The Golden Boys: Just Like Watching Brazil?

For years it was always a pleasure to be able to sing the song “Bra-zil…it’s just like watching Brazil,” a rare treat on a surprising afternoon when Watford might, for once, give their opponents a good thrashing. But it has always been sung with tongues firmly in cheeks. This season, however, is a little different…

Whether or not the kit designers realised it at the time, the foresight to design a blue second strip, was a stroke of genius. The famous Brazilian sides of the past have always graced the pitch in vibrant yellow or their blue alternative, repeatedly giving the envious, on-looking world master classes in trickery and flair, turning heads with a dazzling array of skill, creating legendary moments that live long in the collective memory.

Not quite there yet...

Now, I am not saying the current starting line-up at Vicarage Road can be compared alongside such greats as Pele, Jarzinho, Garrincha, Ronaldo, Romario, Bebeto, Ronaldinho, Carlos Alberto, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Zico (the list goes on). So, apart from the colour of their strip, how on earth can watching Watford be like watching the pentacampeões do mundo (five time champions of the world) I hear you say? Well, just this way: the confidence of the team, the ability to demonstrate the gulf in class between themselves and their opposition in the blink of an eye, the air of expectation amongst the fans, and the fact that sometimes it truly is a joy to watch.

This weekend’s comfortable 3-0 away victory at the City Ground was a clinical and sumptuous display of counter-attacking football of the most devastating order; an away day of the sort usually reserved for top teams.

Nottingham Forest – a side with, until Saturday, realistic play-off ambitions – were dispatched with relative ease. It was like watching an Olympic boxing challenger pulling their punches, saving themselves for the later rounds, but still landing three thunderous blows just at the required moment. The score line, although ever so slightly flattering, sent a statement to the rest of the league: “OK, so we are the division’s top scorers and now we have worked out how to keep clean sheets…bring it on.”

For the away contingent, the afternoon was spent in sheer rapturous joy, wittily inventing songs like “3-0 to the Football team,” “We’re just too good for you,” “We’re Watford FC, we play on the floor,” “Is there a fire drill?” “You might as well go home,” etc. etc. The ones that are most telling though, the ones that encapsulate the utter confidence in Watford’s strength going into the latter third of the season, are all the ones to do with going up – “Now you’re going to believe us…the ‘orns are going up,” and so they will.

Such has been the form of the Golden Boys since the beginning of November; it now almost seems an inevitability that promotion is going to happen as they inexorably close in on 2^nd spot. It is like watching Sebastien Vettel relentlessly tear through the field, after a dodgy start, chasing an unlikely podium; he has the superior engine and the skills to match, but has he left it too late?

Vydra - 5 braces in last 5 starts: makes Marlon King look tame!

The fact that Watford have drawn level with their closest rivals with 18 games to play suggests that the timing is just right. With every game, the squad appears to be refining its game, learning a little more about the system and the games of team mates, finding an extra touch of class to apply a lethal finish. Almen Abdi’s delightfully weighted chip and Matej Vydra’s clinical lob mid-way through the second half yesterday is a case in point.

A win against bottom club, Bristol City, on Tuesday will see the Hornets, if only for two days, go into second place in the division; a place they have not occupied since 23^rd February 2008, and before that 2^nd December 2000; not something that happens very often. On both of those occasions, a mid-season implosion led to a downward spiral of frustration, confusion and hopelessness for fans, swiftly followed by four seasons in the wilderness, in mid-table anonymity, also-rans occasionally flirting with idea of relegation, occasionally flirting with the idea of a play-off push; neither ever materialising.

The 2012-13 season, however, will not end the same way. It can’t possibly end the same way. There was a rather hilarious moment of realisation this weekend. A thought that sent made our company burst with laughter: "This must be what it feels like to support Man United!" 

To a casual observer this comparison may seem, again, quite ridiculous. However, what it means is that Watford at last have a team that can win games back to back; a team that approaches every game with nothing other than victory in mind; a team with a confidence that says: “We are a team going somewhere. This game is just a small step.”

The confidence at United is a product of generations of consistency and silverware, but the confidence around Watford at the moment is palpable. Watford fans for years have been used to being “a team that does well on a budget,”, “a very physical side”, who play in a “direct style”. Whereas, at this current moment in time, every game feels winnable, every game feels exciting; every game sees goals carved out with incisive passing moves and clinical finishing. So, although Watford are no samba-footed wizards, no step-over kings, to us, if only for a short while…it is just like watching Brazil.