Courtesy of The Sixth Day Is For Football, this film of the 1974 Holland of Cruyff, Rep and co., passing the ball around the legs of bemused Argentinians. One of these sides would go on to be World Champions in only a few short years’ time.
Before Pele pointed it out, it’s unclear whether anyone thought that football could be beautiful, ought to be beautiful, indeed, whether it had anything at all to do with that sexually-dubious category. Wodehouse divided the world into poets and golfers, an observation of pure psychological genius.
It can be, though, and when it is, nothing more need be said:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iiJNztpBRE]
I laughed when six of them rushed out like a rugby pack to press the ball.