World Cup Hockey vs. World Cup Soccer

Every four years there comes a time when two World Cup tournaments are held, one in the sport of Hockey and the other in Football (soccer).

While Football has been named ‘The Beautiful Game’ by the legend Pele, hockey, which can be both beautiful and entertaining, has become mechanical and boring to a certain degree. This is not a nice thing to say about hockey, but one has to be honest and sincere if we wish to improve the quality of the game.

I had a good fortune to witness the Hockey world Cup live in Delhi in February/March of this year, and the Football World Cup live in June/July of this year, albeit on television. When we talk about these 2 World Cups, it is hard to not think of doing a comparative analysis, which is presented below.

In the early 1980’s, I was talking to Richard Aggiss, the coach of the highly successful Australian Men’s National Hockey team, where he mentioned that basketball was 20 years ahead of hockey and Football was 10 years ahead of hockey. In my opinion, this observation by Aggiss is still very much true today. I know, a lot you will be rolling your eyes, on this comment of mine.

In the early part of this millennium, during an FIH seminar at the 2002 Kuala Lumpur men’s Hockey World Cup, I heard the Hockey gurus claiming that Hockey was far ahead of Football, and that top European football club coaches watched hockey matches to pick tactics for their club teams.

Yes, hockey has come a long way, from the grassy fields to the artificial turfs. We have advanced tremendously in some departments of the game, but we have also dipped rock bottom in some other departments of the game, which has resulted in our game becoming not so spectator friendly … Natural flair and creativity has been replaced by a set of mechanical plays, of course there is an exception, as couple of teams don’t fall in this category.

The FIH has been trying very hard to make hockey a popular spectator sport. Here are my views on what we can learn from the Football World Cup.

a. Play Build Up Let’s take the example of the young German side, which went all the way to the World Cup semi-finals, where they lost to eventual winners Spain.

It was a beauty to see them move the ball in the back 4, involving RH, RF, LF, and LH. Further, the left inner, right inner and the center half , took sharp angular leads, to receive the ball and build the attack in triangles, from the right or left side, involving the respective wingers and the half-backs.

This was the way hockey was played – more or less – till the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but no more now. Play build up has vanished, with almost all the teams simply bypassing the midfield. This is because hockey abolished the offside rule, resulting in the over-crowding of the defense in the front of the goal.

The football officials did not copy the hockey officials, and kept the offside rule. Thank God. Football players do not overcrowd their defensive area in front of their goals, except in the case of free kicks taken around the penalty box, and long corners.

b. The Beauty of Through Passes

The next sequence after the inner’s and half-backs have completed the build up, is through passes to the leading forwards. Hockey coaches and players don’t emphasize play build up, and bypass the midfield completely with long shots into the circle and goal, looking for a deflection.

c. 1-on-1, 2-on-1, Give-and-Go

Play build up and through passes (a. and b. above) result in 1-on-1 and 2-on-1 situations near the opponents goal. Star players like Romario, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho capitalized on these situations to cleanly eliminate the defenders and score goals. These players were integral to the Brazil teams of 1994 and 2002 that won the World Cup. It is fair to say that Brazil did not have forwards of this class, in the 2010 world cup and it would be very unfair to name Kaka in this class.

a. Faking Injuries to Claim Fouls

This was quite apparent during the Football World Cup and we need not go into any further details. While faking of injuries was hardly done during the Hockey World Cup, our umpires have done a good job!

b. Rough Play and Bad Temper

The number of yellow cards shown to the players in the bad tempered World Cup Football final speaks volumes about this.

The Dutch received a total of 8 yellow cards, with one player – John Hetinga – receiving two yellow cards and being sent off the field for the rest of the final after the second yellow card.

Spain received 5 yellow cards in the final. The total of 13 yellow cards by both teams set a new record for the number of cards received in any World Cup Football final. This was simply disgraceful. We in hockey are far more classy and graceful, although we also do have some bad apples

Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff, who is ranked alongside Pele and Maradona, described his national team’s performance in the 2010 Football World Cup final thus: “It was lamentable, sad, they played dirty and deserved to be down to nine players very early. There were two Dutch tackles so ugly and dirty that they even hurt me.”

What a classy man, no wonder Teun de Nooijer has Cruyff, as his mentor! don’t they both have shirt # 14?

By the way, football, as played in the World Cup final, was no longer The Beautiful Game.

CONCLUSION

Both football and hockey are quite similar, in terms of number of players on the team, systems and tactics. European hockey coaches have successfully employed advanced soccer tactics to defeat formerly invincible teams like India and Pakistan. In the process, we – FIH rules board – have made significant changes in our rules, which has adversely affected the beauty and spectator appeal of hockey, with the exception of the self pass, whic has facilitated the more skillful and imaginative teams.

Your feedback is certainly appreciated.

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