The Perfect Storm

Football, famously, has no end. A match is gone in an instant, a season soon forgotten and even an era fades. For its followers the lack of ultimate victory is its beauty, for its detractors its futility. No team will ever win, no match will lead to any final conclusion. In the absence of such closure, it is only natural that we point to the game itself: maybe football can never be won, but perhaps it can be perfected. So from Cruyff’s total football to Barcelona’s tiki-taka, via the catenaccio of Italy's extraordinary era, we search for greatness. We search for a sign that a team can play the game, and win, in a way that seems unstoppably, unrelentingly perfect. The ideal game of chess, the mathematical formula that guarantees domination. Yet whenever a team seems to verge on it, they are derided. When perfection appears attainable we yearn for the excitement and beauty of imperfection. The irony is that when a team nears the ideal, they immediately distance themselves from how we really want football to be: fundamentally and magnificently chaotic.