Once a year, those upstanding guardians of the English language -- the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary -- produce a short list of “new” words they have deemed worthy of entrance into their grand tome.
The words in question tend to be a mix of odious portmanteaus, modern slang, political catch phrases and nouns used as verbs; the last few years have brought us “selfie,” “showrooming,” “squeezed middle” and “to medal.” If that last one represents a depressing low point, there are some welcome additions: 2012 brought us “omnishambles.”
There are some baffling omissions, and some of the words they add tend not to last -- I can’t recall ever using the term “tweetup” in conversation, but that was on the list in 2009. However, others do; it is through this process that words like “bling” and “staycation” entered common parlance.
This process exists in football, too, this annual enrichment of the game’s lexicon. Before 2012, for example, very few people were using the term “false nine.” The concept had existed for a while, of course -- Luciano Spalletti was experimenting with a strikerless formation as early as 2007 -- and so, too, had the phrase, but it was in 2012 that its usage became widespread. Now everyone knows what a false nine is, not just tactics enthusiasts or the achingly trendy.
There are countless other examples. Nobody had any idea what a “Makelele role” was before 2003; a year later, every single team in the world had someone fulfilling it. Claudio Ranieri introduced us to the concept of “squad rotation” in 2002; Rafael Benitez ensured that everyone knew “zonal marking” in 2005. Jose Mourinho coined “parking the bus” in his first spell in the Premier League. “Tiki-taka” reached its peak in 2009.
You will notice something about all of these phrases: These ideas had all existed for a long time. Claude Makelele was not the first defensive midfielder; Ranieri was not the only manager ever who thought about resting his players. Jacques Santini, who sent out an ultra-defensive Tottenham at Chelsea in September 2004 to trigger Mourinho’s outburst, was not the first coach who went to a game with the aim of keeping a clean sheet. Football, though, is a goldfish: it has a short memory, and it swims around in circles. A lot of new ideas are just old ones repackaged under new names.
This year has been no different. There are words -- if not ideas -- that have come into widespread usage in 2013-14 that have changed the way we talk about the game. These are the ones that stand the best chance of enduring the test of time.
“Philosophy” (noun)
There is no question that this has been the word of the year. Every manager, every club now needs a philosophy -- a term that is essentially interchangeable with “vision” -- of how they play and how they operate.
The concept has existed for a long time: Barcelona, Ajax, Liverpool, Everton, Athletic Bilbao, West Ham, Manchester United and many others have all had philosophies of one sort or another for years. In recent years, though, it has been popularised, and the term brought into common usage, by the likes of Swansea and Southampton.
The extent to which it has caught on became clear at Norwich on the final day of the season. As they announced their youth teams’ various players of the year, one boy -- no older than nine or 10 -- was described as having been schooled in the “Norwich Way.” If you don’t have a way now, you’ve got a problem.
“Coach” (noun)
English football has long possessed a cult of the manager, the omniscient visionary, the leader of men, all stern gazes and inspirational phrases. It has also long suspected that coaches are mainly for laying out cones: it is telling that, as far back as the 1950s, technical coaches were complaining that English football only wanted trainers -- men who could keep the players fit, not hone their skills.
That has started to change this year. The success Brendan Rodgers, Mauricio Pochettino, Roberto Martinez, Gustavo Poyet and Tony Pulis have had with relatively limited resources has served as a reminder that coaching -- like scouting, like tactical knowledge -- can improve your chances of success. All of those managers work in very different ways. Some concentrate on individual improvement, while others, like Pulis, work relentlessly on team shape -- but they are all coaches first and managers second.
This has had a secondary effect. There is an old adage in football that players win games and managers lose them, but that is starting to change now. This has been a season defined and determined by managers. They are starting to get some of the credit they deserve.
“Legitimate space tale” (noun)
A term used to defend a strange, inappropriate fable used as a motivational tool in a dressing room during a vital international match.
“Narrative” (noun)
Not a term used by football people particularly, but one that has appeared with ever-increasing frequency in the media in the last two years. It is now so commonly used that it must be on the border of being a cliche but survives because it fits so perfectly the way football is covered. Each game is essentially a series of hundreds of random events, each of them governed in some substantial way by luck; to make sense of it, we must try to tie them together with something. That is where narrative comes in.
“Game management” (noun)
A long-term favourite term of foreign managers -- Benitez and Arsene Wenger both bang on about it constantly -- the phrase has now been picked up by English managers. It is simply a corporate-jargon version of “controlling the game,” which has essentially been the point of football for 150 years. There is one difference, though: game management can also be used as an excuse for being defensive. You are not lacking ambition; you are simply managing the game.
The Beatles (noun)
Popular music group who -- if you judge by Tottenham’s summer signings -- were not nearly as good as Elvis (Gareth Bale).
“The Pirlo role” (noun)
Perhaps the best illustration of how English football has changed in the last decade lies in the difference between the “Makelele role” and the “Pirlo role.” Both refer to deep-lying defensive midfield positions; one, though, focuses on destruction, and the other on creation. The former is now almost completely extinct; the latter is short-shorts trendy.
That, in part, can be attributed by the rule changes that have influenced football so much in the last 10 years. Tackling is now -- to some extent -- almost completely forbidden, so having a player whose job is almost purely to remove the ball forcibly from opponents is illogical. (That was not how Makelele played the “Makelele role,” of course; he was a player of considerably more grace and intelligence. But it is how the role was widely interpreted by lesser footballers, lesser coaches.)
Instead, far better to use that deeper position to try to imitate what Andrea Pirlo does for Juventus and Italy: building the play, dictating rhythm. Steven Gerrard has reinvented himself successfully in that position for Liverpool, just as Paul Scholes did for Manchester United. Expect others to go the same way.
“Push away with my head” (verb)
An entirely innocent and in no way violent or irresponsible act in which a Premier League manager tries to force something or someone away from you without using his hands, like some sort of building site labourer.