Is it?
"You've got to play nice football."
Do you?
"We don't deserve to go down. We play nice football, y'know."
Really?
It's my pet hate. The 'long ball' stigma being, er, stigged onto a club. It's the reason I'm not keen on Arsene Wenger. Whenever his team slips up against your average Stoke, West Ham, etc. you hear the excuses. That they lost or drew, but who cares? They play nice football. Which begs the question.
What IS long ball football?
Now, in my opinion, there are two types of long ball football: Enterprising and Crafted. Let's abbreviate them ELBF and CLBF. Got that? Good. Right. Let's begin.
Most people picture long ball tactics and they think of hoofing it up to a strong, tall striker who barges into defenders. They think of defenders with the brains of apes, aimlessly clomping it up the pitch in the general direction of the attackers. But the easiest way to find out what a long ball is, is to look it up on Wikipedia.
"Long ball is the term used in association football to describe an attempt, often speculative, to distribute the ball a long distance down the field via a cross, without the intention to pass it to the feet of the receiving player."
But wait...
"The long ball is sometimes criticized as being used by weaker teams with less tactical skill...Analysis of its implementation at world-class levels however, shows that effective use of long-ball techniques can be found in numerous competitive World Cup or championship club teams. It can be used as a counterattacking style...The long ball requires top level skill to implement correctly. Mere passing is not the only variable."
So that means to have counter attacking football, and to implement it properly, you have to have long ball football. Dortmund use it whilst attacking. So do Man City. Two teams with great attacking players, and they're using the long ball. Two great examples of CLBF. But my best example is this picture.
That's right. The Dutch, for all their Totalvoetbal, use a long ball to beat another big team. Frank de Boer, a major cultivator of Totalvoetbal at Ajax. And he has used a long ball. See my point? Long balls can be this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JJD9p6V59Go&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DJJD9p6V59Go... Or this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qIRGC2rwefA&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DqIRGC2rwefA.
Not hard to see which is ELBF and CLBF. Long ball football is stereotyped, by teams who simply use it to survive, like West Ham and Stoke when really, it's a useful and skilful which is relied upon by the biggest of teams.
Written by Olly O'Carroll - @DeJongBall