Spain prove it's not always the size that counts

We know the way that modern sport is going and it is to the gargantuan. Even so it is a little disheartening to hear it from Wenger, a man who is widely considered the defender of the faith where purist principles are concerned. If even Arsenal have an insistence on a standard physique, which supersedes indulging a compelling talent such as Modric, what price those at the bottom end of the Premier League, who seek only to survive? This is not just an issue for Stoke City, either. Fabio Capello, the England manager, will talk up a player as limited as Luca Toni, the Italy striker, who snatched at a series of good chances against France in the European Championship group stage, and went home without a goal in four matches, while it would appear that Michael Owen, a superior goalscorer in every way, is disdained. Owen cannot lead the line and therefore cannot be easily slotted into the modern way of playing with a lone striker, who holds the ball up while the midfield joins at a charge. If that striker can play a bit, like Fernando Torres or Didier Drogba, so much the better.

In every area of the pitch, the game is super-sizing. Seeing the diminutive Paul Parker, the former England full back, on punditry duty at Old Trafford these days is a reminder that, despite his aptitude for the job, he would get nowhere near a leading Premier League team now. A defender of his stature might not even come through the ranks. Iván Córdoba, the brilliant Colombian man-marker who was keeping Liverpool at bay on his own until his unfortunate injury at Anfield playing for Inter Milan last season, is a dying breed at 172cm (just over 5ft 7in). When Liverpool played Arsenal in the next round of the Champions League, Rafael Benítez's tactic was to put Peter Crouch against Kolo Touré, the Arsenal defender, playing in an unfamiliar role at full back.

Despite his customary position at the heart of the defence, Touré is not particularly tall (the Sky Sports Football Yearbook 2007-08, with statistics supplied by the club, gives his height as 5ft 10in) and Liverpool's ploy worked. Crouch won everything in the air and helped Liverpool to establish a 2-1 lead, finally winning 4-2. With the exception of Manchester United, no elite club in England fights shy of using direct tactics and a height advantage, and that includes Arsenal. These days Wenger often talks with great enthusiasm of being able to play route-one football now that Emmanuel Adebayor, not Thierry Henry, is the spearhead of his team. To him it is new and thus exciting.

Luiz Felipe Scolari went so far as to read out the individual heights of the Germany side before Portugal met them in the European Championship quarter-final in Basle. He said that he would have to find a way of combating Portugal's disadvantage, but to judge by the result, and the two headed goals from set-pieces taken by Bastian Schweinsteiger, he failed. Football is susceptible to the vagaries of fashion (at Euro 2008 it was 4-2-3-1, which has replaced 4-5-1 and previously 4-3-3 as the formation du jour, even if the eventual champions started all but one game playing 4-4-2), and every movement over the past decade has favoured the tall, the muscular and the athletic. First the No10 died, now the old-fashioned goalscoring No9 is on life support, and Cristiano Ronaldo, regarded as the best winger in the world, is a 6ft 1in super-middleweight, who is as likely to get a goal with his head as skin two opponents over by the corner flag.

Yet against all this, there is one contrary development that, if it is taken seriously, may just save football from this attack of the Goliaths. Spain are the champions of Europe and they are not tall. Indeed, by comparison to most modern football teams, the midfield would have been more suitably marshalled by Ken Dodd than Luis Aragonés. The official Uefa register gives three of them, Andrés Iniesta, David Silva and Xavi Hernández, the player of the tournament, as 170cm, which converts to a fraction under 5ft 7in, while even the enforcer, Marcos Senna, is only 177cm, which is the top end of 5ft 9in. By any reading of the modern game, they should have been outmuscled long before the final and, using Scolari's assessment, should have had no chance against Germany. So how will football configure its beliefs in physique and athleticism with the best team in Europe having been powered by a midfield that should have been knocked into the ground like tent pegs at the Ernst Happel Stadion?

Hallelujah. Skill, it turns out, matters more than anything. Torres is a powerful striker, but it was his technique that allowed him to lift the ball over Jens Lehmann for Spain's winning goal; just as it was a sublime pass by Xavi that got him into that position. And as we head down the wrong road once more in this country - because everybody knows a terrific kid who has been released by an academy for not growing fast enough - it may be worth noting what can be achieved with footballers, not just athletes, and recalling what happens when Frankenstein's monsters get loose.

At the 1986 World Cup, Uruguay were coached by Omar Borrás, a former PE teacher from the University of Montevideo, with individual ideas on the way football should be played. Indeed, looking at the way the game has developed, Borrás was something of an innovator. His Uruguay players were a certain height and build, minimum 5ft 10in, physically intimidating and had won the Copa America in 1983 by imposing their game on the opposition and because, in Enzo Francescoli, they also had one of the finest players in the world.

As such, they became something of a clever-money bet in Mexico; and clever-money bets are the reason you never see a poor bookmaker. The 1986 tournament comprised 24 teams, going into 16 at the later stages (the stupid format that is soon to be implemented by Uefa with the aim of ruining the European Championship), so Uruguay made it out of their group without winning a game (can you believe Uefa are going to do this?), despite losing 6-1 to Denmark (they really must have sawdust for brains) because two points were all that were needed (just when you thought the regime of Michel Platini, the president, could not get any worse), and were then knocked out by Argentina in the second phase.

However, despite playing four games, winning none, with a goal difference of minus six, Uruguay's contribution is not forgotten, mainly for its malevolence. They had ten men booked and two sent off, including José Alberto Batista, whose dismissal after 56 seconds against Scotland stands as a World Cup record. In addition, Borrás was sent to the stands for being unable to control himself, let alone his violent and foul-tempered players. “Uruguay were a disgrace,” Alex Ferguson, the Scotland manager at the time, said. Meanwhile, as Borrás's giants packed their bags, cursing, the tournament came to be dominated by a forward from Argentina. Little guy, bags of skill. You may remember him. Diego Maradona.

原文地址：http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/martin_samuel/article4251085.ece