The art of showboating: ‘People sometimes see it as a slur – it's expressing yourself'

New York Times

5 hours ago

'If I had been in that position, I would have sawed them off below the knees. You just shouldn't do that.'
It was a passage of play that featured no-look passes, a backheeled volley, and a game of keep-ball that turned a Champions League match into 'a kind of rondo'.
Peter Bosz was furious. Furious with his own PSV players.
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'I thought it was terrible. I'm really annoyed,' he said.
Back in January, PSV were facing a callow Liverpool side who were down to 10 men and trailing 3-2 in the closing minutes. Against the better judgment of Bosz, the PSV players had decided to showboat.
'I don't think it's respectful to the opponent,' Bosz said. 'I think we would have entertained the crowd before without all that craziness.'
A couple of months later, in South America, Corinthians were beating Palmeiras 1-0 on aggregate in the second leg of the Sao Paulo state championship final. As the clock ran down, Memphis Depay stood with both feet on top of the ball.
Andrei Kanchelskis once did something similar for Rangers in a Scottish Cup semi-final against Ayr United, when the Russian also brought one hand up to his forehead as if he was looking out to sea (it turns out he was trying to locate Billy Dodds, the scorer of the goal he was about about to set up).
⚽️ GOAL OF THE DAY: Billy Dodds v Ayr United
🕰️ On this day in 2000, a memorable moment from Kanchelskis in a 7-0 victory at Hampden Park. pic.twitter.com/xymGzb7Uud
— Rangers Football Club (@RangersFC) April 8, 2020
Depay, in contrast, was only interested in timewasting — and in a way that was provocative in the eyes of the Palmeiras players. A brawl and two red cards followed. So did a rule change.
The Brazil Football Federation (CBF) announced that a player should be shown a yellow card if they stand on the ball with both feet, fuelling a wider debate about the changing face of jogo bonito — the beautiful game in Portuguese, and a term widely used as a nickname for football — and whether individuality on the pitch is becoming a thing of the past.
Denilson, the former Brazil international who became the world's most expensive footballer in 1998, expressed his annoyance on Instagram. 'People ask me, 'Denilson, why don't we see players with personality, like there used to be?' Here's the answer — one more thing to take the fun out of our football.'
There is a 'love it or hate it' element to showboating (Pep Guardiola feels the same way as Bosz, judging by the way he once publicly rebuked Raheem Sterling for a flurry of stepovers late on in a victory over Manchester United), but a debate about the rights and wrongs isn't so black and white.
Wasn't Ronaldinho just being Ronaldinho when he was showboating?
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Indeed, a trick that is regarded as excessively flamboyant and even disrespectful in the eyes of one player, may be seen as a go-to skill for another, whether that's Kerlon performing his seal dribble, Ricardo Quaresma's obsession with the rabona or, as was the case in the Copa del Rey final a decade ago, Neymar extravagantly lifting the ball over a defender's head with a rainbow flick that enraged Athletic Club.
'It was an act with no elegance or sportsmanship,' Andoni Iraola, the Athletic captain at the time and now the Bournemouth manager, told Telecinco.
Neymar shrugged in response. 'It's a way of dribbling past an opponent like any other. You can't get angry because it's my style of play, I've been doing that for years.'
Perhaps the timing of Neymar's showboating didn't help. Barcelona were leading 3-1 and less than five minutes remained.
Jamie Carragher says the scoreline, or the 'game state', plays a big part in how acts of showboating are perceived.
'Most players wouldn't take the p*** or do something that risks the result because they know they'd get in trouble with their own players or manager,' the former Liverpool defender says. 'But when they know the result is taken out of the equation, and that the game's essentially won, that's when they probably feel it's OK. But then you're basically p****** off the opposition manager and players, and there's a chance of you getting a proper injury.'
Cue that moment at the City Ground three years ago when Tottenham Hotspur were beating Nottingham Forest 2-0 with less than 10 minutes remaining and Richarlison started to do keepie-uppies. It was red rag to a bull for the Forest team. Brennan Johnson, now a team-mate of Richarlison at Spurs but a Forest player at the time, cleaned the Brazilian out.
'That's what you get for showboating at this level,' Martin Tyler, the Sky Sports commentator, said.
"If you did what Richie did as a kid somebody would give you a whack!" 😅
Ange Postecoglou on the clash between Brennan Johnson and Richarlison in Forest vs Spurs last season 👀 pic.twitter.com/KNwnPyZOWo
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 15, 2023
Carragher, who was working alongside Tyler that day, didn't condone Johnson's challenge, but it was clear during his summarising that he had little sympathy for Richarlison, largely because his actions served no purpose other than to 'wind people up'.
That's nearly always the case with ball-juggling (Frank Worthington's extraordinary goal of the season for Bolton Wanderers in 1979 is an obvious exception) because it's hard to see it as anything other than mocking the opposition.
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In 1999, all hell broke loose in a game between Corinthians and Palmeiras (yes, those two again) that ended up being abandoned after Edilson, with his team 5-2 up on aggregate, rolled a ball down the back of his neck. Edilson was kicked, chased down the tunnel by the Palmeiras players and subsequently dropped from Brazil's Copa America squad.
But what about showboating that does serve a purpose in the closing stages of a game that's already won — is that different?
Carragher nods. 'If someone's using their ability to create a goal, or to get out of a tight situation, or to keep possession… one of the greatest pieces of skill is the Brazilian in the 1970 World Cup final who does that stepover before possibly the best goal of all time. I've always looked at that and thought, 'Wow'. I've never looked at it as taking the p***.'
He is talking about Clodoaldo (below) dribbling around four Italy players inside his own half in the build-up to Carlos Alberto scoring his iconic goal.
Did Clodoaldo need to do what he did before passing the ball 10 yards to Rivellino? No. Was it a joy to watch? You bet.
At the other end of the scale is an incident that took place 14 years ago in Carson, California.
'Mario Balotelli, he's getting booed for this,' the commentator JP Dellacamera said. 'That's a bit disrespectful, I believe, to the LA Galaxy.'
'A bit?' replied Taylor Twellman, the summariser.
Manchester City's Balotelli was clean through on goal in a 2011 pre-season friendly against LA Galaxy when he decided, ludicrously, to turn 180 degrees to try to score with a backheel flick. His shot (if you can call it a shot) went wide and some of the City players openly remonstrated with Balotelli. As for their manager Roberto Mancini, he was so incensed that he substituted Balotelli immediately, with only 30 minutes gone.
On this day in 2011, Mario Balotelli tried this vs. LA Galaxy.
His manager was not impressed.
(via @MLS) pic.twitter.com/Nhr8nF5G9k
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) July 24, 2020
More recently, there was that bizarre moment at Old Trafford when Manchester United were playing against Sheriff Tiraspol in the Europa League and Antony, their Brazilian winger, turned into a one-man circus act. With nobody close to him, Antony performed a 720-degree spin with the ball at his feet — before passing it straight out of play.
'I like to see skill and entertainment,' Paul Scholes, the former United midfielder, said in his punditry role for BT Sport. 'But I'm not sure that is skill or entertainment — it's just being a clown.'
Mark Warburton called Nathan Oduwa into his office. He had no intention of rollicking the 19-year-old or telling him that he could never do it again, but he knew that he had to speak to the teenager to find out what was going through his mind at the time and also to explain why some people reacted in the way that they did.
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A couple of days earlier, Oduwa had come on as a substitute for Rangers in a Scottish Championship game at Alloa Athletic, where they were leading 4-1. It was 5-1 by the time that Oduwa, who was on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, decided to channel his inner Neymar. Oduwa produced a rainbow flick, and the Rangers fans loved it. The Alloa players? Not so much.
'I felt as if he was trying to take the p***,' Colin Hamilton, the Alloa defender, said. 'What was there, a minute to go? Was there really any need for it?'
The Scottish media had a field day. Rangers were a huge club playing in the second tier. Alloa were part-time, and Hamilton's comments about Oduwa fanned the flames.
Rangers manager Warburton dealt with it in a rational way. 'I spoke to Nathan. I said to him, 'We're winning the game, this is Rangers, and that means it's a cup final for the opposition, so understand the reaction. They're at home, they're getting beaten, everyone's there watching, you come on as a young Tottenham boy and you're doing a rainbow flick'.
'I said, 'I love the fact you've got the courage to try something, I love the fact you go out and entertain the fans. If you're doing it for a purpose and it comes off and we create something from it, great. If you try it for a reason and it doesn't come off, I understand. But make sure there's a purpose to what you're doing. The moment you disrespect an opponent, then there's a different tone to the conversation'.
'And he said, 'I was genuinely trying to beat the guy. It's what I would do in training'.'
Occasionally, a player will realise that they've overstepped the mark with their showboating. In 2005, Wycombe Wanderers' Nathan Tyson got down on all fours to head a ball over the line after the Wrexham goalkeeper had misjudged the bounce. Watched by several Premier League scouts at the time, Tyson instantly regretted his actions and feared he would, in his words, come across as a 'cocky nugget'.
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'I don't know what came over me,' he said. 'It was so pub-football-like. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper. He was a young lad, and I never meant to rub his nose in it. It was just intended as a bit of fun, and I would never do it again.'
Kerlon's seal dribble, which involved him running along with the ball balanced on his forehead, was anything but a one-off. It was a move that he had perfected at a young age in Brazil through hours and hours of training with his father, and almost impossible to stop him once that ball was bobbing up and down on his brow. But it was not, Kerlon says, a party trick that he pulled out just for the sake of it.
'I think it was a solution I had available to me, a way of getting out of a tricky situation,' he told The Athletic last year. 'I never walked out onto the field planning to do it. It was just something that would happen naturally.'
Kerlon ran into problems — literally. He was kicked, tripped and, in the Belo Horizonte derby in September 2007, hit with such force and so crudely by the Atletico Mineiro full-back Coelho, that he was fortunate not to suffer a serious injury.
The fallout in the days and weeks that followed was evidence of how divisive showboating, or a piece of unique individual skill, can be — even in a country with Brazil's football history.
'If I was in Coelho's shoes, I would have clattered Kerlon,' Luiz Alberto, the captain of rival club Fluminense, said. 'It's disrespectful to his opponents. They are professionals too. I would find some way to get the ball from him. I would use capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art) moves if I had to. I would take the ball, his head and everything else.'
Others, including the future Brazil manager Dorival Junior, Atletico midfielder Maicosuel ('You have to have ability to do that') and readers of Placar magazine, came out in support of Kerlon.
'It brings people to the stadium in the same way Garrincha's feints once did,' Cassio Mauricio wrote in a letter that was published.
'People sometimes see it as a slur,' Lee Trundle says, sounding mildly annoyed. 'Football, especially now, is played in a way where everything's possession. And, for me, it's boring. For me, showboating is expressing yourself as a player. So I don't see it as a bad thing.
'When I did the one where I rolled it around my shoulders and Peter Jackson (the opposition manager who was in charge of Huddersfield Town at the time) said, 'He's disrespecting players'… well, how are you disrespecting a player? If you do a two-footed tackle on someone, no one will come out and say, 'He's disrespected that player'. For me, that's worse than rolling the ball around your shoulders or nutmegging someone.'
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Trundle never played in the Premier League. He spent the majority of his career in the lower leagues of English football with Wrexham and Swansea City. For a period in the 2000s, though, he was known as the 'Showboat King' in the UK, certainly on the hugely popular television show Soccer AM, where his flicks and tricks and outrageous goals gained him a cult following that continues to this day.
We can't ignore the ballers of the #EFL 😤
Take it away Lee Trundle 🔥 #EFLMen pic.twitter.com/htbIrEZIMd
— Sky Bet (@SkyBet) September 11, 2024
Trundle is still playing semi-professionally in Wales at the age of 48 and scoring jaw-dropping goals. Last week, he was taking part in the Baller League in front of Will Smith.
'I like to express myself and I like to have fun on the pitch,' Trundle says, smiling.
Aside from the broken nose that he suffered in a six-a-side game as a 17-year-old after putting the ball through the legs of a player who had threatened to punch him if he nutmegged him again (Trundle, being Trundle, also said 'Shut them' as the ball disappeared one side and came out the other), he was never on the receiving end of any physical retribution in a proper match for his showboating.
'On a professional pitch, players will say stuff, but when are they ever going to do it?' Trundle adds.
Indeed, the reaction of players and fans to showboating is, to an extent, a reflection of the football culture in that country. Xavi, for example, made some interesting remarks about his former Barcelona team-mate Neymar's rainbow flick against Athletic Club after he had moved to the Qatari club Al Sadd.
'Those things in Brazil are accepted, but not so much (in Spain),' Xavi told Sport. 'He (Neymar) should reflect on it because he's an extraordinary guy, a hard worker and humble. But he has this Brazilian trait, which sees such things as part of the show. (In Spain), it looks like a lack of respect.'
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Warburton, who is currently the sporting director and head of soccer for Sporting Club Jacksonville in the United Soccer League, nods in agreement. 'That's a major point (about the culture),' he says. 'One of the reasons I responded so quickly to your message (asking to talk about Oduwa and showboating) is that over here, in the States, people see something like that as being magical.
'I watched a game the other day where the team were defending a goal and the defender cleared it with an overhead kick, like a scissor kick, and the crowd went nuts. They were really like, 'Wow!', and they applauded it. It's a different audience.'
In truth, most football supporters around the world enjoy a bit of showboating and all the more so if the main protagonist is playing for our team.
Celtic fans still talk about the day Lubomir Moravcik controlled a ball with his backside against Heart of Midlothian, while Newcastle United supporters of a certain age will always smile when they think about Kenny Wharton sitting on the ball against Luton Town to get his own back for the humiliation they had suffered in a 4-0 defeat at Kenilworth Road earlier in the season.
Go back a bit further to 1972 and Don Revie's Leeds United were playing exhibition football against Southampton, in much the same way as PSV did against Liverpool more than fifty years later. 'It's almost cruel,' Barry Davies, the BBC commentator, famously said as Johnny Giles produced a rabona in the middle of a 39-pass sequence.
On This Day 1972 #lufc'To say that Leeds are playing with Southampton is the understatement of the season''Oh look at that, it's almost Cruel!'Barry Davies great commentary on the great Leeds United.#lufc #lufc100 ⁦@LUFC⁩ ⁦@TheSquareBall⁩ pic.twitter.com/uCNjdQ0uuV
— LEEDS UNITED MEMORIES (@LUFCHistory) March 4, 2020
Showboating, in other words, has been around for a long time, and it's hard to escape the feeling that the good outweighs the bad, especially in an era when football increasingly looks the same.
'You don't want to kill that entertainment value,' Warburton adds. 'If the kids see a trick, buy into that skill, go and get a football and start copying it, that can't be a bad thing. We want players to be brave and to try things with a ball.'
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen; Ana Maria Ortero / AP Photo, Anthony Wallace / Getty, Sebastian Frej / Getty)