Keep-ball is not football as we know it but the traditional English virtues are no longer enough, or even relevant, in virtually a non-contact sport
The drive and passion of Manchester United's Roy Keane, pictured tangling with Edgar Davids of Juventus in the 1999 Champions League semi-final, would have made little difference against Barcelona. Photograph: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images
One of the few things more nauseating than hearing Sepp Blatter prattle on about the Fifa family was having him constantly describe England as the mother country, usually with the faint suggestion that parental duties would only be properly performed when the unruly child ended up at a Swiss finishing school.
There will be much less of that sort of patronising talk from now on. The events of the past couple of weeks have left this scepter'd isle recast as the new Millwall. In Fifa terms, no one likes us and we don't care. Who wants a World Cup anyway? Football in this country hardly needs its profile raising.
Yet it is a mistake to imagine that World Cups are the only gifts Fifa have to bestow, and that apart from the need to worry about increasingly over-the-top blowouts every four years in ever more unsuitable locations English football can just shrug and carry on as normal. Fifa are also in overall control of refereeing, for instance, literally in charge of the way the game is played, and the more one studies the evidence from last week's Champions League final the more it becomes clear that English football is in danger of becoming isolated on the pitch as well as in the corridors of power.
Sir Bobby Charlton, along with several others in good positions to judge, observed after Manchester United's Wembley defeat that the effect of two decades of Fifa refereeing directives has been to turn football into virtually a non-contact sport. Take the physicality out of the game, he reasoned, and English teams are immediately put at a disadvantage.
This is not to suggest successful English teams of the past have necessarily been cheats, thugs or bruisers who have bludgeoned their way to the top prizes, just to acknowledge that strength, pace and a certain robustness have always been traditional English virtues. Think of Roy Keane in Turin in 1999, for example. His drive and passion carried United through, but he was falling foul of officials to the extent of having to miss the final through suspension. Few imagine even Keane in his pomp would have made much difference to United against Barcelona. He would either have seen just as little of the ball or been repeatedly penalised for trying to win it.
While Barcelona may well be the best club side the game has seen, it is important to understand that if they are impossible to beat it is because they are better than everyone else at playing by the new rules. They are not exploiting referees, simply taking advantage of that fact that if you can move the ball around quickly and accurately it is now extremely difficult for opponents to get a foot in cleanly and legally. Their ability to retain possession for minutes on end tends to frustrate opponents and produce clumsier tackles or, in the case of Antonio Valencia at Wembley, frayed tempers.
It was significant that several commentators noted that Barcelona seemed to be playing a different game, perhaps even a different sport from United, because they were. Keep-ball is not football as we know it. Look at how little United profited from Javier Mascherano having to play at centre-half. Sir Alex Ferguson must have wished he could rush out and sign Andy Carroll or Kenwyne Jones when he saw the team sheet, if only to gain an aerial advantage at corners. But that game has gone. In 90 minutes against Barcelona, United failed to win a single corner. Barcelona won half a dozen, and played them all short, leaving Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic statuesque in the penalty area as the passing game resumed just outside it.
Clearly it helps when you have a genius such as Lionel Messi within your ranks, but Barcelona no longer put their trust in such risky propositions as crosses and headers. Like Brazil, they believe in their ability to open up teams through the middle with the ball on the ground. No wonder they were able to offload strikers of the quality of Samuel Eto'o and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Why take chances on hitmen's ratios when it is so much safer to pass the ball into the net? Arsenal have been trying to develop the same philosophy for years under Arsène Wenger, and for the most part showing just how difficult it is to make it work.
Still, at least Arsenal beat Barcelona once this season, and came closer than anyone else to disrupting their progress towards another European Cup. They didn't lose 5-0, like José Mourinho's Real Madrid in La Liga, or succumb to a hiding, which is what Ferguson admitted happened at Wembley. Surely as long as Wenger is at Arsenal the Premier League will not be completely out of touch with the new football, or so one might have thought.
Rather depressingly, Wenger has just blamed the season's failures on an inability to defend set pieces, and said his priority over the summer will be to sign some taller players. That strategy may just pay off in the Premier League, where tall players and goals from set pieces will probably last forever, but one would have expected Wenger of all people to notice that Barcelona rule the world with a team of midgets who do not concede corners and rarely head the ball.
The challenge facing English football is either to emulate or to nullify them, not to become a bit more like Stoke. Although the sooner Stoke get to play Barcelona, just to see if long throws, big lads and aerial bombardment can rattle their composure, the sooner a few arguments can be put to bed and the restructuring of English football according to the new refereeing reality can start. Fifa have subtly brought about a game of touch and technique. Not really English strengths, but no one in Zurich will be crying about that. Thoroughly outmanouevred on the world stage, the mother country now needs to make sure it does not become marginalised when playing at home.
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