A National Soccer Team Is not Just a National Soccer Team

A country's national soccer team is a reflection of its sensibilities in the same way its architecture or food is. That is, an imperfect one. A squad that exhibited all the characteristics of its citizens at once would resemble a peyote-tripping theater troupe; a dish that incorporated the sum total of a country's regional cuisines would taste utterly confusing and look like braised accident. But there is something there, in the players and tactics: Brazil would not be the Seleção without impractically showy attackers; Italy would not be Gli Azzurri without an organized back line.

Does this say something about the two nations? Kind of, but at the same time, Brazilian protesters took to the streets last year to proclaim the country needed improved social programs, not a joyful-but-expensive soccer tournament. Italians have only just recently stopped calling cartoon corrupt politician Silvio Berlusconi to public service. Try to determine where Neymar's dribbling or Giorgio Chiellini's positional awareness fit into either of those developments, and you'll break yourself on the rocks of a million tortured metaphors.

More than anything, a national team's defining style is its own spin on a game that allows for a vast variety of interpretations. That feeling of ownership is the important thing, which is why Johan Cruyff periodically reminds the Oranje that they're failing to live up to the fussy aesthetic ideals that informed the beautifully doomed Dutch squads of the 1970s. No one has ever accused Cruyff of being practical, and that he yearns for Holland to play a type of soccer for which their current national pool is unsuited is a little ridiculous, but Cruyff knows he's filling a necessary role. He's a quixotic national conscience. He asks: if the spirit of Total Football isn't guiding the Oranje, then what is Dutch about them? When they play like a souped-up version of Stoke City, Cruyff would argue, they stand for nothing. Or, to use his words, "it hurts the eyes." One imagines more than a few of Cruyff's countrymen feel the same way.

The English, on the other hand, seem pleased that their national team's sledgehammering approach of late. In a land of muscular Christianity, effortful defending and fast if not altogether sharp attacking are embraced. Quoth arch-Anglo Wayne Rooney: "You want teams to look at England and think: 'we know we have a tough game. It is going to be physically hard against them. We are going to have to defend, and we are going to have to be good on the ball to keep it.'"

The actual teams might play similarly these days, but the crucial difference between the Oranje and the Three Lions is that the latter's fans have few qualms with pragmatic soccer. In fact, the English tend to cast side-eye at possession-heavy styles. Even as Spain were dominating the globe a few years ago, there were murmurs from Manchester and Liverpool about how tiki-taka was cute and all, but Xavi couldn't put a tackle in. (This was an impressive bit of point-missing, and also not even particularly accurate, but England has never totally let go of the fact that it's no longer the epicenter of the sport it invented.) Anglos want England to win, and they're not picky about how the job gets done. All that matters is that the team are currently at the top of their Euro 2016 qualifying group. That they're also throwing in fearsome challenges and going forward with a certain boulder-down-the-mountainside menace is gravy.

Spain are working through a minor identity crisis as a new generation of stars come into La Roja. Vicente del Bosque, who has mostly brilliantly helmed the national team/art project since 2008, has been cautious about mixing younger players into his starting lineups, even after a noticeably aging Spain were blown off the pitches in Brazil. After a just-okay 1-0 win over Ukraine in European qualifying, del Bosque labored to assert that his squad isn't undergoing a sea change so much as a revision: "the axis of Sergio Ramos, [Gerard] Piqué, [Sergio] Busquets is [still] there, in top form. They are people with craft, with titles, with clout. They are not boys."

But del Bosque must know he's going to need to trust some of his more boyish players—Isco, Koke, Álvaro Morata, Dani Carvajal—to help him figure out what Spain will become in what is, if not a post-tiki-taka era, then at least a post-golden one. Green talents cannot simply be plugged into roles formerly occupied by Xavi, David Villa, and Xabi Alonso and expected to perform exactly as their predecessors did. This would be not just ineffective, but incompatible with the expressive ethos that has characterized Spanish soccer for decades. Xabi was great because he was a complete holding midfielder, but he was also permitted to be great in his own distinct manner. Del Bosque can still employ a strategy that calls for clusters of quick, short passes and gives his midfielders the freedom to roam, but if he tries to match the pieces he has now up with Spain circa 2010, he's inviting disaster. Koke isn't Xavi, nor is Isco a carbon copy of Iniesta. Del Bosque's pre-match instructions to each of them cannot be go out and play like player who is not you.

Del Bosque's conundrum is universally familiar to national team managers. You are a coach, just trying to win games, but you are also a polemicist, making an argument with your lineup choices and tactics for one way of playing over another. Fans and media in every country care most about the former, but they also place varying degrees of emphasis on and philosophy. Dutch dogmatists wonder aloud why their team is bothering to play at all if they're not going to at least try to play positive, controlled soccer. The English just want to see the Three Lions compete. Spaniards are concerned they might be witnessing the death, not just of a world-historic string of triumphs, but of an approach that seeks to transform soccer matches into balletic spectacles. All three groups want to look out onto the pitch and see something they can be proud of. What that looks like, precisely, depends on who's watching.