"Non-occurances of events appear generally less salient, memorable or informative than occurrences.... As a result, people discount causes that are absent (things that didn't happen) and augment the importance of causes that are present (things that did happen). This influences how we think about soccer: not only do we consider the goals that our team score more important than the goals they do not concede, but we value the tackles they make more highly than those challenges that their preternatural sense of positioning, their game intelligence, mean they do not need to make. That is where (Sir Alex) Ferguson went wrong (selling Jaap Stam because of decrease in tackling numbers). He needed to engage in counterfactual thinking: Stam was not doing as much, but that was not a sign of weakness, it was a sign of his quality. But because Ferguson could not see those unmade tackles, he did not value them.
"Xabi Alonso, the Spain and ex-Liverpool midfield player, understands this instinctively. He told the Guardian that he was surprised so many young players at Liverpool herald 'tackling' as one of their strengths. 'I can't get into my head that [soccer] development would educate 'tackling' as a quality, something to learn, to teach, a characteristic of your play,' he said. 'How can that be a way of seeing the game? I just don't understand [soccer] in those terms. Tackling is a [last] resort and you will need it, but it isn't a quality to aspire to, a definition.' To Alonso, tackling happens when something goes wrong, not right.
"There was no greater exponent of this than Paolo Maldini, the legendary former captain of AC Milan and Italy. Maldini, famously, rarely made a tackle. Mike Forde, Chelsea's director of [soccer] operations, reckons Maldini made 'one every two games.' Maldini never had to get his legs dirty because he was always in the right place to cut off the danger. The best defenders are those who never tackle. The art of good defending is about dogs that do not bark.
"This is difficult to accept-- even for Ferguson-- because it requires us to engage in counterfactual thinking-- that is, we need to imagine a world that is counter to the facts, a world that does not exist."
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Hockey is a bit different, but this reminded me about LHHers saying that Andrew MacDonald blocking tons of shots was not a good indication of his play. And the Maldini paragraph reminded me of Kenny Jonsson, seemingly always in great position on the ice, hardly ever throwing a thunderous body-check, yet often edging out forwards until there is no where to go. (I think we saw some of that in de Haan's game this past season.)
And as the saying goes, a defenseman who is hardly noticeable is usually having a good game. (This soccer book goes into how it is human to focus on events-- shots, hits, blocks in NHL terms-- rather than non-events, such as good positional play that causes a predictable pass and allows teammates to recover defensively.)
BTW, in the context of the excerpt above, it sounds like by "tackling" they mean slide-tackles and lunges. (Aggressive tackles, in other words.)... And it is different than hockey, because in soccer you're not supposed to make much contact with a player even an instant after he/she releases the ball. (And obviously the contact allowed in soccer, even to a player in possession, is quite a bit different than hockey.)
The book also explains how data suggests that not allowing a goal is generally slightly more important (in relation to standings points) than scoring a goal. (Using pretty much all the stats from the top four soccer leagues in the world of the past many years.)... And that is under a system where it is 3 pts for a win, 1 pt for a tie, 0 pts for a loss, and no overtime period! How much more does it matter in the NHL, where simply getting through 60 minutes tied produces an average of 1.5 points in a game for a team, when the most a team can take away is 2?