s******r
发帖数: 5309 | 1 华盛顿邮报这篇评论文章颇有意思。
足球不适合举国体制。比如当年东德的奥运金牌数一数二，但足球比西德可以忽略不计。
足球运动完全没有正确的踢法，也没有可以遵循的成功路线。 足球需要运动员能够在
场上随机应变。
严格训练虽然能提高球员的技能和体力，但足球艺术不是练出来的。
球队成功很大程度靠球星。为什么最伟大的球星都是小矮个没人能理解。
球星不是刻苦训练能产生的，而是需要能自由发挥的成长环境。
巴西，阿根廷，西班牙，葡萄牙这种推崇激情鄙视纪律的国家最适合踢球。
美帝虽然是自由国家，但体育却是强调纪律训练的专制体制，所以美帝足球也很烂。
Why China doesn’t dominate soccer
By Stefan Szymanski
June 18 at 3:18 PM
The most populous nation on Earth is not playing in the 2018 World Cup.
Soccer is China’s most popular sport, but its current FIFA world ranking is
No. 75. What accounts for this disastrous showing?
China has become an Olympic powerhouse. Since 2000, it has consistently
ranked in the top three in medals earned at the Summer Games, and in the top
16 at the Winter Games. But China has managed to qualify for the World Cup
only once, in 2002, when it proceeded to lose all three of its group matches
and failed to score a single goal. How can a country be so dominant in
Olympic sports and so awful at soccer?
China’s soccer troubles are a case study in the limits of authoritarianism.
When the government decided to allocate significant resources toward
Olympic success — a process that included recruiting children as young as 6
years old, often separating them from their parents, and, as most experts
believe and the World Anti-Doping Agency may soon show, using performance-
enhancing drugs with abandon — they achieved their goals. In many Olympic
sports, high performance is a matter of biomechanics and discipline. To be
sure, neither are irrelevant to soccer — but they are not decisive, and too
much discipline can actually be a handicap.
Compare that archetype of authoritarian Olympism: East Germany. The country
amassed a record number of medals over two decades (thanks in part to a
state-sponsored doping program). In contrast, East Germany attempted to
qualify for the World Cup nine times and managed to get in only once (1974).
The liberal democracy of West Germany lagged well behind their East German
counterparts in the Olympic medal tables, but won the World Cup in 1954,
1974 and 1990, and reached the final in 1966, 1982 and 1986.
The mighty Soviet Union also dominated the Olympics and still ranks second
in the all-time combined medals table. And though not as hapless as China or
East Germany, Soviet soccer was a hit-and-miss affair. The USSR reached the
World Cup quarterfinals four times between 1958 and 1970 and the semifinals
in 1966, but between 1970 and 1990, it barely made an impact. It fared
better in the European Championship, which it won in 1960, and finished
second in 1964, 1972 and 1988. Then again, it failed to qualify altogether
between 1976 and 1984.
Soccer has not succumbed to central planning because the game has proved
resistant to scientific analysis. We’re not even sure what a player’s
ideal physique may be. It is a contact sport, so you would expect top
players to have some heft, but three of the greatest players of all time are
decidedly on the short side: Brazil’s Pele is 5-foot-8, while Argentina’s
Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi are 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-7, respectively.
Training and drills do not appear to make too much of a difference. Most
statistical research suggests soccer coaches have a relatively small impact
on a team’s success. Unlike American football, soccer is a free-flowing
game of infinite, largely unpredictable variety with relatively little use
for rehearsed “plays.”
The Dutch superstar Johan Cruyff once said “you play football with your
head, and your legs are there to help you.” Physical fitness and some
measure of organization and structure are certainly helpful, but each player
must be able to strategize on the fly, individually. This means you can
certainly improve a terrible team’s performance by focusing on the basics,
as many of the world’s weaker nations have done over the past decades, but
true success depends on factors that remain elusive. Instead, World Cup
victories tend to be associated with the mercurial skills of the iconic
players: Pele in 1970, Italy’s Paolo Rossi in 1982, Maradona in 1986,
France’s Zinedine Zidane in 1998. Almost everyone thinks the outcome of
this World Cup will depend on the performances of Portugal’s Cristiano
Ronaldo, Messi and Brazil’s Neymar.
President Xi Jinping of China, a passionate soccer fan, is committed to
raising his country’s game, with an ambitious plan that includes creating
50,000 soccer schools by 2025, up from around 5,000 in 2015.
But no centralized program will create the kind of player who creatively
dribbles and dances his team to victory. In fact, the more you plan and the
more you dictate, the less likely you are to rise beyond mediocrity. There
is a lesson here for the United States as well: American mainstream sports
tend to rely heavily on the authoritarian figure of the coach, who draws up
plays for obedient players to execute. It is an interesting paradox: in its
sports culture, the nation that prides itself on a free-wheeling and nearly
unbridled individualism actually encourages unquestioning submission in its
popular sports and, far too often, you see well-meaning soccer parents
preach to their children about iron discipline when they ought to tell them
to express their free spirits on the field.
It is no accident that the nation that has won the World Cup more times than
any other and has exported the most talent to the rest of the world is
synonymous with the most flamboyant, Carnival-esque expression of o jogo
bonito, or the beautiful game: spirited Brazil. |
