Football is about entertainment. It’s about what gets bums in seats in anticipation, and then what gets bums out of seats in delirium. At some point, this sport has probably made you bark and clap like a seal. And that’s why we keep coming back every week.

Of course, what moves us as spectators is subjective. There are those out there who prefer to ponder over La Pausa. And then there are those – like me – who just love to see ballers ball. The feints, the flicks, the jinks, the nutmegs. The creation of unorthodox solutions to near impossible obstacles. The parts of the game that force you to make involuntary noises like you’re Gary Neville on comms duty. The crossroads where football transcends sport and becomes art.

These days, most references to football as “The Beautiful Game” are sarcastic ways of grumbling about the sport’s embrace of new trends. Like a much more unserious version of Vito Corleone’s infamous “look how they massacred my boy” line in the Godfather film.

But to me, joga bonito is more than just a slogan. It’s a mantra. A promise to play the game with a fearless freedom. To express one’s individuality, but for the greater good. It’s the way we’ve seen countless generational talents announce themselves on the grandest of stages armed only with an unshakable confidence and a desire to manifest their potential.

I’m thinking of Ronaldinho, Marta, Eden Hazard and countless others who epitomised the quest for high rewards in high risk circumstances. But today, this type of protagonist is something of an endangered species.

Without trying to sound too dramatic, we are witnessing the death of ego in favour of preserving more sterile and cautious team structures which are much less entertaining to watch. The fine line between a moment of individual brilliance and a sloppy mistake which leads to a goal is finer than it ever has been, and the financial consequences of victory or defeat have never been so important to a club’s success. So it makes sense – at least in theory – to keep that improvised unpredictability to a minimum.

Defences are a lot more organised and compact today, which makes it harder and less effective to go on a one-man mission towards goal. The flipside is that attacks are now coordinated in the same meticulous way, leaving little wiggle room for players to wiggle the right analog stick. The difference between Jack Grealish at Aston Villa and Manchester City is perhaps the best embodiment of how individuals lose their edge, especially at the elite level. Going from his team’s creative engine to just another cog in a brutally efficient machine. The aim of the game is to control. Each player is drilled so that the team moves as one entity, rather than one entity moving the whole team.

There is also a greater risk of attracting cynical tackles as a skilful player – an issue that Bukayo Saka, Neymar and James Maddison are all too familiar with. Combine that with the increased workload young players are facing and the life of a pure jugador is not one many can justify in today’s game. 

But it still doesn’t feel right. For me and many others, football is at its best when we are absorbed by audacity. Whether that’s Jay-Jay Okocha conjuring something from nothing or Arjen Robben pulling off a signature move no-one can stop. Both come from the same urge to influence a game on their own terms. Now, football is quicker to remind us about the dangers of a piece of skill not coming off rather than indulging us in the rewards of actually executing it.

This is not to say the jugador tap has run completely dry. Jérémy Doku, Lucas Paquetá and Vinicius Jr are among those flying the flag of flair today and playing with the same youthful freedom Papa Wenger said the game is losing. But in its pursuit of perfection, football is still experiencing an individuality deficit that will affect our relationship and engagement with the sport as a form of entertainment.

Here’s hoping that the Taarabts of tomorrow who spend hours in the cages of Sao Paulo, London, Paris and beyond continue to refine their inner child to the tune of elite football without losing their appetite for risk.

The system will always be more powerful than the individual. But once the individual dies out, who will get us out of our seats?

@AhmedShooble

In recent years, there’s been more of an emphasis on control which has changed the game at the expense of risk-takers. The all-conquering Pep Guardiola has been a catalyst for this and his success has influenced the footballing world to adopt his principles of patience and discipline in possession. It isn’t just Aston Villa, Brighton and Burnley choosing to play this way. Teams lower down the leagues are also implementing more rigid, possession-based play styles.

This is largely because the overall technical quality of football has improved drastically. Goalkeepers today are more comfortable with the ball at their feet than some outfield players were in years gone by. Centre-backs have more responsibilities in possession. There are more technical overlaps between defenders and attackers than ever before. Having such a varied skill set across squads is better in a team construct. But on a player level, it means there are less specialists in the game today – especially one-v-one dribblers.

This homogenisation has also trickled down into academy football, where talent production has become more industrialised leading to a much more sanitised spectacle. Arsène Wenger, now chief of global football development at FIFA, believes young players today are over-coached – leading to an erosion of creative freedom and the loss of off-the-cuff muscle memory.

Speaking to the Independent in September, Wenger said: “The game itself is a good coach. Why? Because, if I play in the park, I have to make decisions. If I’m shrewd enough to think why did that not come off and have a right assessment, the next time I am in the same situation I am correct. 

“We have lost that a little bit. We lose a bit of that individual personalised training that happened before.”

Argentina’s World Cup winning manager Lionel Scaloni echoed these sentiments, referencing players being “remote controlled” by coaches and lamenting the effect this has on youth team players.

The kinds of risks that are taken in football today epitomise how it has lost faith in individuality. The sport now prefers to take its risks with more collective responsibility. The risk of playing with a high defensive line and the risk of passing through a high press are just a couple of examples. No matter how fruitful, these are deemed more acceptable to persist with than any explosion of solo spontaneity. There is more faith in recreating what is rehearsed in training than the individual bits of magic that form some of our most core footballing memories.