Success vs Entertainment

Success.
Football is extremely tribal and enough time without trophies just leads to constant mockery from opposition fans which gets tiresome. Plus some will just overreact completely and other United fans will become almost as unbearable.

That issue removed, I'd rather watch an entertaining United side than a successful one. Football is an entertainment industry after all. People can say it's all about results but people only care about it because it's entertaining. If football was boring, less people would watch it and care about it so the trophies would be worth less.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Tell you what, I'd give my eye teeth for a season as entertaining as the one that Slippy ruined for them. The ending was brutal but every Liverpool fan I knew absolutely fecking loved that season while it happened. So many amazing victories and brilliant attacking displays. Even against the best teams in the league. I was deeply jealous.
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Considering the season we had that year I think we all were (jealous). I agree, they played fantastic football that year, it was a true version of you score 2 then we'll score 3.
 
They aren't mutua exclusive. However, if I was forced to pick it would be success every time. Would take a drab 1-0 win over a 5-4 loss every day of the week.
 
It's all about winning trophies, being entertaining at the same time is a bonus on the side.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Heh.

Assuming entertainment can be measured by goals scored (which works for me, anyway) I wonder how often teams have been the highest goal-scorers in a league and not won it?

Bit different in cup competitions, where it's easier to shit on a stick yourself to glory. Rafa Benitez has made a career out of it.
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Think this would be interesting to look at

FCBarca said:
Simple, winning is NOT everything. How you play matters. If you can combine both, win win
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makes sense coming from a barca no?

VeevaVee said:
I started answering this then realised it's a terrible question.
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it is a terrible question but terrible questions seem to get a wealth of responses.

Walrus said:
:lol:
Its hard to explain exactly how I feel. It was a combination of the obvious disappointment, and the sheer drama and excitement of the situation. I guess I just cant find it in myself to be angry or upset over such a climactic and exciting finalé to the season, and appreciate just how mental it was and how we may never see anything quite like it again.
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i understand where youre coming from walrus. it's a moment in football we will unlikely ever see repeated. for that i can appreciate it. thats as far as it goes for me though
 
Walrus said:
So basically the question we have boiled this sub-debate down to is: is success inherently entertaining?
Again for me, success is entertaining in the short term. i.e. your team wins a trophy - you are happy. But does that trophy keep you happy throughout the year? Is it 'worth it', does the end justify the means?
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The trophy alone might not keep me "happy" in the sense of feeling totally satisfied, I get bored too with routine. However, the alternative - playing more entertaining games but failing to succeed - certainly won't make me happier in comparison. Therefore I'd say, if you want to hermetically distinguish these two aspects of football, entertainment is clearly secondary to success in terms of bringing a football fan happiness.

If I try to remember the most boring winning teams of Porto, there was definitely something missing at times in terms of enjoying the 90 minutes week in week out. But feeling happy as a fan also includes watching the points accumulate in the table, seeing opposition fans annoyed at the inability to catch up, and gaining ground in the long-term trophy-counting battles with rival clubs. This last aspect is incredibly important for fans of teams like Porto/Benfica, United/Liverpool, Real/Barça, for obvious reasons. You're not just battling for silverware, you're battling for the right to call yourselves the most successful team in the history of a given competition.

This obviously is the perspective of a fan from a winning team, in which success is measured by trophies. For teams in which a successful season is finishing 8th and an unsuccessful season is finishing 16th, the difference might not be so clear.
 
Successful. I would be hugely disappointed if we were only playing good football without any trophies. I can live without being entertaining as long as we win.
 
Walrus said:
You may be right on the marketability point, it was just something I thought about when writing the previous post.
It really does just come down to ones own priorities as a fan. To re-state a point I edited in to one of my previous posts, lets look slightly less at the big picture and drill down into the short term a bit.
On a week by week basis, do you go to Old Trafford, or sit down in front of your TV to be entertained, or to see the team win? What is your objective?
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Ok on a match by match basis I think it would be with the idea of being entertained. Success would be the overall aim but in that moment you want to be entertained. You could lose an entertaining match and still feel it was worth your money but a sterile 1-0 win where we didn't do a whole lot of attacking may not be as enjoyable.

But again there are so many variables, losing an entertaining match to Liverpool will hurt more than losing a similar match to Chelsea. Or wining a sterile match 1-0 against City will be much more enjoyable than a similar game against Bournemouth.
 
GBBQ said:
Ok on a match by match basis I think it would be with the idea of being entertained. Success would be the overall aim but in that moment you want to be entertained. You could lose an entertaining match and still feel it was worth your money but a sterile 1-0 win where we didn't do a whole lot of attacking may not be as enjoyable.

But again there are so many variables, losing an entertaining match to Liverpool will hurt more than losing a similar match to Chelsea. Or wining a sterile match 1-0 against City will be much more enjoyable than a similar game against Bournemouth.
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The thing I have noticed from what you are saying though, is that you are ultimately looking for enjoyment. As you said, a 1-0 win against City will be very enjoyable for the United fans because it means beating a bitter rival - fair enough. But ultimately what you are seeking is enjoyment (ie entertainment) rather than simply success for the sake of success.
 
Walrus said:
The thing I have noticed from what you are saying though, is that you are ultimately looking for enjoyment. As you said, a 1-0 win against City will be very enjoyable for the United fans because it means beating a bitter rival - fair enough. But ultimately what you are seeking is enjoyment (ie entertainment) rather than simply success for the sake of success.
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Yeah but if you can have only one or the other I would still plump for success.
 
Entertainment without success is nothing, success without entertainment is still success.

Do you remember who plays the most attacking football in 200x? Do you rememver the beautiful entertaining loser in the cup final?

Does our attacking football consoles us when city wins it?

I wouldn't support Manchester United if they play a good football without winning anything, and i suspect most of you lot didnt started supporting us because of simply entertainment, alot more thant that. I call it glory, and glory is not always trophy, being protagonist, playing youth, munich, history of the club and the romance of it.

But if we won nothing it means nothing,! Many teams plays brandishing attacking football but none of them are as big as united simply because we won things.
 
You can not entertain the fans consistently throughout the season. Even the likes of Barcelona have those games whereby they fail to deliver (although that ratio is very slim), but competition football is a marathon not a sprint. All kinds of factors play a role to present an 'entertainment' display. Players fatique, injury spells, midweek games, you name it. Yes we as fans like to see the excitement and tiki-taka passess, but if the players go for combat and run their socks off to give it their all, that is good enough for me. I judge this by the long term value and that is TROPHIES. Manchester United is in a rebuilding phase. It is merely impossible to go back to the prime football of ours in just two seasons. Its about restoring the mentality, restoring the trust and more importantly create that unit within the team that would drag each other out of the quicksand. Patience is key.
 
Plenty of great teams have played entertaining football with succes. Dortmund won 2 titles with free-flowing football, Bayern 12/13 was a joy to watch as well, Guardiola's Barca was destroying teams with breathtaking tiki-taka etc. And for me football has always been about entertainment, I don't care about some trophy somewhere in a showroom, that's not what I'll remember 20/30 years later. I'll remember the amazing displays showed by teams and players on the pitch.
 
Sky1981 said:
Do you remember who plays the most attacking football in 200x? Do you rememver the beautiful entertaining loser in the cup final?
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The question is more - do I care?
Again, the counter question I pose to you is why do you care about a trophy that United won in 200x? Does that trophy make any difference to you? Were you involved in winning it? United won trophies under Ferguson while I was still a toddler. Does it affect my life in any way? Not particularly.


I wouldn't support Manchester United if they play a good football without winning anything, and i suspect most of you lot didnt started supporting us because of simply entertainment, alot more thant that. I call it glory, and glory is not always trophy, being protagonist, playing youth, munich, history of the club and the romance of it.
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Glory yes, but whose glory? Do you have some claim to this glory as a fan. I can perhaps understand a season ticket holder who attends every match - who has seen things through the thick and thin, and has a chance to relish the success, glory and victory at the end of it. But other than that, does it really help you sleep at night to know that United won x,y and z league titles from various years?

It is a mindset that I just cant quite fully grasp, that people would prefer to sit in front of a TV for 90 minutes every week watching some dull, tepid performance, as long as it means that a bunch of millionaires who we will likely never meet or speak to, get to lift a trophy at the end of the season.


edit: to clarify, I am not trying to have a go at any fan or say that anyone doesnt deserve to enjoy the success of their team. I am just trying to examine the mindset of those who believe that success is the be-all and end-all for them as fans, supporting a football club.
 
Sky1981 said:
i suspect most of you lot didnt started supporting us because of simply entertainment, alot more thant that.
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Personally, I started supporting United after the 2005 FA Cup final loss to Arsenal. I just loved the way the team threw the kitchen sink at Arsenal for 120 minutes. The trophies are nice, but at the end of the day it always boils down to the 90 minutes on the pitch. If it was only about trophies what is left for the supporters of clubs that don't win anything?
 
Success that can come from many different strategies is what is most entertaining over any one specific strategy.

The idea of United playing 4-4-2 with wingers from now until football dies is not entertaining whatsoever. It's the perfect example of inflexible boring shit.
 
Seems a stupid question to me. Basically no team has won the premier league in 20 odd years without also being pretty entertaining. Look at the goals scored stats.

Citing Greece in a short tournament is completely irrelevant when it comes to a club across a season. Would I take a dour single performance in a semi-final? Of course, but that's the exception.

People saying it's one or the other don't seem to understand that the two are not only not mutually exclusive, but almost always positively correlated. Ie, you can't really have success without entertainment, in a season of football.
 
The fact that such a large number of clubs never enjoy trophy-success, yet are still well supported, suggests that fans in general are looking for entertainment.
Perhaps having had incredible success over an extended period has skewed the way we view it. Particularly the younger fans.

Personally I think the promise of entertainment keeps us coming back, but it only makes sense if the end goal is success, and sometimes that won't necessarily mean a trophy.

I value entertainment higher, but both camps have been disappointed recently.
 
Beachryan said:
Seems a stupid question to me. Basically no team has won the premier league in 20 odd years without also being pretty entertaining. Look at the goals scored stats.

Citing Greece in a short tournament is completely irrelevant when it comes to a club across a season. Would I take a dour single performance in a semi-final? Of course, but that's the exception.

People saying it's one or the other don't seem to understand that the two are not only not mutually exclusive, but almost always positively correlated. Ie, you can't really have success without entertainment, in a season of football.
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Well this is why 'entertainment' is such a stupid measurement.

Chelsea 2004-07 under Mourinho were at times dubbed boring and yet are one of the best sides to ever win the PL. I actually appreciate that Chelsea side and many others do but they were frequently called 'boring and defensive' like alot of Mourinho teams.

I couldn't care about entertainment in isolation - it's as meaningless as your rating of a musician despite the amount of albums they've sold. This is a game and it has to be won by any means necessary. Ideally your 'craft' is better than your competition of course but that's a secondary concern, now and always.
 
adexkola said:
Personally, I started supporting United after the 2005 FA Cup final loss to Arsenal. I just loved the way the team threw the kitchen sink at Arsenal for 120 minutes. The trophies are nice, but at the end of the day it always boils down to the 90 minutes on the pitch. If it was only about trophies what is left for the supporters of clubs that don't win anything?
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I supported united since we got out of the cl by virtue of phil nevile foul in the box resulting in juventus penalty.

The co92 was the attraction, the story behind united, the fact that they are a successful team, it's all part of what i called glory. Not the trophy per se, but off course why would i support nottingham forrest who languish in division 1 even if they play good football.
 
Walrus said:
The question is more - do I care?
Again, the counter question I pose to you is why do you care about a trophy that United won in 200x? Does that trophy make any difference to you? Were you involved in winning it? United won trophies under Ferguson while I was still a toddler. Does it affect my life in any way? Not particularly.




Glory yes, but whose glory? Do you have some claim to this glory as a fan. I can perhaps understand a season ticket holder who attends every match - who has seen things through the thick and thin, and has a chance to relish the success, glory and victory at the end of it. But other than that, does it really help you sleep at night to know that United won x,y and z league titles from various years?

It is a mindset that I just cant quite fully grasp, that people would prefer to sit in front of a TV for 90 minutes every week watching some dull, tepid performance, as long as it means that a bunch of millionaires who we will likely never meet or speak to, get to lift a trophy at the end of the season.


edit: to clarify, I am not trying to have a go at any fan or say that anyone doesnt deserve to enjoy the success of their team. I am just trying to examine the mindset of those who believe that success is the be-all and end-all for them as fans, supporting a football club.
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We dont play beautiful football either, it's not us that kicks the ball.

If it's purely entertainment than its not supporting, you simply turn on tv and watch the team of the season.

The balance lies somewhere in the middle walrus, you cant call any sides of opinion spoiled or imperfect.
 
Sky1981 said:
Entertainment without success is nothing, success without entertainment is still success.

Do you remember who plays the most attacking football in 200x? Do you rememver the beautiful entertaining loser in the cup final?

Does our attacking football consoles us when city wins it?

I wouldn't support Manchester United if they play a good football without winning anything, and i suspect most of you lot didnt started supporting us because of simply entertainment, alot more thant that. I call it glory, and glory is not always trophy, being protagonist, playing youth, munich, history of the club and the romance of it.

But if we won nothing it means nothing,! Many teams plays brandishing attacking football but none of them are as big as united simply because we won things.
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Absolutely. We pissed all over arsenal in the cup final in 2005, it was an amazing performance by United and arsenal rode their luck for 120 minutes. However, they won and we didn't. That performance counted for nothing.
 
Entertainment. It's honestly not going to have any considerable impact on my life if Manchester United don't win anything for decades to come, but it would sure make my evenings a lot brighter if we played excellent stuff.
 
verminater said:
And yet it's the performance that makes it memorable...
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By a small percentage of diehards.

I don't remember that match at all and I watched the whole thing. We didn't win and it was a frustrating afternoon - I try to forget it.
 
Success, always.

What kind of masochists are getting entertained by United losing?
I get the whole 'valiant attack; losing with style!' though, because that was my entire childhood, but truth is that I'd much rather we'd won with boring, passing-back-to-the-keeper Scouser style.

Having said that, I'd always support United, even if we played the most dire of horrible football for ages and ages and never won shit. I'm always entertained -- as in 'on the edge of my seat; adrenalin rush!' -- when United play, I'm so nervous every game is exciting to me. Even during the Moyes year. Insane, I know.
 
You don't win every games, you don't win every competitions, so some us prefer to see United always try to play a nice brand of football and try to win that way, than see United play a win at all cost brand of football and win a little bit more. Basically I prefer to see United win 3 leagues in 10 years playing consistently in an entertaining way than watch United win 5 leagues in 10 years consistently playing in a "Capello" way.
 
In the real world the natural progression is that you work on being successful and then once you're performing at a suitable level you work on being more entertaining (it's a common idea in football that you don't break out the tricks and flicks in a game before it is won, if at all). So success seems like the obvious choice in the real world.

In a vacuum though, where only one will ever be present, I would choose entertainment. The vacuum assumes that I can still be entertained whilst losing every week; that I will continue to be entertained regardless of how long the time-frame and that if I were to choose success I would literally never be entertained by it. I see this as being like if somebody said to you "United will win 1-0 every week." you'd soon stop watching - the outcome is predetermined, the major draw with sport is it's unpredictability.

Even bragging rights would disappear in those circumstances. "we're going to beat you next week." We, know, 1-0, like always, what's your point?
 
Y'all are weird.

What do you do with the list of the club's accomplishments per season? Print it on tissue paper and wank yourselves off with it?

The club has to strive for excellence on the pitch, I get that. But apart from laughing at Liverpool fans, I don't get the appeal of trophies to the fan. At the end of the day they're just byproducts of 22 men chasing a ball on a field of grass.
 
Succtainment.
 
I'd take inter defending heroic of jumbo jets parking if it means not a cl cup and not getting spunked by barcelona.

Dunno about most of thr munich fans, but i believe they will trade anything (handgoal, red card, boring football, playing for the penalty with 0 shots on goals) if it means winning it. @Balu
 
The problem is that no two people would agree on what constitutes entertainment. I remember in 2012/2013, we had so many entertaining games like the away one to Villa, home to Newcastle and away to City. A big part of that is that we were really bad for long periods of those games but to our credit, we managed to fight back. The drama and roller-coaster of those type of victories are considered entertaining by most fans including myself but there is no way you can plan them or aim for them. They are in fact the result of a team that is not complete. Strong at throwing the kitchen sink but vulnerable and too easily pushed back.

Another type of entertainment is the football the current Bayern, Barcelona or Arsenal (when it clicks) play. It is based on quick passing that slices through a defence time after time creating chance after chance. This is entertaining to some because it shows crisp incisive passing and it is generally considered a joy to watch creating chance after chance. Fans of drama and end to end football are generally disappointed by that though. Under Fergie, we were very rarely part of the latter, maybe on occasions but never consistently. We were however full of the former. Our ability to come back and throw all we got at a game was quite ridiculous in its consistency and contributed to us being fun to watch as you know you'd be on quite a ride. We were however, not entertaining by some grand design and well structured parts of our play the way those other teams are.

Personally and I suspect for most United fans, our type of former entertainment through unpredictability and chaos was simply too much fun. I to this day, cannot think of a more exhilarating footballing experience than United chasing a goal with 15 minutes to go. The nagging feeling however, is that this type of chaos that resulted in so many entertaining games and memories is simply not the best bet to achieve success against the very best. In England, sure! It works to a tee and I can see traces of it with Manchester City which is giving them a lot of success. In Europe we were either easily found out ('90s and early '00s) or forced to sit deep and defend (late '00s) even against the not so great footballing sides of that era. The very fact that in England we talk about "learning to play in Europe" suggests that this style of leaving it to chance and going for it is not efficient and will not reward success consistently enough.

The question is therefore, if we define entertainment as drama or emotions, we should be willing to sacrifice any high hopes of competing with the very best in Europe. We will have to accept that our best chance is through stopping them rather than going toe to toe with them. If that is the case, we should have never hired LvG and should get rid as soon as possible. If our definition includes the pretty patterns and quick passing that creates chances while maintaining total domination and therefore very little end to end action or drama, then what we do now is the road for it. It is a very difficult style to play and can be very frustrating (see Arsenal) but very rewarding (see Bayern). We should therefore stick with LvG and go ahead with Pep or someone who will ensure the continuation of that style.

For me personally, I prefer the rock 'n roll as Neville put it but I am not turned off by the orchestra that Wenger or Barcelona play. It is less entertaining but not by a long stretch. What sways it for me then is the promise that by adopting that and mastering it, we can finally look forward to outplaying Europe's elite instead of defending for our lives against them. I suppose it is ego or whatever you want to call it but year after year, even the ones our teams were doing well in Europe, I was getting sick and tired of our teams being known for their toughness and strengths. We played the worst Barcelona side in the decade with our best and still had to sit as deep as the Sunderlands of the PL do against us. So if it means less entertainment and more authority, I am all for it which is why I am willing to give LvG all the time he needs to set up that foundation for the future.
 
Sky1981 said:
I'd take inter defending heroic of jumbo jets parking if it means not a cl cup and not getting spunked by barcelona.

Dunno about most of thr munich fans, but i believe they will trade anything (handgoal, red card, boring football, playing for the penalty with 0 shots on goals) if it means winning it. @Balu
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But would you take it, each every seasons?
 
The fun is in the chase. It's about the entertainment for me....and trophies are a bonus. Imagine putting up with shit on a stick football season after season?!
 
I just like to see us moving in the right direction. Which I think we are, admittedly we're moving towards success at the expense of entertainment right now but provided we keep progressing I'm not fussed. The fun looking forwards.
 
adexkola said:
Y'all are weird.

What do you do with the list of the club's accomplishments per season? Print it on tissue paper and wank yourselves off with it?

The club has to strive for excellence on the pitch, I get that. But apart from laughing at Liverpool fans, I don't get the appeal of trophies to the fan. At the end of the day they're just byproducts of 22 men chasing a ball on a field of grass.
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Why pick a team if accomplishments are just by products? Would you also categorise failure as such? Surely the best way to ensure uninterrupted entertainment is by being a neutral.

Accomplishments bring out the most positive emotions in a fan, just like failure burns.

A sunderland fan would gladly have taken our season under Moyes, who knows, might even have classed it as entertaining.
 
JPRouve said:
But would you take it, each every seasons?
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The equivalent to your question is would you takr beautiful football if it means we never gonna win it every season?

For me the beauty of the game is not only the football, the drama, the excitement, the bragging rights, the underdog.

It's like watching a movie, a tragedy/comedy/drama/exploitation/cartoon might still entertain me at the end of the day.

Im not gonna stop supporting united if we stop winning trophies, i dont think any of you entertainment brigade will stop supporting united if we play bland football.

Each to his own.
 
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