While congratulations are in order to the Greek football team and its legions of fans, who are among the best, in terms of knowledge and good-natured passion, on becoming the European champions, this bodes ill for the next trends in football.

Like all other sports, football’s practitioners fall into fads. This is just the sports version of the herd-like behaviour of corporations. Just as businesses have gone through the waves of the Harvard Business School inspired interchangeable cogs theory of management, the Peters and Waterman “excellence” theory, and the “reengineering” theory which is now on the wane, football has seen both evolution and cyclical behaviour. In football there will always be the issue of balance between individualism and adherence to “team concept”. At the same time, the game has evolved as pay and professionalism have advanced, which has seen greater speed, fitness and higher levels of technical skill.

Superimposed on these trends, which have their origins in the very nature of the game and of professional sport in contemporary culture, respectively, have been fads. The most obvious are the “systems”, beloved of the natterers of football small-talk, 4-2-4, 4-4-2, the “diamond” etc.. All BS. Coaches have to go on about it because it’s the language of their employment. Fundamentally, positional play in football is the same as it ever was. It’s determined by the nature of play. All that has changed has been the addition of defenders to the basic back three and greater fitness and substitution leading to the "filling up" of midfield. It’s also why “man-marking” can never be more than a selective option.

The dark trend presaged by the Greek win is that coaches, to stay in or gain employment are going to find is safer to “go Rehhagel”, which will mean emphasizing “team concept” over individual play. (Call me pigheaded but the Greeks were just luckier. While it’s a mistake to dwell on individual incidents, if you look at the Czech and Portugal games combined, it can only be put down to good fortune that Greece conceded no goals. There were about ten high quality chances, despite the efforts of the admittedly excellent Greek defenders. This would normally yield at least two and up to five goals. I will claim some credit for identifying Nikopolidis as the edge: he was solid and Ricardo outright botched the Greek goal. He as also made heavy weather of the only other chances – two- that Greece made. Terrible keeping.) This, in turn, will lead to a new cycle of defence-oriented football,

We’ve been here before. The World Cups of the 1980s through the resurgence of Brazil in 1994 reflected general trends towards defensive soccer. It was sad to see the Brazil teams of that era, despite the odd memorable player, such as Zico and Socrates. Brazil remains the great hope against the Greek trend. Contrary to the misplaced emphasis on individual stars, Brazilian football is based on the overwhelming creation of goal opportunities, which stems from having superior players. ( I actually think, in general, that far from being "clinical finshers" Brazilians flub more chances than anyone else but they create so many that it doesn't usually matter. Check out all the goals Romario missed in '94: but he was a brillant player who created chances on his own. Look at recordings of 2002 for the many flubs by Rivaldo and Ronaldo.) Incidentally, they are “well-organized” and work hard, too, and are as good defensively as anyone else (a good player is a good player, it’s not magic!) but this is neither why they win nor why they are more entertaining than everyone else. Except when they have met teams with even better talent, like the wonderful French team of '98.That Brazil is not immune from fads, which saw them shackle their superior talent to misplaced “systems”, we have already seen. The stakes are high for the 2006 World Cup!