Hearts And Minds

"In the past, the football of results tended to refer to a physical or cynical style but the recent success of Spain awoke a new realisation: technically excellent football could be dull. In decades to come, as the specifics of their triumphs fade into the yellowed pages of history, how will Spain’s era of tiki-taka dominance be remembered?"

In Episode Fifty Seven we bring you 'Hearts and Minds' by Greg Johnson, first published in Issue Thirteen ahead of the 2014 World Cup.

Drawing parallels between Spain's somewhat sterile dominance of major tournaments around the turn of the first decade of the 21st century with Lennox Lewis's spell at the top of heavyweight boxing's tree, he asks whether Vicente del Bosque's all-conquering side, like Lewis, the last undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, run the risk of going down in history as unloved champions.

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