The debate about whether football is ultimately all about results is as old as the game itself. People like to talk about it, maybe because they are talking about themselves: are you a so-called realist or an idealist? For the idealists, here’s a quote I saw recently from Marcelo “El Loco” Bielsa:
“When managing a team, we have an obligation: we have to win. And the way we do it is no longer important. There should be a penalty for those who ignore the beauty of the game in order to win.”
But Marcelo – why?
“I love football because I love the people who love football ... [and] I find it hard to accept that the only thing we are going to offer them is results. Because if we don’t offer them football as an aesthetic element, we are making them worse as human beings. The appreciation of aesthetics is a condition that we humans have that is linked to sensitivity. It cannot be ignored; not everything can be commercialised. It cannot be, as the market would have it, that the winner is smart and the loser is stupid. Beauty also has something to do with it.”
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Usually I’d have a lot of time for this sort of thing. Man cannot live on winning and losing alone. There has to be something more – something that speaks to the soul ...
Then you’re at something like the match in Dublin on Thursday night. Not many people would say that there was a lot of beautiful football in this game. Ireland played 5-4-1 and hit balls over the top. They never did anything like, say, what Argentina did for their second goal in the last World Cup final – the Ángel Di María goal at the end of the one-touch end-to-end move.
But did the people love this game? Did they feel like they had just been part of something incredible? They sure did. Was this just because Ireland won? In part yes, but it’s not the whole story.
What do we really mean by “aesthetics” anyway? What is beautiful? That Di María goal is an easy example. People often think of beauty in football as a thing to do with lines and movement, an emergent property of geometry.
But beauty comes in different forms. You know what else was beautiful? The look on Séamus Coleman’s face as he ran beside Troy Parrott celebrating Ireland’s second goal.
People are moved by the sight of someone giving everything for a cause. If this is not beauty, then whatever it is will do just fine.
We know now that leaving Coleman out of the squad for the first two qualifiers in this series was maybe the biggest mistake Heimir Hallgrímsson has made. It would feel easier to criticise him for that mistake if it had registered with more of us at the time that it actually was a mistake.
The truth is that when Hallgrímsson made that decision it seemed perfectly reasonable – obvious even. Back in August, when the squad was named, Coleman had played just 3½ matches’ worth of football for Everton and Ireland in the previous 12 months. He had played 18 minutes since the start of 2025. It’s clear that you cannot be in your late 30s and play only 18 minutes of football in eight months and still be in shape to play in World Cup qualifiers. Everybody knows that.
And there he is, somehow doing it, and taking everybody along with him.
Eighty-one minutes into Thursday’s game, Portugal had possession and passed it out to Rafael Leão on their left. Chiedozie Ogbene, ahead of Coleman on Ireland’s right, was exhausted after all the running he had done but found the energy to close Leão down and force him out of play with the ball for an Ireland throw.
It was a small moment in the game, but Coleman – who must have been exhausted himself – immediately ran up the line towards Ogbene and started shoving him aggressively and shouting at him. Ogbene seemed almost startled by the intensity – had he done something wrong? But no, this was Coleman congratulating him and urging him to keep going.
Coleman has always understood the irrational side of football. The game is about space and lines and tactics and skill but it’s also passion, the battle of wills, and this, more than pretty and creative patterns, is what most people really love to see.
Think of the great Guardiola-era Barcelona team, who played the most intelligent, the most technical, the most conventionally “beautiful” football anyone had ever seen. The players chiefly responsible for that were Messi, Xavi, Busquets and Iniesta. But no player was more loved by the fans than Puyol.
Séamus Coleman will go down as one of the great underappreciated players, including in his own country. He has 75 caps and should have twice that number. It’s still staggering to think he was left out of Ireland’s squad for Euro 2012. His problem then was that Giovanni Trapattoni saw everyone under the age of 26 or 27 as a baby. Coleman was already one of the best full backs in the Premier League – but he was only 23. Trap thought John O’Shea, Stephen Kelly, Paul McShane and Kevin Foley were better options at right back. What a waste.
Maybe it’s because it was a long week, but at some point on Friday I remembered Coleman lying on the pitch in agony with his shin broken in half, and Shane Long kneeling down next to him, cradling his head, and tears briefly welled in my eyes.
The admission might mark me as someone who is likely to confuse beauty with sentimentality, or temperamentally unstable, or who should at least try to get a couple of early nights in a row.
But Coleman’s terrible injury is just the most graphic example of how these players have suffered playing for Ireland. Most, thankfully, have not had their bones broken, but all of them have paid a price in frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, ridicule. There’s not been a lot of glory to make up for it.
There’s glory to play for on Sunday. Hungary have everything to lose, Ireland have everything to win. At two o’clock on Sunday everyone in this country who loves football will be doing the same thing. This team has brought us together at last.
