A One-Man Team?
There is a lot of comment doing the rounds in main-core and social media outlets about Spurs being a one-man team. That man, of course, being Harry Kane. Logically, Kane could only be a one-man team if the rest of the players failed to turn up on match-day. But the logic found within football is tempered by emotion. It’s just not reliable!
Spurs/Kane, Spurs/Greaves, Liverpool/Keegan, Liverpool/Rush, Arsenal/Henry, Madrid/Ronaldo, Barca/Messi, Chelsea/Drogba, United/Law, etc, etc, …. are/were they all ‘one-man teams?
Every team needs a striker to score goals and, if the striker is something special he, and the team, will get a lot of media attention because of it. Because goals are the most exciting aspect for spectators to see, the media, and many supporters, often focus solely on the striker and dismiss the contributions of his team-mates. A very good striker will score a great deal more goals with talented players around him than if he plays with mediocre team-mates. The strikers mentioned played for very talented teams.
But a goal is just the end product of a team effort. None of the above prolific goal machines could have scored as many goals as they did without good team-mates to support them. Every one of the above teams relied on their main striker to do his job …. and the rest of the team to help him do it. They were all ‘team’ efforts. Every club on the planet relies on their main striker to do his job with team support.
All top clubs dream of having a striker like the ones above. Most can’t afford them and will keep dreaming. The European ‘money’ clubs try to have more than one prolific striker because of the injury problem. But it would be extremely difficult to have an equally competent striker in the squad who is on a par with Messi, Kane, Ronaldo, etc. If you had two Jimmy Greaves, would one of them be happy on the bench? In which case, clubs have to devise another way of playing if their main scorer is unavailable for a period. And the success of that will depend on tactics.
My two questions for comment are …. are we really a one-man team as the media suggests? And, if so …. is it unusual?
Share this article
