We must all have experienced this at school. An English teacher plucks a sentence from a poem by a long-dead Briton and extracts hidden meanings from it: the ‘blue curtain’, for example, symbolizes the poet’s deep-seated grief.
But overthinking is almost an intrinsic human trait. If everyone operated strictly within the limits of their original thoughts, we would all still be living in caves.
Like everything else in the world, modern football is inundated with an incessant stream of analysis.
It’s almost as if a new football term is born every day, defining the roles or actions of players, or the formation or identity of a team. A few weeks removed from this rapidly evolving analytical ecosystem can leave a follower feeling clueless and out of touch.
It is human nature to look for patterns and isolate causal effects to explain how things work. But has it reached the point of infinite reflection, where we have ultimately read too much into too little?
During the 2026 FIFA World Cup, we have seen teams and coaches reiterate that football is not as complicated as it is made out to be.
Defending champion Argentina’s coach Lionel Scaloni gave a fairly simple explanation of how his team functions.
«We have the players. That’s the reality. I put the players there, I tell them three or four things, how we can attack, and that’s it, that’s the reality,» Scaloni said after Argentina’s stormy comeback against Egypt in the round of 16.
«We try with the coaching staff to ensure that the team flows because they know how to play well, but the ones who play are them; that is the reality. It is more than clear,» he added.
Frankly, Scaloni can afford to be so straightforward. After all, his team features Lionel Messi, a player who continues to wield the unparalleled ability to unlock games at will.
Throughout this World Cup, the Argentine playbook has been to get the ball to Messi in the right places and at the right times and watch, or rather hope, as he creates goals or scoring opportunities.
But it is not just Argentina that operates in a jargon-free reality. Many of the successful tactical adjustments at this World Cup involved subtle adjustments.
Powered by Kylian Mbappé and Michael Olise, France have scored fourteen goals at this World Cup so far. | Photo credit: AP
Powered by Kylian Mbappé and Michael Olise, France have scored fourteen goals at this World Cup so far. | Photo credit: AP
France’s much-discussed attacking front four only came into action after coach Didier Deschamps moved Kylian Mbappe into a free-running role and pushed Michael Olise into central areas.
Olise shifted from the right to the field halfway through France’s first match against Senegal. He has been compelling ever since and has five assists to his name in the tournament so far.
«I made the switch today because I thought it would help us connect better. He can play on both sides, but the more he gets on the ball the better,» Deschamps explained after the win over Senegal.
What makes the French system work is the sheer unpredictability of its attackers. France’s attacking game has defied a unique design and morphed into different shapes to suit its opponents. It’s not the result of pointed arrows drawn on a tablet, but rather comes from putting ridiculously talented players in optimal positions.
You could also argue that teams and coaches avoid sophisticated technical details because there is a real chance that they will fly right over the average football player’s head.
Look no further than Uruguay and Marcelo Bielsa. The veteran coach was forced to reduce his team talks to ten minutes so as not to overload the players. Even that proved too much for some.
«I was told that to adapt to the younger generations I had to make the conversations shorter and spread them out over several days so I wouldn’t overload the players’ attention spans. I did that… until they asked me to stop,» Bielsa said after Uruguay’s shock group stage exit.
READ ALSO | France’s ambition faces its biggest test yet from old rival Morocco
Even if a team is blessed with players who can absorb complex information, the reality of match situations continues to fluctuate constantly.
Often teams enter games with well-laid game plans. But inevitably they all seem to converge in raw football logic at crucial moments.
Throughout the group stage and round of 32, Mexico distinguished themselves with their silky smooth passing football on the ground. But when it needed a goal in the final 30 minutes, even against 10-man England in the last 16, Mexico panicked and did what teams have done for ages: packed the penalty area with more bodies and fired crosses from deep.
England head coach Thomas Tuchel’s response was equally traditional: send his tallest defenders (read Dan Burn) and ask them to head those crosses as far away as possible. Thirty minutes of pinball later, England had the victory and a place in the quarter-finals. Simple.
Football can be simple after all. Maybe the curtain is blue because it is blue.
Published on July 9, 2026
