DEFENDERS DESERVE MORE PRAISE THAN THEY RECEIVE, by Rojit Brijnath
When history spits out the names of famous duos, real and imagined, they won't find their names up there with Lennon and McCartney, Magic and Bird, Butch and Sundance. But say this much about the pair of Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand: They, and their shirt-tugging, fine-tackling, bone-jarring, mind-reading fraternity of defenders, are worth at least part of the price of any football ticket.
In a Champions League week, most conversation will start with Ronaldo and end with Messi. Even Hiddink will earn more centimetres, but defenders will shrug. They're re used to getting praised about as often as accounting clerks and show up on highlight reels even less often than streakers. Unless they produce a massive blooper like Vidic letting Torres go.
The football defender is a job that ranks just higher than being Rafael Nadal's training partner and holding down the ball for the kicker in gridiron. Certainly, it's the unsexiest assignment in the coolest sport. Even goalkeepers get to do their mid-air heroics, but defenders rarely strike such a romantic chord.
It shows in the nicknames. Strikers get called 'Der Bomber' (Gerd Muller) and 'keepers Black Spider (Lev Yashin). But defenders, poor fellows, are left with unsavoury titles like the Butcher of Bilbao (Andoni Goikoetxea).
From childhood we are conditioned to dislike defenders because instinctively we enjoy the adrenalin of attack. The first lines to most sporting hymns as boys were Pele, Maradona, Platini Cruyff, and every one of them functioned best on the creative side of the half-line. It's easy to name an A-Z (Adriano to Zico) of Brazilian strikers and midfielders, but hard to recall even a handful of their defenders.
Strikers have the flair of artists, defenders own the subtlety of an army sergeant major. They looked like Nobby Stiles, all missing teeth and demonic grin, and had the manners of Claudio Gentile, who conducted a footballing assassination on Maradona in 1982.
Forwards create ideas, defenders create havoc. Ever seen what happens during a corner? Elbow in ribs, hand in back, knee on thigh. It's what a collective mugging might look like.
But, like classical music, defenders grow on you. In time, their beauty is revealed. Franco Baresi defended the penalty area like Horatius did his bridge, and Paolo Maldini gave us elegant tutorials in being in the right place when it mattered.
The best player at the 2006 World Cup was a player who somehow got a shoulder, a leg, a head in the way of an attacker's progress. Of course, he was Italian, too. One might say Fabio Cannavaro could read what attackers would do even before they decided what to do.
Cannavaro's breed hands out suffering happily because they suffer stoically themselves. Certainly they deserve a few more awards than they have historically been given. Defenders have won the Fifa World Player of the year award only once in 18 years, and the World Soccer magazine World Player of the Year twice in 27 years.
Still, they don't whine as much as attackers because they're too busy running backwards and sideways yet staying balanced and suggesting they own better eyes than a fly. If there is something happening behind them, they better know it. It is a fine skill under great pressure for if the attacker misses, he can try again, when a defender errs, it's often a goal.
These back-end boys are like tennis' grinders, whose value is evident in their consistency and wear abuse even when good. Chelsea's defennce against Barcelona brought to mind dykes and dams, yet earned them not enough credit.
Teams win obviously because of goals put in, but also because of goals not let in. Vidic has fallen off a little lately and injury has haunted Ferdinand, but Manchester United couldn't think of quintuple, quadruples or three-peats without this twosome. At their best, they and John Terry and Carles Puyol, stand like lean, muscular, unsmiling pillars, who provide not so much thrills as reassurance.
So here's a thought. This week during the Champions League semi-finals, keep an eye on the tall boys at the back. Sure, some days like Liverpool against Arsenal, defenders look clumsy and awful, but let's not be blind to the small, subtle skills they bring every day to the game.
So, watch the cleanliness of interceptions, the exquisite timing of tackles on sprinting wingers, the positioning for headers, the composure under pressure, and raise your hat. And give silent thanks that it's not your delicate ankles that Ferdinand is clattering into.