that. We'd be down to 7 a side under the current conditions.

I feel as if Gattuso played for us he'd have been kicked out of football.

He'd have taken a few down before he went though

God damn hero that man.

Howard Webb tried that in the World Cup final and the game descended into chaos. By contrast, the ref last night booked Schweinsteiger after 2 minutes and there were no more bookings for another 80 minutes.

Well I, for one, don't agree completely with what you're saying.
Football is NOT (like the americans like to say) a "contact sport". And while I agree that there's way too much theatrics in football today, the fact remains that the players need to be protected, and injuries are too easy to get even in a relatively low confrontation game.
That's the main reason UEFA and FIFA instruct the refs to be so strict with bookings.

We're no longer in an age where players fought hard for possession in muddy pitches, a lot of them with beer bellies and smoke-filled lungs. Players nowadays are like pure bred race horses, and given the intensity at which the game is played now, it's much easier to twist, tear or break muscles, ligaments or even bone.

Well I remember Frank Skinner's comment during the 1990(?) World Cup.
He reckoned was watching a Germany match and decided to make himself a cuppa. He brushed past the tv on his way to the kitchen....and Klinnsman fell over!

If it's not a "contact sport" then there is no reason for defense. They should just put in technical players in the back and turn the whole thing into a basketball game.