In 1970, Rinus Michels was pioneering a new style of play while Leeds and Chelsea were kicking lumps out of each other I recently watched a recording of the 1970 FA Cup final replay with my 12-year-old son. You can find the match by searching for “football’s most brutal game”. I was attempting to show him how football has “evolved” and it made me smile that the first thing you see in the BBC coverage is an upfront trigger warning that “some viewers might find the video disturbing”.Best porn XXX. That in itself tells us how much society has changed over the past 50 years, before you see the Leeds manager, Don Revie, smoking a cigar in the dugout while Leeds and Chelsea play out a game that today looks like a combination of football and mixed martial arts. Some of the best players of that generation, including Jack Charlton, Billy Bremner and Ron “Chopper” Harris, spend more time kicking each other than they do the ball. The game was viewed on TV by nearly 29 million people and featured only one yellow card and no sendings-off. Across the North Sea in the Netherlands at about the same time, Rinus Michels was developing a style of play that would become known as Total Football. A dynamic, fluid style is characterised by player versatility and positional interchangeability, where almost every player is expected to be adept at playing multiple roles. This style emphasised aggressive pressing rather than tackling in order to regain possession quickly and then maintaining control of the ball through skilful, short passing. The English game has come far from those threadbare pitches and proponents of casual violence of the 1970s to the variant of Total Football that dominates today, not only in the Premier League but among the most successful teams in the English Football League. It seems this expansive, possession-based game has won the battle for tactical dominance for a number of reasons. Most evidently, Pep Guardiola’s coaching philosophy at the UK’s most successful current team, Manchester City, is clearly rooted in a style that evolved from his playing days at Barcelona under Johan Cruyff. This lineage traces directly back to Michels, who built his freewheeling Ajax sides around Cruyff’s football intelligence. Cruyff then refined this philosophy at Barcelona, both as a player and later as Guardiola’s coach and mentor. European coaches such as Michels, Cruyff and Guardiola have had a profound impact on tactical approaches worldwide because their methods have proven effective and entertaining. Their attractive style has been televised to a global audience and shown how success can be married with style. Michels won the European Cup with Ajax and then led the Netherlands to the World Cup final in 1974, where they were narrowly beaten by West Germany. Cruyff’s influence at Barcelona started a golden period from the early 1990s with their first European Cup win that reached its pinnacle under Guardiola, who showcased the effectiveness of this approach with the dominant team that overwhelmed Manchester United in the 2011 Champions League final. This prompted Sir Alex Ferguson to say: “They do mesmerise you with the way they pass it.” English football, traditionally characterised by its direct style and physicality, began to slowly integrate more strategic and possession-based tactics with the arrival of foreign coaches such as Arsène Wenger. He came to the Premier League in 1996 with new ideas and philosophies about how a club can be run, starting a wave of change that has led to where we are today. Changes such as the back-pass rule, VAR and regulations against harsh tackles have also facilitated a more possession-oriented, less physically risky style. These have encouraged teams to develop styles that prioritise control, technical skill and passing over physical aggression and dominance in order to be successful. This seems to reflect a societal shift in views on masculinity and the role of aggression and violence both on the pitch and in everyday life. Wimbledon’s late 1980s Crazy Gang encapsulated this most clearly with their unapologetic anti-football style, route-one simplicity and groin-grabbing intensity, which can be seen to symbolise the last flailing efforts of a style that hasn’t brought high-level success since. There are still flaccid imitators to be found in the lower divisions, but few who can build lasting success or a devoted fanbase in today’s game. It is now a given that teams struggle to be successful without a long-term plan and clearly defined style of play. This “game model” allows clubs to create repeatable (though not predictable) behaviours, recruit specific types of players that fit the model, and develop academy talent towards a first-team system that they will recognise and fit into. This approach means they are not dependent on a head coach or manager’s vision, a model that limits success more to luck and low probability than something that can survive changes in key personnel. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football after newsletter promotion English football has increasingly focused on improving the technical skills of players from a young age. Academies and training programmes emphasise ball control, tactical awareness and versatility much more than in the past. This shift has made it easier for teams to adopt styles of play that require technically skilled and tactically intelligent players as a more standard requirement for leagues that demand these qualities. Additionally, the influx of foreign players has brought different skills and tactical understandings, which have blended with the traditional English game to produce a more varied and tactically sophisticated style. Our partners at Twenty First Group discovered that in the past 20 years, the technical element of the game has improved significantly, highlighted through its data that shows there are 66% more successful passes per top-flight game since the inception of the Premier League. When you look at the teams Leeds and Chelsea turn out today, most people would be glad to see that football has evolved to a higher state. Fans of a certain generation and mindset will lament the “sanitisation” of the game, the loss of physicality and of a player’s ability to make a crunching tackle that could potentially end an opponent’s career. That said, I think most have enjoyed the shift from the rough prose of the 1970s to the fluid poetry of the game today. Jason Stockwood is the chair of Grimsby Town Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — As he left the floor for the last time in his collegiate career after his team’s 75-60 loss to UConn in the national title game Monday night, Zach Edey stared ahead, walked down the stairs and disappeared into the tunnel. In the end, Edey couldn’t carry Purdue. Not that far. Not past a modern legend.Best porn XXX. Not over a force of nature that beat every opponent in the NCAA tournament by double digits during its second consecutive national title run, this one even more dominant than the last. Twenty years from now, UConn’s historic effort will still overshadow Edey’s individual achievements. The 7-foot-4, 290-pound center will soon collect his second Wooden Award, a feat that only former Virginia center Ralph Sampson Jr. has matched. The Huskies? They outscored their opponents by 140 points in the NCAA tournament. Their 23.3 point-per-game margin of victory is the greatest mark of all time, per ESPN Stats & Information research. But Edey, who finished with 37 points and 10 rebounds on Monday while matched against projected lottery pick Donovan Clingan, will leave college as one of the greatest players in the history of the game, despite the loss. “When you look at his numbers against the greats, there is no question he’s in the conversation,” coach Matt Painter said. “But he’s also the winningest player at Purdue. We won our league in back-to-back years [2023, 2024] by multiple games. It’s the first time that’s happened in the Big Ten since I was in kindergarten. We got to the [national] championship game after having a disappointing loss [in last year’s NCAA tournament]. He got to a Sweet 16. He went to four [NCAA] tournaments. I think that’s always what kind of separates everybody.” In front of Edey’s locker room at State Farm Stadium after Monday’s game, four granola bar wrappers were scattered around the stall. The various body washes and body sprays the NCAA provided for each participant were arranged neatly overhead and a pair of slippers — size 20 — were on the floor nearby. As Edey was swarmed by cameras, his teammates discussed the footprint he has left over the past four years of his collegiate career. “I think he’s the best Purdue player that has worn the uniform,” Boilermakers guard Lance Jones said. “His statistics speak for themselves.” Long before he finished with 177 points in this season’s NCAA tournament — 29.5 points per game, which is second most all time, according to ESPN Stats & Information research — Edey was searching for an opportunity. A former baseball and hockey player in Canada, he found basketball later in his athletic career, but not an abundance of optimism from collegiate coaches who wondered how he’d fit with their programs. Painter, however, had coached multiple 7-footers in his career and viewed Edey as a potential star. “[Painter] is someone who just gave me a chance,” Edey said. “I’ve been trying for four years to pay him back for that. He believed in me when not a lot of people believed in me. He gave me the ball. Not a lot of coaches did that. Not a lot of coaches trusted me in that role.” That bond helped the Boilermakers make a run to the national title game for just the second time in the program’s history — and a year after an upset loss to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson in last year’s NCAA tournament. Through the fog of that loss and the backlash that followed, Edey was determined to improve from last year’s national player of the year effort. He added more muscle and improved his agility so he could make a greater defensive impact this season. Edey, somehow, got better. That growth was the team’s ticket to a run to Glendale. Early in the game, Edey scored on dunks and skyhooks and established that the Boilermakers clearly had the best player in America. But the Huskies had the best team. That was the difference, as Connecticut swarmed Purdue’s perimeter players — the Boilermakers, who entered Monday’s game as the No. 2 squad in 3-point shooting, finished 1-for-7 from beyond the arc — and spread the load with five players scoring nine points or more. Still, Edey kept battling. With 3:25 to play in a game that had long turned into a question about UConn’s margin of victory and not the result, Edey scored his 31st point. He would add six more in the final minutes. Instead of reflecting on his overall numbers after the game, however, Edey instead emphasized his lapses, such as a period in the second half when he couldn’t find the rim. “I’ve just got to play better,” he said. “This is one of those games where I can’t go through stretches where I’m not effective. I had a few of those stretches today and that was the game.” That attitude has made Edey one of the greatest players in college basketball history. He did not leave Glendale with the national title. Still, the 7-foot-4 superstar left his mark. Not just on Monday’s game or even Purdue’s program — but also on the history of college basketball. “He’s a generational player,” Purdue forward Mason Gillis said. “I don’t know if there will ever be another 7-foot-4 guy that dominates the way he does. I think Purdue should not take for granted what they were able to watch for four years. His development was for the fans. For Purdue. He wanted to bring success and raise the Purdue name. He just wanted to win and fight. And that’s what we did.”