da pixbet： Spoiling tactics are ruining the game as a spectacle, but Brighton, Napoli and others have shown that it is still possible to win and entertain

da luck： Towards the tail end of last season, Verona played Bologna in a Serie A game at the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi. The hosts won a desperately scrappy encounter 2-1, thus boosting their hopes of beating the drop. In that context, Verona's rather defensive display, coupled with their attempts to waste time at every possible opportunity, were understandable.

Bologna boss Thiago Motta was fuming, though. "Today was like the Italian football of years ago," he told reporters. "There was always someone on the ground. One guy went down, the physio came on, then the physio went off. Then, another guy went down and the physio came on again. With such a tempo of play, I don't think my guys could have done much better."

For those that cared to comment, Motta was cast as a sore loser trying to claim a moral victory after an actual defeat, portraying him as some sort of football-hipster-manager that gets upset when opponents have the audacity to defend deep against a clearly superior, free-flowing side. However, Motta had a point when he argued that the officials should be going more – or, perhaps more accurately, instructed by their bosses to do more – when it comes to tackling time-wasting and simulation.

"When someone continually stops the play, it's obviously difficult to play with continuity," he argued with rather flawless logic. "So, by allowing these stoppages, you favour the team that wants to play anti-football, and not the one that actually wants to play."

Pathe'The game is about glory'

This is nothing new, of course. Since football's very inception, spoiling tactics have been employed against the greatest exponents of 'The Beautiful Game' (see Pele's Brazil being literally kicked out of the 1966 World Cup). It's nearly 50 years since Danny Blanchflower famously stated, "The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot – not waiting for them to die of boredom." And yet those words still resonate today.

Granted, much has been done in the modern era to improve the game as a spectacle. For those unfortunate enough to remember Italia 90, just think of how far we've come since then. The tournament was so dour, so defensive, that FIFA literally had to change the rules in the years that followed, outlawing the back-pass rule to alleviate the tedium caused by the ultimate 'out-ball', and clamping down on challenges from behind in order to protect flair players.

As Motta pointed out, though, it's high time that similarly drastic action was taken to eradicate time-wasting and simulation, which remain important tools for the most pathetic practitioners of anti-football.

Advertisement(C)Getty Images'The dark arts'

It is often argued that there is no right way to play football – but there is most definitely a wrong way. While previewing last season's Champions League final, pundit Jamie Carragher said while he wasn't advocating that Inter use "the dark arts" in Istanbul, he did feel that it might be their only chance of sufficiently upsetting Manchester City to put them off their game.

In the end, of course, Inter didn't need to resort to such gamesmanship. They carried out Simone Inzaghi's disciplined game-plan to near perfection, nullifying the threat posed by Erling Haaland & Co. until Rodri, of all people, broke the deadlock after being teed up by a fortuitous deflection. Thereafter, Inter dominated and would have deservedly forced extra-time – and maybe even won the game – had it not been for their misfiring forwards.

Consequently, the Nerazzurri received plenty of praise for their performance – and rightly so, because there was certainly no shame in applying a counter-attacking approach against such an overwhelming underdog. What is unforgivable, though, is an elite club or coach having negativity as their default setting.

Getty'Maradona showed them how much beauty there is'

When Napoli played Juventus midway through last season, long before a first Scudetto in 33 years became a formality, Luciano Spalletti pointed out the game at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona represented a classic contrast of styles, "two different philosophies" that epitomised the struggle between the purists and the pragmatists for control of the term 'good football'.

For Massimiliano Allegri, 'good football' is winning football. Aesthetic considerations simply don't enter into the equation. In that sense, he is the perfect coach for the grand Old Lady of the Italian game. As Spalletti said, "Allegri espouses the Juventus' motto: 'Winning is the only thing that matters.'

"However, here, in Naples, it's all heart and soul. There was Maradona, the people saw him play, and when he won, he showed them how much beauty there is in football and we can't help but take some of that beauty with us and remember that football, hoping to reproduce it."

And they realised that objective, that dream, in the most glorious possible fashion, by not only winning the Serie A title but doing so with a brand of football that made them revered around the world. Despite losing one club legend after another last summer and replacing them with bargain buys, Spalletti managed to remind everyone that it is still possible for smaller clubs to both win – and entertain – on the most uneven of economic playing fields. And he wasn't alone in that regard.

(C)Getty ImagesDe Zerbi silence his critics

In the Premier League, Roberto De Zerbi was met with the same kind of scepticism that Arsene Wenger encountered in England more than 25 years ago, and yet led Brighton into UEFA competition for the first time in the club's history – and with a sublime style of play that even had Pep Guardiola purring.

De Zerbi reportedly declined the chance to speak seriously to Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis about succeeding Spalletti as coach at the Maradona because he sincerely believes that he can get Brighton into the Champions League. And why shouldn't he?

The Seagulls have already lost Alexis Mac Allister this summer and Moises Caicedo could follow his fellow South American out the door at the Amex, but given they boast an excellent team and an outstanding coach, Brighton really could prove England's answer to Atalanta, who qualified for the Champions League for three years in a row under Gian Piero Gasperini, even reaching the quarter-finals in 2020.

It was the Bergamaschi, remember, who helped put Andrea Agnelli's nose so out of joint that he redoubled his efforts to introduce a Super League. Atalanta provided proof that even a provincial club could beat the big boys if they recruited sensibly and had a clearly defined footballing philosophy.

Just as the likes of Spalletti, De Zerbi, Freiburg's Christian Streich and Union Berlin's Urs Fischer are dismantling the idea that the only way to compete in this money-saturated modern era is to play defensive, counter-attacking football.