Happiness is not a cheat code — Square Ball 1/11/23
CREATIVE FULFILMENT
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
After Leeds trounced Huddersfield on Saturday there was a
contrast in front of the South Stand. Daniel Farke has quickly made celebratory
fist swinging part of his crowd-work repertoire, but he has to be careful –
total abandon is a bad look for a football manager, and the previous weekend
he’d felt the burden of his affection for Norwich so heavily that he forwent
the fun altogether. Against Town it was simple decorum restraining him, but
after once telling Georginio Rutter not to use his skills to embarrass
opponents, Farke must always self-police his body language.
The contrast was supplied by Rutter himself, wrapped up in a
big coat after fifteen minutes on the bench. He went galloping across the
grass, flinging his arms with a big grin on his face, leading and receiving the
cheers. Here was someone having what Farke can not: fun at the football.
It can be depressing sometimes to think about how few people
actually derive pleasure from playing football, so I’ll try not to dwell on
that here, except to wonder why more players don’t just do what Rutter is doing
this season, and Crysencio Summerville and Dan James, and play at a level where
they can frolic. Perhaps James has a slightly different reason: after a few
seasons of getting faffed about, he wants to live in Yorkshire and play for a
good team and not be stuck on a Premier League bench somewhere or get shoved
into being a striker. But watching them play, what Rutter and Summerville are
realising is that, as artists, the freedom of Division Two can help them
express themselves and fulfil themselves in ways that their agents and advisors
might not help them to reach.
Footballers are supposed to be ambitious and driven,
striving to test themselves at the top level. And if we bring Kalvin Phillips
into this, I respect his attempt to usurp the best player in his position in
the world, trying to take his place in the best team in the world by impressing
the best coach in the world. What that has got him, though, is tears, and
mockery, and it’s got me wondering, who was asking this of him? At what point,
on his rise from Ronaldo Vieira’s shadow – from Eunan O’Kane’s shadow, at that
– to England international, did someone ask Phillips to test himself against
the elite? And how does that person feel since Kalvin has been sob-texting
Marcelo Bielsa, asking for advice, searching for a smidge of self-confidence?
It’s possible that person might be Kalvin himself. But that only makes things
worse.
Perhaps he should have done what Rutter and Summerville are
doing. They are making Leeds United a joy to watch this season and having a
good time doing it. Forget that it’s the Championship – the first half on
Saturday was a full giggle. It’s entirely possible, particularly when we think
about last season, that Rutter wouldn’t have half this swagger in the Premier
League. It’s great news for us, then, that he was playing against Tom Edwards
this weekend. From a spectator’s perspective, it’s about what we want from a
flair player – to watch them getting chopped down and neutralised by full-backs
who are too good for them, or to see them given the space to create moments of
wonder that thrill? And from a player’s perspective, do you want the
frustration of every brilliant idea being snatched away before your feet can
carry it out, or do you want to go on the field feeling like you did as a kid,
when every new thing you wanted to try felt possible? The first goal on
Saturday was thought up by Rutter from inside his own penalty area, and after
he watched Summerville and James make his ideas reality at the far end, he
didn’t run to celebrate with them, he just pumped his fists on his own near the
benches, until the ball bounced to him and he grabbed it like a friend. He
looked happy, and no wonder, because he’d just seen a dream come true.
The pressure on top level footballers is insane given this
is supposed to be a sport. But rising wages at all levels mean riches are
becoming relative and some players can think in terms of enough, rather than
always more. At their level there should be a way of balancing money, ambition
and happiness, but football has a way of enforcing the influence of the first
two above the importance of the third. The pressure, when you break it down, is
not really created by the players, many of whom seem like nice pals to each
other despite club divides. It’s not even from fans, who want their team to be
good and the players to play well. The players inherit the pressure from above.
The furious grind towards results at all costs is driven by owners, and there
was an intriguing subplot at Elland Road on Saturday: Leeds United, owned by an
investment group formed by the San Francisco 49ers, against Huddersfield Town
and their new owner Kevin Nagle, chairman of Sacramento Republic FC, who but
for Covid would have put an MLS expansion team a two hour drive from the 49ers’
Levi’s Stadium in northern California, and still might. It’s these kinds of
guys, and their need for returns on investment, who are the makers of misery as
expressed through the euphemistic weapon of ambition. See also Andrea
Radrizzani, sacking Marcelo Bielsa because it was going to cost his business a
lot of money if Leeds got relegated. Leeds still got relegated and it cost his
business a lot of money anyway, and I realised when reminded of this at the weekend
that I am still far from over how much not just the football club but the city
of Leeds lost from that decision. The realisation I had when Bielsa was sacked
was instant: Leeds football could only be about results from that point, but
since Bielsa, it no longer felt like wins were enough.
Which is where we can meet Rutter and Summerville with open
arms, because most every team in the Championship is going to get results
against Huddersfield Town this season, but will they do it with this much
style? Or will the style, the joy, the pure fun of it be all ours, our thing
beyond wins, the idea that pulls us to Elland Road out of more than just duty
and sustains us if results don’t go our way?
And part of the thrill is how illicit this feels. We’re not
supposed to be enjoying this. When the Manchester derby kicked off on Sunday
afternoon, Peter Drury declared on Sky that ‘battle’ was commencing. Battles
aren’t fun, but over the next two hours, the televisual aim was to raise
everybody’s blood pressure, the reds’ in anger, the blues’ into glorious rage.
It didn’t seem permissible that anyone might just have a normal good time. Fun,
or playing without pressure, are taken as signs of an immature lack of ambition
that is incompatible with the serious business of professional football, but I
dunno, maybe I’ve had enough of angry people in brightly coloured polyester
tops with their favourite player’s name printed on the back telling me that
football is serious stuff and I should grow up and suffer with them. Maybe it’s
just the Premier League. Over in the Bundesliga, after years of making himself
miserable by trying to achieve something so stupidly ambitious as winning a
trophy with Tottenham Hotspur, Harry Kane was looking pretty happy to have
given all that up for a new life of scoring from his own half in 8-0 wins.