14-05-2015, 20:30
The other night, on TV, there was a moment of sublime football skill displayed by one of the three Barca forwards on the nearside touchline when he flicked a ball over the head of the defender, danced around the other side, collected his own pass and stormed off towards goal. The crowd audibly gasped. These moments of pure football invention are rarely if ever seen in bread and butter Premiership games. The Albion, and similar clubs, have to cut their cloth according to their abilities and concentrate on plain skills well executed in the search for hard won points. Should we now acknowledge that we watch two very different games; the Premiership struggle where 90% of the football is percentage play with little sentiment for flair and the European games where the 10-20 best players in the World sometimes have a chance to show their true abilities to the delight of the audience?