Chelsea’s recent domestic success based on a relatively unambitious (to say the least) style of play has once again plunged English football into a quasi-existentialist crisis. What, as sofa experts and twitter pundits argue, is really the aim of football: success or entertainment? On the one hand, sport is a competition, thriving on rivalry, combat and ultimately the desire to be the best - as so many hyperbolic sportswear ads would underline. Yet on the other hand, football remains part of the entertainment business, supported entirely on popularity and viewing figures which can in turn generate the sponsorships, the revenue and the logistics which have created the most lucrative and popular sport worldwide.

The main asset of any sport is excitement. The pure, live, unscripted nature of sport can always set it apart from what are essentially its rivals in the entertainment business, namely music, theatre and film. On the other hand, its main nemesis is boredom; a boredom which can manifest itself in both the style of play, but also, and crucially, in the manner of results.

It is easiest for aesthetically unattractive teams (any Tony Pulis team would fit the paradigm) to turn the viewer against football. The concept of an ultra-defensive, unambitious, and a win-at-all costs mentality probably saw its zenith in the late 1960s in Helenio Herrera’s Inter Milan, who went as far as not only developing their on-field ‘catenaccio’ (‘doorbolt’) style, but also pioneered the clandestine use of various pills and syringes off the field. When they were finally beaten in the 1967 European championship by Celtic, European football widely rejoiced at their demise. Skip forward almost half a century and the same could much be said of Chelsea, generally disliked around the country as a result of a tendency to simply grind out results, with the 2012 Champions League Final being the most perfect example.

Yet what ultimately turns the fans against such negativity is more a monotony of success rather than the style of play. A case in point would be Atletico Madrid, who remain widely liked despite having a system based on breaking up play, exploiting set-pieces, and a hard-working and well organised defence. Central to their support is their underdog status; their vastly inferior resources and finances compared to their domestic rivals and the other European heavyweights mean that even a system at worst neo-cattenaccio but at best a refined Stoke finds widespread neutral support. Indeed, defensive organisation is central to almost any inferior team’s game plan. In the early 1990s, AC Milan coach Arrigo Sacchi used to pit ten of his top strikers and midfielders, including Van Basten, Ancelotti, Gullit and Rijkaard, against just four defenders and a goalkeeper and challenge them to score just one goal in fifteen minutes. The well-drilled defence would win every-time. In such a defensive vein would any substantial underdog line up against an overwhelming favourite, and quite rightly - with little public qualms.

The animosity towards defensive outlooks seems, therefore, overwhelmingly directed at teams which appear to have the capabilities to play more expansive football, but do not. People become even more critical if a team based on solely defensive solidity actually does achieve success. For even the philosophically innovative, like Barcelona between 2008 and 2012, find detractors when success comes easily and frequently. Just four years after their lauded victory over Manchester United, their symbolic tiki-taka has been derided as aimless possession football, criticised by its engineer himself, and ultimately consigned to denote boredom. In just such a way is Bayern Munich the most fiercely vilified club in Germany, not because of their monotony of their style, but the monotony of their success.

Disillusionment with any sport is the product of a single team’s repeated success or domination, often no matter the aesthetic quality. Formula 1 is a case in point. The season which saw the most overtakes ever was 2011; yet it was also the nadir of Formula 1’s viewing figures since many grew disheartened by Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull’s constant success. Furthermore, domination of any sport by an individual often has the knock-on effect that the game itself becomes monotonous. Matches are no longer as closely fought, are over by half-time, and occasionally little resistance is offered at all against an opponent steamrolling his way to the title.

Of course, a beautiful style of play can only help the entertainment value of football. But ultimately, the key to football’s appeal is not entertainment but excitement; and as long as each match, and each title, is open, unpredictable, and closely fought, the excited tension produced will provide a level of entertainment which two or three beautiful passing moves will be unable to trump. After all, ask yourself, would you really care if Chelsea played as negatively as they did against Arsenal in the second half if they were down in 14th?