The Beautiful Game is an over-used phrase: football is often an arduous spectator sport. When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad, it’s awful. And when it’s somewhere in-between – which is where it spends most of its time – it’s usually pretty turgid.
Those who pooh-pooh ‘the beautiful game’ point to the fact that in 90 minutes you’d be lucky to see an average of three goals. They point to a raft of 0-0s every week and a lack of genuine excitement. But let me point something out to them: you can have an utterly enthralling 0-0 and goals don’t necessarily equate to a good game.
Take the lower echelons of professional football. Both leagues One and Two have higher average goals per-game than the Premier League (2.85 and 2.90 respectively, compared to 2.76 in the top-flight), but down there you’re unlikely to see an aesthetically alluring game.
Perhaps we have all been spoilt by the top-quality football on our TV screens almost every night of the week, but take a place in the stands at a lower league ground and you’ll be brought swiftly back down to earth. It’s a completely different world, and more goals most definitely does not mean a better game.
Even in the top-flight things aren’t always much better. Does Blackburn-Bolton really get anyone, even their own fans, excited? A rugged spectacle of long-balls, indiscretions and gamesmanship. However, lest we not forget that these are the former Premier League champions and a team of European pedigree not so long ago. Yet few would want to watch it, let alone pay for the pleasure.
On Tuesday night Beauty and the Beast played itself out at the Nou Camp as Barcelona took on Chelsea. On the one side there was a team with the potential to become the greatest club side of a generation; on the other a behemoth of experience and stubborn resistance.
Was it a good game? I thought so but I’d struggle to argue with those who disagree. No goals, niggly fouls and a smattering of genuine chances, it took a keen (perhaps rose-tinted) observer to appreciate the way Chelsea vehemently repelled wave after wave of Barcelona attacks.
The best Chelsea game I ever saw live was the corresponding fixture at Stamford Bridge in 2005 - a 4-2 mauling of the Catalans in the Champions League quarter-final. But was it the best I’ve ever seen live? No. That honour goes to Brighton’s 4-4 draw with Leyton Orient at the Goldstone ground in 1993. A low-grade goal-fest that saw an irate Albion fan run on the pitch, chin Ray Wilkins and tear the prostrate midfielder’s boot from his foot. An act of retaliation for the winning goal ‘Butch’ scored against the Seagulls in the 1983 FA Cup final.
Sometimes you find exactly what you’re looking for in the place you'd least expect it.