Death of the Maverick?

In the last 10 years, football has totally changed. Going back 10 or more years, it was a game played by hard-nosed, brilliant individuals, characterised by the unique personalities and styles that they took to the field. The god-like Brazilians, Ronaldinho & Ronaldo, the defensive Italian battle-hardened madonnas, Maldini & Nesta and the French aces such as Zidane & Henry. Every single one of these individuals was characterised by their individual and marvellous maverick virtuoso. They were made of something completely different to everyone else and they knew it, but so did we.

Off the football pitch, we have seen big changes in the world of technology and business too. High staked city-slickers sat on large proprietary trading desks, now no longer reigning supreme, in a world of high-frequency trading and teams of risk officers. Individual programming wizards such as Sean Parker too would be forced under the red tape in hours should Napster of been created now.

Instead, we now live in a world of increasingly, highly complex systems. Governed by data and rules. We only need to look at the top 25 US stocks to see companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook (now META), VISA, MasterCard etc. They are all systems that have been created to govern data of the so-called 'individual'. All of which have been broken down into highly efficient nodes, that have been used to extract value via their corresponding governing system(s). Those same systems are governed by large numbers of people (but not individuals), obsessed with improving their existing systems to create new nodes in their technologically powerful systems.

These same principles are now more evident than ever in football too, with the most recently successful football teams in Europe; Manchester City, Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Chelsea, all ran in principle by highly effective and efficient systems. We only need to look to the highly successful German coaches Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel, who have won Europes biggest prize (the Champions League), not by the individual talents, but the highly effective systems and principles of 'Gegenpressing' (famously named this by Ralf Rangnick). The players are far more replaceable in such structures of the game, with attacking talents such as Lukaku or Jack Grealish, finding themselves benched, to be replaced by far poorer goal scorers as they simply provide better 'ball pressing'. Within these games, there is less room for mavericks, unless that talent conforms to such governance. It is getting harder to imagine a character such as Ronaldinho playing in any modern football team. He simply, would not fit. Because he didn't fit in anywhere. He was simply Ronaldinho. An undefinable gift, uniquely precious and inspiring to all those that watched him.

Increasingly companies and football clubs no longer require the 'rockstars' of the past but people simply called to fit into a system. To the extent that these star players or the proprietary traders have now been replaced by collective ball pressing or by a group of quants, crunching numbers inside a program of defined rules. Such companies and teams proclaim diversity and promotion of the individual, yet disappointingly we are met by collections of individuals performing similar tasks within their own governed system with very few unique or eye-catching qualities.

The latest football and technology headlines this week support this argument, with the appointment of Ralf Rangnick as Manchester United interim manager and Parag Agrawal, the new CEO at Twitter. Both are the keepers and proponents of such systems. To the eye of a maverick, they are dull, boring and neither would be welcomed at an Investment bank in the noughties or to the management of a Real Madrid Galacticos side. The maverick mindset would see these as simply unappealing and boring at best. Mavericks are ungovernable, definable or controllable. Ralf and Parag are not 'artistes', they are simply gatekeepers in a matrix. Highly effective in their understanding of the proponents of such systems.

This leads us to Lionel Messi, the most recent Ballon D'Or winner. Who was announced by the French press as being the greatest living footballer for 2020-2021 Not because he is a maverick. But because he is uniquely great in a world full of systems, he is not successful because of the system, but because he can function with or without the system. He is unique. He is not Cristiano Ronaldo or Robert Lewandowski, who rely on the service of such a system, but the creator of unique moments in and out of a system. A player that remains indefinably great in a system of nodes, neither part nor part of such systems. He symbolises the connection between the past, the present and the future. Connected by all, yet separated by all. A double-sided mirror that bears no identifiable reflection yet creates its own reflections. And this is why he won the Ballon D'Or, much to the appreciation of the football mavericks, the dreamers, the rockstars and individuals who pride themself on their unique individual qualities. Things so precious, that they remain undefinable. The Elon Musk of Tesla Motorcars or the Muhammad Ali of boxing. They don't consult data. They don't consult anyone. They just are.

Ending this article is going to be hard, partly because it is my first. But secondly, I cannot determine whether or not this is my very own love letter to that of the maverick genius, or simply of my own insecurities as a self-proclaimed individual, pouring onto an internet web page, run by the systems I secretly wish to sometimes dispose of, yet undeniably remain part of. Both of which can only be true.