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Sports
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Written by Robert Madoi
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Wednesday, 25 November 2009 19:54 |
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Diamonds are forever. At Chelsea? Maybe. The Ugandan football landscape? Not a chance. The tried and tested diamond-esque system of having a deep-lying midfielder protecting the rearguard doesn’t endear itself to national football coach, Bobby Williamson.
Uganda had for eon years played with a deep-lying midfielder until Williamson broke the norm during last year’s CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup. Devoid of a grafter, a central midfield of Owen Kasule and Tony Mawejje piled one blinder on the back of another as the national football team - The Cranes - played spellbinding football.
Statistics, we have been warned, don’t bleed; but The Cranes’ statistic of 16 goals scored in half a dozen 2008 CECAFA matches does a bloody good haemorrhaging job. It seems to suggest that - the dismaying level of football in the CECAFA region notwithstanding - Williamson’s attack-minded football philosophy is sure to take Uganda places.
Circumspection was pretty much the watchword during Csaba Laszlo’s tenure as The Cranes coach. Laszlo’s caution-infested displays eventually cost Uganda dear. Besides drawing a blank on their travels to lowly Lesotho, The Cranes failed to score the plethora of goals needed against Niger to secure a 2008 African Nations Cup ticket.
Williamson’s offensive approach guarantees The Cranes the game’s premium commodity - goals. A 15-year-long playing career in the final third of the pitch saw Williamson plunder a respectable 138 goals from 402 matches. The Scot naturally wants his charges to mirror, if not better the attack-minded approach that he exuded in his playing days.
In an interview with The Observer (“I have made some inroads” - November 23-25), Williamson said: “I have shifted from [the diamond] system to a more offensive approach with two central midfielders that can attack and defend. This makes it hard for the opposition to pick them out in an attempt to nullify their game because they find it hard to know who defends and attacks. Teams won’t know which player arrives in the box”.
It will be interesting to see how Williamson’s system moulds with The Cranes on the road. The offensive system might have won the Scot droves of admirers last year, but things are far from being prim and proper - especially since it’s a given that a touch of steel is needed to stand a team in good stead.
You need someone to do the attractive mop-up job in midfield. Sadly, this is an art that has eluded many an offensive midfielder - the type that tickle Williamson’s fancy.
Football loves its clichés, though, and one that stands out most is: attack is the best form of defence. The aforesaid cliché should bring a wry smile to Williamson’s face. Whether that smile will still be visible on December 13, 2009 - when the CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup final is played in Nairobi - remains to be seen.
***
Williamson is of course taking a footpath that Brazil’s national football coach, Dunga is quite conversant with. By injecting a dose of pragmatism in Brazilian football, Dunga has attracted a sullen crowd in his native country.
The sullen crowd contends that anything less than free-flowing (samba) style doesn’t give Brazilian football a pleasant countenance. Not even trophies like the Copa America and Confederations Cup that Dunga’s counter-attacking philosophy has won.
Overwriting an imprint can be a tough, thankless job. But the key to success is sticking to what you believe in. Brazil under Dunga has had quite a number of valley moments. Brazilian media have vilified Dunga, but he has stuck to his guns. His rather unsightly philosophy is now paying dividends, and could yet win Brazil the World Cup next year.
A couple or so of valley moments shouldn’t stop Williamson from going on with this offensive brand of football. His philosophy might just be the tonic we need to break a Nations Cup hoodoo stretching three decades and counting.
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