Re: Team Sky Discussion thread
rlntlssly said:
Brullnux said:
rlntlssly said:
Disliking Sky because they use the most effective tactics for winning grand tours is like disliking a football team because they play a goalkeeper rather than an extra centre-forward.
Not really. It's like disliking a football team for playing Del Bosque tiki taka (i.e score one goal and not let your opponent touch the ball for the rest of the game, while doing nothing at the same time) after buying the best midfielders, strong defenders and fantastic strikers because they're rich af.
This post has gone way beyond my knowledge of football!
What I mean is, by all means dislike them because you don't like the sponsor, or you don't like the money, or you prefer Italians to Britons, or any number of variously convincing reasons, but disliking them because they use the only genuinely sensible tactic for winning a bike race seems strange to me.
I disagree. What sky do is completely understandable, and they have built their team around it so they have optimised it as well. But it is boring to watch, for many. They have learnt to control the race so well that not much happens in them anymore. There are other ways of winning GTs as others have shown, which are more exciting. As watching professional cycling is essentially always done for entertainment purposes, it doesn't really fulfil that for many. I'm not arguing it's validity as a tactic, but rather it's watchability. I watch cycling to be entertained, and if there's one team pushing out a certain number of watts the whole time, then I leave unsatisfied.
I'll go back to the football analogy. Spain's tactics worked brilliantly between 2008 and 2012, and they won everything they could win but it was really dull to watch at times. They'd score once, maybe twice, and control the rest of the game with an iron fist just passing the ball around the midfield. Sometimes they'd go mad and go full Guardiola and pass the ball with a purpose, but sometimes they'd just sit back. For the team Spain had at the time it was the optimal tactic of course, but it was slightly dull. I'm a bit hypocritical I admit as I love to watch when a team goes full catenaccio on another team and defends with their life, but look as if they are effortlessly controlling the game by just staying in defence as I always think a perfect defence is extremely rare but extremely beautiful, but I understand why others may find it dull. Disliking a team because they are perceived by someone to be boring is perfectly reasonable imo.