In Defense of Defense

Listening to some football fans, you'd think the winner of a football match were decided by judges rating the two sides on artistic impression and technical difficulty. But football is not gymnastics. In point of fact, the winner is simply the team that puts the most bulges in the old onion bag. As in most sports, every team needs to focus both on scoring goals and preventing the other team from scoring.

The old adage is that "offense wins games but defense wins championships". This is as true in football as it is any other sport. Indeed, simple statistics show that preventing one more goal per game will earn you 10-20% more wins than scoring one more goal per game.

Yet, many soccer fans not only ignore the defensive part of the game but openly deride it. Defensive minded teams are called "negative" and "boring".

The idea that defense is boring seems somewhat peculiar to (association) football.

In baseball, the central player in the defense -- the pitcher -- receives at least as much attention as the top hitters. The Cy Young award, given out to the best pitcher, is hugely anticipated each year. Even relief pitchers (especially closers) receive much of the glory. The mystique surrounding Mariano Rivera being a perfect example.

In basketball, similarly, the best teams of all time include many teams known for their defense, like the Detroit Pistons, the New York Knicks, and the San Antonio Spurs. The Celtics dominant player for many years, Bill Russell, is today primarily lauded for his defense.

Perhaps the sport where good defense is most appreciated is American football. There, we find many of the best teams of all time are primarily known for their defense. They even acquired fanciful nicknames like the "Orange Crush", the "Big Blue Wrecking Crew", the "Purple People Eaters", and the "Steel Curtain".

I still vividly remember watching the Washington Huskies play during their national championship season in 1995. Like any fans, we applauded great offensive achievements, but the loudest applause of the games would come after a string of great defensive plays. When the total rushing yards of the opponents would become negative (which it did quite often), the crowd would go bananas.

Of course, (association) football is not American football, nor should it be. However, defense is critical to winning trophies in both sports, so it remains odd that defense is so poorly appreciated by (association) football fans.

Here at Negative Football, we will see if we can do our small part to help fix that....