Certainly, there was nothing like the tackle-rate of the young Gerrard on show. The kids of today are being coached a lot better and are superior technically than we would have been in our youth team, so I would imagine very little attention is given to the ‘art of tackling’. If you contrast that with the youth team match I watched down here at Brighton a few weeks ago when we faced QPR, the difference was acute. The one thing that struck me about him was that he was putting in one tackle after another to the extent that I knew I would have to go in strong on him to make sure he didn’t do me over. When I was at Blackburn Rovers under Sam Allardyce he was big into stats and this aspect of the game – reading the play and making interceptions - was something he encouraged his midfielders to try and improve on, as he too recognised the game had evolved.Īnother example of how things have changed: I played against Steven Gerard in a youth team game in 1997 and I remember everyone was going on about how good he was and predicting that he would definitely go on to play in Liverpool’s first team. The result is that while Carrick is one of the best there is at making interceptions, you will rarely see him making a tackle. Rather, his game has always been about his ability to pass the ball, while in recent seasons - as more defensive responsibilities have been given to him - he has had to improve his reading of the game to ensure he doesn’t allow the opposition pick up space in front of his defenders. But, again, the tackling part of that role is becoming less significant as the game changes.Īn example: Manchester United’s holding midfielder for the past few seasons has been Michael Carrick who, even by his own admission I’m sure, doesn’t regard tackling as a huge strength of his game. When this term first began to be used, the holding player was always the one who was the more defensive-minded of the midfielders, the one who could tackle and enable the other midfielders to attack in the knowledge they had someone covering for them. In today’s game you also often hear the term ‘holding midfielder’. But his protests are guaranteed to fall on deaf ears now because, within the laws of the game as they are applied today, if the tackle is deemed worthy of a yellow then the referee is left with no choice but to issue a card. That’s why you will still sometimes see a player pleading with the referee that it was his first offence. When I started playing at a professional level it was regarded as customary that a defender would get one ‘free’ tackle/foul on the attacker, which is why you often saw some of the most determined attempts to soften up an opponent happening early in the game.īut not any more, even though some are struggling to come to terms with the changing times. Put it this way: you don’t get to play for Manchester United, Inter Milan and Liverpool if all you can do is tackle. I am a little young to have seen the likes of Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris or Billy Bremner play, but I’m well aware of who they were and how hard they played the game back in the ’60s and ’70s.Įven in more recent times, when I was beginning to forge my own career in football, there were players in the game renowned for their tackling, some of which was definitely ‘dirty’! I’m thinking of people like Vinnie Jones, Stuart Pearce, Paul Ince and Denis Wise to name just a few of the ones who relied heavily on no-holds-barred tackling as a big part of their game.ĭon’t get me wrong, someone like Ince was also a fine footballer who - as Roy Keane rightly observed the other night - probably didn’t get enough credit for his many attributes. Sadly, tackling is an art of the game that has almost now become a thing of the past. As I watched the programme on Tuesday night and, especially, the clips of the tackles Keane and Vieira made against each other at the height of the Man United-Arsenal rivalry, it struck me forcibly that I haven’t seen anything of that ferocity for years on a football pitch.
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