Modern Football’s Soloist Playing in an Orchestra

Sarthak Dev

7th March 2018 | 12:00 AM

The debate on Paul Pogba’s tactical liberation highlights a problem modern football is facing: Teams are starting to look like soloists playing in an orchestra.
Modern Football's Soloists playing in an Orchestra - Paul Pogba
Modern Football’s Soloist (Cristiano Ronaldo pictured) playing in an Orchestra. Illustration by Charbak Dipta.

I don’t read or write much poetry, but I have no doubts that it warrants a pedestal of its own in literature and art, a realm prose might never achieve. It must take enormous ability to master either, but it is the aesthetics of poetry’s very structure that tilts the balance towards it.

You hear poetry in the rhythms, in the accentuated words and swift pauses, in deftly placed alliterations, always asking you to invest more than just the time. You see poetry in shapes and curves, in long sentences and complex emotional threads neatly wrapped around each other in perfect symmetry. When you reach the end of a well-written poem, it feels like a parting glance at a piece of art.

As humans, we are preconditioned to appreciate art. It triggers spiked activity in our anterior temporal lobe (the part of the brain responsible for handling logical reasoning) as well as the posterior cingulate cortex (responsible for thoughts and emotions).

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