I was listening to BBC Radio Five Live’s excellent Monday Night Club a few weeks ago. Hosted by one of the Beeb’s best broadcasters, Mark Chapman, the show is usually a discussion on the previous weekend’s football – predominantly, it must be said, English football. Licence fee payers in Scotland tend to be ignored by Aunty Beeb south of the border but that’s only my personal opinion.
One of the regular contributors to the Monday Night Club is someone with good experience of Scottish football – former Celtic striker Chris Sutton. He was in discussion with other contributors about whether certain players are comfortable playing as a ‘nine’ or a ‘false nine’ or if they prefer playing as a ‘ten’ or even a ‘false ten’. Someone else mentioned Chelsea effectively operating with two ‘sixes.’
I sat rather bemused by it all. Back in the late 1960s when I attended my first football match there was no such talk about playing as a ‘false nine’. Just as well because, as a six-year-old, I would have been totally bamboozled and put off football for life. As a 62-year-old, I’m still bamboozled but such gibberish doesn’t prevent me from watching the game I shall always love.
Watching Scottish football over the last six decades, I can certainly vouch for witnessing some players as a ‘false nine.’ But in the cases I’ve seen, it’s not so much a tactical ploy, rather it means the player in question would struggle to hit a barn door with a banjo. And, believe me, I’ve seen plenty of players like that…
Modern day match commentators do tend to come out with utterances which have me scratching my head. I heard one the other week declare that a team would be looking for one of their players to ‘exploit his pace.’ I assumed the commentator meant said player would try and run past the opposition defence but that possibly depended on whether they were playing a false number six…
It’s all a far cry from when football seemed a much simpler game. When games invariably kicked off at three o’clock on a Saturday. When you could pay cash at the gate (yes, I know paying with cash is fast disappearing in today’s society. In fact, it disappeared from me many years ago…) When players wore the numbers one to eleven without their names on the back of their shirts. And there wasn’t the name of a sponsor to be seen anywhere on said shirt.
But the language of football seemed much simpler back then. Standing on the crumbing terracing of Tynecastle Park back in the 1970s, I never heard anyone talk about players ‘going down the channels.’ Or ‘diamond’ formations. Or ‘running at pace’ although anyone who has ever seen me attempt to run for a bus will vouch for the fact that pace is nowhere to be seen. Or the frankly ridiculous sight of a player lying down on the ground behind a defensive wall at a free kick. This has been a recent trait as well as the sight of a goalkeeper having two of his defenders either side of him when taking a goal kick. I’ve never quite seen the reason behind this particularly if the team’s false number nine or pretend number ten or either of the number sixes are screaming for the ball…
But it seems modern jargon is here to stay. I recently asked my ten-year-old grandson which position he played for his school football team. He told me he was an ‘attacking mid.’ Not for the first time he saw the bemusement in my eyes and didn’t attempt to explain. When I was his age an ‘attacking mid’ was Hearts Drew Busby scaring the living daylights out of Alan Hansen, then of Partick Thistle in a game at Tynecastle. The look of fear on the future Scotland defender’s face was priceless.
My 14-year-old granddaughter told me she can play ‘centre mid or offensive’. My reply that, when I was playing for my primary school team back in the black and white days, I was a utility player – useless in any position – merely brought a black expression on her face, as The Specials used to sing…
Football is a simple game. Today it seems to be over-analysed, over-interpreted, and overrun with technical jargon which has old timers like me staring into space. Possibly the space where the false number nine should run into…
Mike Smith
X/Twitter @Mike1874
