Gavin Cooney

DOMINIK SZOBOSZLAI’S NEXT game is of course against Ireland, who have spent most of the 2020s showcasing a probability-defying ability to concede from long-range shots. 

Great. 

So while Irish fans had reason to greet his rocketing free-kick against Arsenal with some quease, the rest of the watching world had reason to give thanks and praise. 

It was a well-earned reward for anyone who had sat through the 82 utterly turgid minutes that went before. It’s remarkable, really, that the two best teams and the two biggest-spenders in the world’s richest football league can collude to provide such a wretched spectacle. 

The context naturally bred some caution. Man City’s defeat earlier would have subtly reinforced to both sides that they were each others’ biggest rival, and August sunshine is not exactly the kind of weather that screams must-win. 

But this game, especially the first-half, was drab beyond any acceptable reason. It brought to mind Jorge Valdano’s dismissal of the Premier League’s first European superpower era of the mid-2000s as “shit on a stick.” 

“Chelsea and Liverpool are the clearest, most exaggerated example of the way football is going: very intense, very collective, very tactical, very physical, and very direct”, wrote Valdano in 2005. “But, a short pass? Noooo. A feint? Noooo. A change of pace? Noooo. A one-two? A nutmeg? A backheel? Don’t be ridiculous. None of that.” 

Valdano would be minded to describe this game as expensively-assembeled, intensely-coached, obsessively-calibrated, shit on a stick.

Like those Liverpool/Chelsea games he so hated, this was intense, collective, tactical, and physical. But it was not direct, and it featured lots of the short passes that were the first signifier of what we agreed was good football 20 years ago. 

Shortly after the debasing spectacle of Liverpool/Chelsea, Pep Guardiola pioneered the style of football at Barcelona that Valdano revered, which was in turn challenged by Jurgen Klopp, who met possession with pressing and its territorial dominance with the swift and devastating incursions of direct counter-attacks. 

Such was the success of Klopp’s methods, coaches had to figure out how to react to his reaction. Hence elite-level coaching is now about countering counter attacks, and it is what led to the dreary nonsense to which we were subjected to at Anfield. 

This arc of tactical development was covered in a recent episode of the excellent Double Pivot podcast. Where Guardiola’s sides used to hog possession in the opponent’s final third, pinning them back in the box, that is too risky nowadays for our counter-obsessed coaches. They prefer their teams to hold possession inside their own half now, ideally drawing their opponents onto them – baiting the press, in tacticospeak – from where they can shift the ball about and then attack into space. If it works, you’re almost creating your own counter-attacks, and if it doesn’t, then at least the opponent isn’t galloping into acres of open space. 

Hence why the most expensive players in football nowadays are defensive midfielders who are comfortable taking the ball under pressure while facing their own goal, and why the big number nine is back in fashion, as they can scrap for long balls when teams need to relieve pressure near their own goal.  

This can be pretty dull to watch when one team does it, but when both are at it, you get this: the modern update of Jorge Valdano’s nightmares. Liverpool and Arsenal seemed to take it in turns to slowly circulate the ball inside their own half – which was suffocated with bodies – while Noni Madueke was the only player on the pitch who showed any real individual attacking spark.

There was one point in the first half when Riccardo Calafiori got the ball in midfield and, mercifully, some space, but having taken a couple of strides forward, he thought better of himself, stopped, and turned around. Better to build more slowly so you’re better set were you to lose the ball. Yawn. 

This is the great failing of Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal: a side so obsessed with counter-attacks they don’t counter-attack themselves.

Liverpool have much more attacking range and have been the great entertainers so far this season, but this was a game played on Arsenal’s terms and so the home side showed painfully little adventure in their passing. 

Gary Neville, meanwhile, spent his commentary pleading for Florian Wirtz to stay higher up the pitch, but Wirtz had to drop deep to feel in any way involved. His start to life at Liverpool has been tricky but today his side played in a way utterly inimical to his talents. 

Liverpool did show a little more positivity after the break, partly at the beseeching of their home fans, who cranked up the volume around the hour mark. Liverpool finally manage to break the stalemate when Virgil van Dijk spotted a gap down the middle of the Arsenal midfield: a 404 error in the Arteta script. Martin Zubimendi was attracted to Wirtz and Declan Rice – continuing a very poor start to the season – was caught off guard, and so Van Dijk zipped a pass into Curtis Jones’ feet. Zubimendi quickly fouled Jones in an area of the pitch he assumed to be safe, but Szoboszlai disagreed. 

It was a majestic moment of individual quality that swung a game that deserved to end in a goalless draw. 

An Arsenal side without Saka and effectively Saliba losing to an audacious goal away to the champions is hardly an episode of shame or grand rebuke, but it continued a painful trend of Arsenal continuing to be undone by fine margins in the biggest matches. In choosing to keep Ebreche Eze on the bench from the start, Arteta chose the conservative option and thus sanded down those margins in the first place. 

Szoboszlai’s brilliance ultimately showed that football is simply too random to submit to full control all of the time. Even a game as hostile to individual improvisation as this one was ultimately settled by exactly that, so maybe an acknowledgement of this fact will provoke a change of approach from these two sides, especially Arsenal, who follow it more dogmatically.  

Those of us who are sitting down to be entertained, meanwhile, must hope it is all a quickly-passing fad.