George Best was one of the world’s most exciting soccer players in the 1970s. One opponent, Roy Fairfax of Northampton Town, who had been marking Best (or rather trying to mark him) when he scored six goals in an 8-2 win, quipped in an interview after the match that “The closest I got to him was when we shook hands at the end of the game.” A newspaper reporter writing about Best in another game said that “Shellito was taken off suffering from twisted blood.” He was an astonishing individual player with extraordinary flair who could not fit in to scientific tactics; soccer was not a science for him but an art, a means to express himself.
Sports followers love to compare teams and players! They love to debate who is better: Hashim Amla or AB De Villiers? John Terry or Lionel Messi? England or the All Blacks? An alternative, but similar, question might be: who would we prefer to watch – the efficient or the enigmatic? The
choice may be characterised by the two views of sport; sport is a science or sport is an art. The prevailing view, as in the modern world of academics, may be to view science as the most important approach. Universities offer Sports Science Diplomas, not Sports Art Diplomas. The hockey guru of the late 1990s, Horst Wein, wrote his book, “The Science of Hockey”, which became the template for coaches. Is sport a science or an art? Or, putting it in other words, is it Serious or Adventure, Evolution or Creation, Nurture or Nature?
Sport as a Science may be identified by its emphasis on discipline, on systems and rigid structures with set moves. It may be seen by its repetitive drills, routines and emphasis on fitness and on stifling the opposition. It may be found in a commitment to concentration, to defend. It may be about results, about money, about keeping possession and territory, about nutrition and attrition. Seeing sport as a science means playing within the box, with a straight face, like a game of chess. It is about giving an explanation. It is like treating the players as machines but limiting them to political correctness. It is making the players play as if on rail tracks, going in a certain clearly specified direction.
In contrast, sport as an Art may be identified much more by its encouragement of instinct and creativity, flair and imagination, allowing players to make decisions for themselves. Instead of drills it is all for thrills, for excitement, for risk and experiment, for attack. It will be found in passion and emotion; it will be about entertainment and love of the game, about creating space, about natural talent, about expansion. Seeing sport as an Art means thinking out of the box, with a smile on our face, like a game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’. It is about giving expression. It is like liberating their humanness and releasing common sense. It is allowing the players to play as if they are in a four-by four off-roader.
Modern professional sportsmen and women are monitored scientifically so that the coach knows how far the player has run, how many times he has touched the ball, where the player has been on the pitch, how many tackles, passes, shots were made (successfully and unsuccessfully) and much more. There is a real danger that in the pursuit of excellence in sport we limit the progress to a scientific approach, just as there is a parallel danger if we focus our curriculum on scientific (STEM) subjects. We need to allow for the artistic flair, creativity, instinct and individuality; too often we have trained creativity and individuality out of players and pushed systems and tactics into them. Coaching from the side has not allowed players to think or express themselves on pitch. It is down to coded calls for line-outs, set phases, and referenced moves.
We return, in closing, to George Best. A hotel bellboy who delivered champagne to George Best’s room and found him entertaining a scantily-clad Miss World on a bed covered with his winnings from the casino said, tongue-in-cheek: “So, George, where did it all go wrong?” We in turn might ask a similar question, though more seriously: where has sport gone wrong? The answer might be that we have made it a Science and not an Art; as a result we do not have twisted blood but a twisted view of sport.
