Death of the Meatwall?

“Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the corners.”

“But nothing happened from the corners.”

“That was the curious incident.”

There were six corners in Sunday’s Community Shield, two for Arsenal and four for Manchester City. Jérémy Doku took three of them; Ben White, Antoine Semenyo and Noni Madueke took one each. Only one corner found its man. The only vaguely notable event from a corner came from Arsenal’s second, after 14 minutes, as Gabriel tangled with Abdukodir Khusanov and went down appealing for a penalty, only to be penalised for having initiated the grapple. And that was it. Arsenal didn’t win another corner.

Which was… nice. The World Cup was pleasingly free from much in the way of corner controversy and the Community Shield followed its lead. That, obviously, doesn’t mean that corners will not be a feature this season, that the set-play wars have just gone away. There’s something slightly freakish about Arsenal not winning a corner in the final 76 minutes of the game. And that made it more of a spectacle as a result.

I confess to a degree of ambivalence here. I am not against set plays being a major feature of the game. There can be something thrilling about a barrage of corners or long throws. Football should be about physicality as well as technical skill. But only up to a point, and it felt at times last season that threshold was breached. In part, the problem was that set-plays seem on some intuitive level the right of the weak. That’s how the scrappers can challenge the grandees. Once the grandees get hold at them and begin to focus on them, it feels a little off.

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There was also the length of time it took, often two minutes and more from the corner being awarded to it finally being taken. That both interrupts the flow of the game – and if hydration breaks taught us anything, it’s how vital flow and rhythm are to football – but also means less football is played. Quite apart from short-changing paying spectators, anything that reduces the amount of actual football played in a match is, almost by definition, bad for football. Regulations to speed up the taking of set-plays should help.

Just as unsatisfactory was the sense that developed last season that the penalty area at a corner became a Wild West. There were fouls happening everywhere all the time. Little wonder that referees seemed to decide, after a few uncovincing weeks of penalising holding, that they would let anything go.

The occasional incident that gained traction and real media attention demonstrated just how impossible the situation had become. Take, for instance, the goal West Ham had disallowed against Arsenal in May. Although David Raya was fouled, there were also four or five other fouls taking place simultaneously in the box. How is a referee, or even a VAR, supposed to rule on that? Or take the penalty Manchester United were awarded at Fulham. Calvin Bassey wrestled Mason Mount to the ground. It was a foul, so VAR awarded the penalty. Except, six feet behind Mount, Luke Shaw was committing exactly the same foul on Rodrigo Muniz. Again, which is the correct decision: penalty or defensive free-kick? Both feel somehow inadequate and arbitrary.

But what can be done? It feels like every summer there is a new directive about grappling or wrestling in the box. It’s enforced for a while and then ignored. It often seems referees feel slightly uncomfortable about enforcement, aware how arbitrary decisions can seem, so situations develop like the Sunderland v Brentford game last season when Brentford were awarded a penalty by Anthony Taylor for Reinildo hauling down Nathan Collins (at least the second time he had done so), only for Sunderland to appeal at every set play until they too were eventually awarded a penalty for Rico Henry tugging at Habib Diarra. Because the truth is that there will always be a foul in the box if you look hard enough.

Perhaps the only solution is to follow the policy referees seemed to follow in the Champions League, perhaps most obviously Jesús Gil Manzano in Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat away to Galatasaray in the last 16, of actively looking for an attacking team foul to penalise. If it becomes counterproductive for attacking sides to hold, grapple and block then it also means that fouls by defenders are both less necessary and more obvious, and thus easier to give.

It might not be ideal, and it might lead to a drop off in the number of goals from set-plays in the short term, but it might be the only way to prevent football becoming an endless battle of the meat wall. Certainly, though, it seems worth trying before having to resort to some of the more extreme solutions presented last season, such as preventing attacking players from challenging goalkeepers within the six-yard box.

Nicolas Jover will, no doubt, have his plans to deal with the new environment. It was notable how on Sunday Arsenal’s players started at the back of the box and moved en masse towards the front. It’s not the first time we’ve seen that ploy, but it is a move that reduces basic grappling and leads to the sense of space in the box.

And space is to be welcomed. However it is achieved, this season would benefit from less of the meatwall.