Opinion – Tostão: Today, the thick ones are more likely to cheat

Since the 1960s, one of the words most used by commentators, coaches, players and fans, in discussions in taverns and, now, on social networks, is space, excess or decrease.

Attacking space and generating space are fashionable expressions that try to explain everything, even what has no explanation or what makes no sense. It is often said that players in the past had more space, which made it easier to execute big plays, which is true. On the other hand, with more space, those without talent quickly showed their deficiencies. Today, with less space, the thick ones are more likely to deceive, to confuse.

When a team advances the midfield and the defenders are glued to the penalty area, a frequent deficiency of Brazilian teams, there are spaces left between the two sectors for the opponent to receive the free ball, between the lines, another fashionable expression. When the team advances in a block to become more compact, to reduce the distance between the most backward and the most advanced player, more spaces appear in the back of the defenders, which forces the goalkeepers to be attentive and to be quick to cover.

If a team retreats too far, in a block, to close the spaces close to the area, a frequent strategy of inferior teams when facing superior ones, the team under pressure, when they recover the ball, has a long space ahead to counterattack until reaching the goal. another goal.

Dribbling and fast wingers, highly valued in Brazil and around the world, perform better when they find more space. The opponents, knowing this, reinforce the marking by the side, as Croatia did, against Brazil, in the Cup, even more so that the Brazilian wingers did not have the help of the laterals.

Tite’s justification that he didn’t need to have supporting wingers, as the team already had wingers, is a half truth. It depends on the circumstances. Tite relied too much on dribblers, on one against one, another fashionable expression.

When talking about dribblers, I remember the greatest of all, Garrincha. There was an order in Botafogo for no teammate to work near him, so as not to disturb him. The team exchanged passes through the middle and left and turned the ball over to Garrincha, who dribbled the opponent, went to the bottom line and gave decisive passes for the attacker to score the goals.

Space also reminds me of Xavi, when he was playing for Barcelona, ​​under Guardiola. Xavi liked to pass a pass to a partially marked teammate, close to the defender, who was trying to get ahead. He arrived late, and, in a fraction of a second, the ball was already passed to another Barcelona player, and so, successively, the team advanced, exchanging quick passes, until the opposing goal. Manchester City does the same.

This ability to break away from the marker and associate space with time, with the speed of the ball and with the movement of teammates and opponents is a great quality of the greatest players. Neurologists call this kinesthetic intelligence. Freud would say that it is unconscious knowledge. The person does not know that he knows. Armando Nogueira said that it was a medullary action, without going through consciousness. Fernando Pessoa would say that many things have no explanation, they exist.

To paraphrase the poet Manoel de Barros, science can classify and show statistics, but it cannot explain or calculate the charms of a great star player.