Betis won 1-3 in Girona with an exhibition of football on International Day of Creativity and Innovation. The celebration of that day dates back to 2001, when Canadian Marci Segal established a day in favor of creativity in … Toronto, motivated by the conviction that the Canadians experienced a “crisis of creativity.” In some locations in Spain, such as the rest of the world, on April 21, artistic expression workshops are held and companies organize innovation competitions to devise a new product. The socceros gathered in front of the screen or went to the Montilivi stadium to see how creativity is embodied in plays drawn on the grass.
Betis was a perfect condemn of forcefulness and inventiveness, in front of a disconnected Girona. The Verdiblanca squad suffocated its opposite based on high pressure, intensity and speed. And, once with the ball, Betis is deadly if his best players have the day. Unlike other coaches, Pellegrini does not manage their most creative players. That Antony sits at ease since he arrived, has to do with both the football that Betis practices, and with what the club and the fans ask his players. The Brazilian danced with the ball, as he likes in Sao Paulo … and in Seville. He went crazy to his markers, adorned with “Arabesques” when he wanted and kicked masterfully, with the interior, a dog center. Isco, his magic partner, also became decisive again: he took out the corner that Johnny brilliantly finished off, moved throughout the field, lucidly directed the most dangerous attacks of his team and, on top of that, he scored the third goal of an accurate header. They should declare “Spanish artistic heritage.”
With Antony and Isco, beticism dreams of playing the Champions League next year. To the south of Despeñaperros, the taste for players with imagination comes from old. Already in the 10s and 20th of the last century, the most admired soccer players were the ones who put the self -confidence and bargain for the brute force and order. The so -called “Sevillian School”, to which both Sevillist and Betic soccer players contributed, was not only based on the touch of filigree and rapid associations between players, but on trying to take the cat to the water in front of the adversary based on unimaginable plays, which are not in the script. That is exactly what Antony or Isco tries again and again, which was allowed, even, some pipe or “cachita”, as it was said in my time.
“Different players are in extinction,” says Álvaro Benito. Juanma Lillo always tells me that what abounds are the “fish farm players: all the same, standardized.” For Guardiola’s assistant at the City, today’s football is affected by “Dostocismo”: the player has automated that the whole game goes through controlling the ball and passing it to the partner. Almost no one assumes the value of breaking with the model and improvising according to each moment, because sometimes it is better to play a touch and others, such as Isco, conduct the ball. The good players, according to Lillo, are the ones who know when you have to give a touch, three, seven or finish first, as Antony did to send the ball to the network.
Some of my university colleagues regret that people do not go to the theater, to the opera or dance shows, where they could enjoy the product of creativity: art in motion. The same is that they prefer to live it in a football stadium. The Betics present in Montilivi sang the happy birthday, for their 33 years, and recognized Antony with applause for their artistic deployment, the same day that the most football and original Pope left us. April 21: Creativity Day.
