My point is that this is a competitive game. Winning requires doing what is necessary to win. We venerate winners. If we don't want players to do these things, we have to start venerating sportsmen rather than winners.
All we do around here is complain that Everton doesn't win enough. Why? Everton does it the right way. That's why we're here. Complaining that Everton doesn't win all of the titles City, and United and the RS do misses the point. Do we really want to be them? Most of us would quit following Everton if we were.
Larry Bird once walked into the locker room before a three point contest and asked them all who was finishing second. He won. He once took the shots in a three-point-contest in his warmup jacket. He won that one too. He once got Dr. J to start a fistfight by telling him their relative points tallies every time they went up and down the court. I think the tally was something like 42-6 when Julius Erving finally lost his temper and took a swing at him.
Dr. J was a top-twenty all-time basketball player, and a good person. If you've ever met Dr. J or heard him talk, you know that he is not the kind of man to take a swing at Larry. Being from Philadelphia and raised by basketball people from Indiana, Dr. J was my idol growing up. On the basis of skill, it's between him and Magic on who is the greatest basketball player of all time. Listen to Magic talk about the behind-the-backboard layup. Magic thinks Dr. J is the most skilled player ever. He won't come out and say it, but it's subtext. I tend to think Magic was more skilled, but it's close.
Larry Legend is a legend and a top-five all-time basketball player precisely because he was a legendary trash talker. He was an incredibly skilled, but also limited basketball player. Dr. J was more skilled. He could fly. His highlight reel is insane. Forget Jordan's. Watch Dr. J's.
Larry Legend compensated by getting into opponents' heads.
Actually injuring players should be out-of-bounds. I'll confess to that one. Back when I played as a kid, if you slide-tackled the ball into a faster opponent's ankle, you could get off without even incurring a yellow. The opposing coach was furious about that one. It did, however, slow the guy down enough that I could keep up with him, and I didn't inflict actual lasting injury because I used the ball instead of me. I just slowed him down enough for a few hours.
We won the game. If I don't make that slide tackle early when the opportunity presented itself, I assure you that we lose. There is a reason that a slide-tackle is an automatic card in youth soccer these days. I use the word 'soccer' because I am describing the youth game in America.
I was fast. I wasn't as fast as that guy, so I solved that problem. This is what defenders do.
It's not the only time I did that. I had better reasons the second time. I did that to a bully who was twice my size. It put him in his place, which needed to happen. It turned his 'friends' on him, because they respected strength. I demonstrated that I had far more strength than he did despite being half the size, as well as character, by doing it. I had learned a few things in the intervening half-dozen years.
I was fast, and I can tackle, but I am also short. I could not be a defender as a result. It's why coaches later on played me as an inverted left winger, to compensate for the fact that I am ridiculously right footed but possess little range. They realized that I was useful if you played me as a guy where teammates just dumped the ball forward into space, hockey-style, and let me hunt it down and pop a cross in. I could score from range, but I needed a ball with some pace on it hit into my direction or a half-volley to do it. I could make a tackle, and put a medium-range throw-in on a dime. I could put a short or medium-range pass on a dime, but I couldn't see the through-balls.
That set of skills, even attached to the cynicism, was not good enough to make it at the high school level in America back then, much less now. If you can't stretch the defense by presenting a legitimate scoring threat from your corner of the box, you can't be a winger. That is what it is. I was still better than the mason that I am as a basketball player. That was what I really wanted to be, but I am short and a bricklayer, so that one wasn't happening. Don't think I didn't try.
It is worth noting that I incurred precisely zero yellow cards in youth soccer. That was a mistake. I wasn't cynical enough to make it.
As a wrestler, I was very good. Not great, but very good. I have the trophies and medals to prove it. I could afford sportsmanship, and was the cleanest wrestler you ever saw. I wholeheartedly agree with the notion that we should be teaching our kids sportsmanship. Wrestling teaches that. It's a good life lesson. It's what we should want athletes to be, but we in actual fact don't. We lie to ourselves about this one.
Messi got dumped on for the lack of international titles. He is not the kind of player to go out and solve that problem. For my money, he's the best today and has been for fifteen years now. His teammates solved his problem for him, because he couldn't. He's not wired that way. Schweinsteiger owned Messi in the 2014 final because Schweinsteiger was willing to get his jersey filthy, and Messi wasn't willing to flop. If Messi had been willing to flop, Argentina wins that final. Schweinsteiger straight won that final by recognizing that he could get his jersey filthy, and that Messi would never flop in response. It was the best 120 minutes of defending I have ever seen.
Schweinsteiger is my son's idol. His mother is partially of German descent, and he was seven, so he rode them to glory. I explained to him why the Germans won. This is why Schweinsteiger is my son's idol.
Maradona was a better player than Messi because he could, and did, do those sorts of things. Maradona is a legend precisely because he could hang both of those goals on England. There is the one where he cheated like all get-out, and the one where he slalomed through the entirety of the English defense. He literally repaid England for a war against his country with the goal where he cheated.
Maradona should get a pass on that one, given the context of the war. He should not get a pass on the rest of the character flaws.
So. I accept Sassy's reply. She is not like me. She does not have the sins to confess that I do. She wants to follow a good team, in the sense of a team with morality. I also eventually figured out that I follow this team precisely because of its morality. I like morality. I'm also the kind of person that will completely throw that to the wind for the right reasons. I shouldn't have slide-tackled the ball into the kid's ankle. I did it because it worked. I generally try to be moral. I will also still do what works when that happens to be right, in the moral sense of the word 'right'. The second kid, in high school, had that one coming.
I bet Sassy wouldn't do that in either case. She's posted enough around here to make that one clear. It's obvious that, like
@RAFUH, she's a nice person.
My point
@Zatara is that, if you really want Everton to win, you want Everton to bring in defenders that will do that. If you don't want us to bring in Ramos, then you don't really want us to win. Federer could afford to be a really good person and still play tennis at a high level. That's how that game works, because of its rules.
You can also be a rotten person in tennis and win. See: McEnroe, John. He is the best commentator in the history of tennis not because he was the best player, but because he understands the game better than any other high-level player that has ever played that game.
This is why McEnroe ranted at umpires and broke rackets. He was the king of mind games. He made Larry Legend look like a pussycat. Borg was considerably better at tennis. McEnroe eventually owned him anyway, because he got into Borg's head.
Football is not like tennis. The rules advantage the defender, so long as the defender is willing to be immoral. Suarez got sent off for the handball and won the game. Chiellini's horse collar was gold because it exploited the rules. He gets one yellow card. Spend it wisely. He spent it wisely. It was glorious.
If winning requires the insults prior to the opponent taking the PK, and if you agree with Lombardi that "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," then the goalkeeper should apply the insults. It's always easy to condemn a player for that sort of thing as a neutral.
I will also point out that we venerate Duncan Disorderly for playing mind games. I can be intimidating, despite small stature. That man makes me look like a pussycat by comparison. I, personally, have not been sent to prison for headbutting someone in the course of doing my job. If you ask me who I want at my back in a bar fight, I am taking Duncan Ferguson any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
We love a snide, so long as he plays for us. We hate snides that play for the opponent.
Let's be honest. The argument that Martinez is wrong is the argument that Big Dunc is not an Everton hero, and that Big Dunc is not the one and only person to have at one's back in a bar fight.
I'm willing to accept that argument. I'm willing to accept that the reptile portion of my brain is wrong. In practice, we as people do not do that. We love our snides. We hate the opponent's snides. We hate all snides as a neutral. We believe in morality. We subvert that morality where our allegiances are concerned.
Apologies for the essay, but I am a writer. At about the time I put the basketball down, I figured out that was what I really wanted to be. I am an unreliable narrator, and I was feeling it this morning. That seems to happen a lot of late.
