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Imre Schöffer, 1933: W System and Scottish style

Author: Isaque Argolo | Creation Date: 2022-07-25 11:21:53


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W SYSTEM EQUALS SCOTTISH STYLE!!
Imre Schöffer | 10/11/1933, Siena

We have pointed out more than once in the columns of this newspaper the damage that "pundits" cause by uttering meaningless slogans. Unfortunately, they have had no effect, and are more rampant than ever. Serious sportsmen and women are taking over and degrading their otherwise respectable and worthy of respect and consideration statements.
Wit, science, momentum, how can these be separated?
What is reason if there is no drive, or can drive be enough if there is no knowledge?
In the old days, when MTK or FTC could really field eleven players with one hundred percent knowledge, they swept all their opponents with their momentum, but when they played without momentum, they lost to teams with quite mediocre knowledge.
A player who can play with skill and drive is a perfect player, a player who lacks either of these qualities is not a footballer. To divide the two, knowledge and drive, or to equate them directly to "academic football" or "drive football" shows a great lack of understanding.
Until every team plays with intelligence and drive, until separate intelligence and separate drive players are sought and nurtured, the Egyptian scourge will always haunt. There, too, we worked with slogans. Then the slogan was that we needed a separate team against the technical teams, another against the Latin teams, but unfortunately for us they did not provide a third one against the Africans.
But the ultimate ignorance, the ultimate uninformedness, is when they have no idea what the Scottish style is, they say things like, "the antidote to the W system is the Scottish style" or "the team has gone from the W system to the combination Scottish style".
Listen to me: the Scot is not philosophical, the Scot is a practical man, in everything, including football. The Scotsman's game was the rule in the days of the old offside rule, the practical Scot came to apply the game of necessity after the new rule was introduced.
The Scot immediately recognised the danger to his goal from the new rule (it took us 5 years), which he could only defend against by holding off all the opponent's forwards and, if necessary, pulling his forwards back to cover the opponent's hooks. Conversely, he has found a way to score a sudden counter-attack goal with 'three,'even' just two strikers.
So modern Scottish combination football is literally what we call the 'W' system. Can you see now how absurd it is to "defend against the W-system with a Scottish style"? It's as hair-raising as "the national weapon of the Hungarians is the flashing trousers".
The pundits say that this modern football (now we can say Scottish style) is not scientific football. Have you seen Juventus? How much brains, how much science is in that team, that they didn't even feel the Hungarian attack in the first 17 minutes, while the Hungarian team with Korányi was complete.
Meisl knows Scottish football well, because long before the Austrian-Hungarian match, he made a statement in a French newspaper about the upcoming Scottish-Austrian meeting and said that he had a surprise in store against the Scots' W-system. And we don't know this here, and Meisl could admit that in Vienna they won't play the W system, but the Scottish style, against the Hungarians, and the experts were convinced. It's lucky that the national team captain is not a professional.