Opinion – Tostão: A good midfielder must have an intense athlete and a creative

After two and a half years of a pandemic, I took a week of vacation and rediscovered myself with nature, with greenery, with the singing of birds and with the sea. “Eternity is where the sea meets the sun”, said Arthur Rimbaud.

Life and football go on. Over the weekend, I watched several matches. Athletico, with Felipão, and Inter, with Mano Menezes, two coaches who have already been labeled as outdated, are doing very well in the Brasileirão. Series A and B show that a good coach has neither nationality nor age.

Diversity is essential. Furthermore, teams do not win or lose solely – or mainly – because of the coaches, although many insist on deifying and massacring coaches in wins and losses.

Several goals, in the last round, occurred after crosses in the area, as usual. Atlético scored three goals from the top, in the turn over Fortaleza. It is an efficient strategy, as long as it is not the only or the main one.

São Paulo, on the other hand, against Juventude, in a 0-0 tie, crossed a thousand balls in the area, without success, even with Calleri, a great header. The balls were poorly crossed, too high and slow. Meanwhile, Reinaldo, excellent at crosses, was on the bench throughout the match.

Wings, wingers or wingers like Reinaldo and Arana don’t need to receive the ball free to make great crosses. Even if they are marked, without dribbling, they play to the side and cross strongly, in a curve, with speed and the ball leaves the goalkeeper.

In São Paulo’s draw, the young and promising Nestor, once again, played on all sides, entered the area several times and just didn’t play where he should, in midfield, coming from behind, with a broad view of the set, from where he could build plays, make great passes and penetrate the area at the right time.

The terminology used in the past for midfield positions, of having a first midfielder, shirt 5, a second, more skilled midfielder, with the 8, and an attacking midfielder or spearhead, shirt 10, even if today the numbers are not fixed, it is still widely used by many coaches.

Currently, in Europe, the most used formation is the one with a more centralized midfielder, who protects the defense and initiates the offensive plays, in addition to a midfielder on each side who plays from one intermediate to the other.

Today, the midfielder who plays with intensity is more valued than the one who plays with creativity. Both are necessary. Players like Ganso, of low intensity, lost their place.

Ganso performed well again because Fluminense has a coach, Fernando Diniz, who has a broad view of the game and is concerned with passing and ball control. The ideal is to have, in the same team, an intense midfielder, like Kante, and a creative one, like Pogba. The two complement each other in the French national team. Even better is De Bruyne, who does everything in one game.

In the tie between Avaí and Palmeiras, I saw, to my surprise, the midfielder Jean Pyerre, ex-Grêmio. He joined the Santa Catarina team in the middle of the second half and scored a beautiful free-kick goal, for the curve, for the speed of the ball and for the touch on the post before the ball died in the net. Jean Pyerre left Grêmio much criticized for the lack of intensity. They wanted him to be an attacking midfielder, to enter the area and score goals.

I, who was delighted to see him play the first games for Grêmio, for the elegance and for the beautiful touches and passes, I regained hope or the illusion of seeing him shine brightly.