OPTING FOR OPEN FOOTBALL, Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has acquired winger Florent Malouda (above) from Lyon for 13.5 million pounds to give his team greater width on the pitch. -- PHOTO: AP

IS ATTACKING football dead, or dormant, or momentarily out of fashion?

We are a year on from the World Cup, won on penalty kicks by Italy who got there by conceding just two goals in seven matches - that is a goal every 330 minutes, counting extra time.

France, the defeated finalists, were almost as mean in defence, conceding three goals in the tournament.

Both Italy and France proved that it was possible to be the best in the world by scoring a goal a game and forbidding opponents to do the same.

Twelve months later, Brazil reined in jogo bonito. Coach Dunga told us The Beautiful Game, in his opinion, is all about efficiency.

He chose just one recognised flair player - Robinho - and told him that he had to chase back and help out in midfield and defence.

Dunga's pragmatism squeezed the flair out of Argentina, and he took the Copa America back to Brazil.

Right now, the Asian Cup is full of running. Take Malaysia's porous defence out of the equation, and the fact is that most groups were dominated by nations that made sure they conceded one goal, or less, per game.

Some of them, to be sure, are playing pragmatic football, conserving energy, where they can, in extreme heat and humidity.

Yet, even in Europe, where the air is cool or cold, adventure has had its wings clipped.

In the Champions League, the flamboyance of Barcelona and Arsenal in 2006 was replaced by the more solid teamwork of AC Milan and Liverpool this year.

Yes, Manchester United revived the cavalier football for which Alex Ferguson is renowned. Yes, United relieved Chelsea of the Premier League title.

But, as much as Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs had to do with that, undoubtedly Ferguson (or is it Carlos Quieroz?) sorted out the defence far better than before.

Most of us would take that balance: Good defenders like Nemanja Vidic stopping attacks at one end, and getting the ball to quick forwards at the other.

However, United ran into Milan and out of Europe. And, in Spain, Barcelona's reign was ended by Real Madrid whose achievement was heavily organised by Fabio Capello, the coach promptly sacked because his face did not fit.

Officially, Capello went because his football was too pragmatic, too lacking in style for the aficionados of the Bernabeu.

Interesting, because Bernd Schuster, Capello's replacement, has nowhere near the pedigree of winning titles as Capello.

Doubly interesting because Schuster's success with modest Getafe was, to put it bluntly, sometimes achieved by players roughing up the likes of Barcelona.

El Barca? Ronaldinho was in post-World Cup fatigue, Lionel Messi and Samuel Eto'o spent half the season injured, and the elan, the rhythm of Barcelona's pass and move beauty, went AWOL.

Frank Rijkaard remains as coach, but he and the board have formed a committee which will monitor from week to week whether 'complacency' is affecting the team.

The suspicion within the club is that, having won the Spanish league twice, and then beaten Arsenal to win the Champions Cup, some Barca players sat on their laurels. From the outside, it looked like Barcelona's imbalance was to blame. They are pleasing on the eye when they have the ball, but they defend badly.

So, with the exception of signing Thierry Henry, it is significant that Barcelona's summer has been spent recruiting defensive muscle.

Henry's era as Arsenal's symbolic hero was over anyway. The London media portray him as a man whose marriage to an English model had run out of amour; he had to get away.

The reality was that, since the double disappointment of losing the Champions League final in Paris and the World Cup final in Berlin, he was scarcely seen.

He was not fit, in mind, body or soul last season.

Arsene Wenger, his mentor since the player was a youth, did exceptionally well to make Henry the goal-scoring god of Highbury.

But the expensive move to the new Emirates Stadium seldom saw the full flow of Henry's French flair.

Whether Barcelona will rekindle it, we wait to find out. Whether Henry in a team not built solely for his movement, his whims, is such a superstar, time will reveal.

I felt the season before last that Henry should have seen his 30th birthday approaching, and should have sought his own challenge within Arsenal's developing team.

He could have dropped back, alongside the emerging genius Cesc Fabregas, and become the master of Arsenal's tempo, providing the passes for younger legs to run for.

Instead, whether because his sciatic nerve and other injuries signalled his body's rebellion against a decade of brilliance, or because in his mind he needed a complete change, he became a sideshow.

His 226 goals in 364 appearances for the Gunners will probably never be approached again, but what has he left for Barca?

That is the 16.5-million pound (S$49.5 million) question. Wenger, with regrets no doubt, has cashed in Arsenal's blue-chip commodity.

The coming weeks and months will tell us whether even Wenger has concluded that everybody else's football towards more negative style obliges him to stiffen up Arsenal.

He has, in any case, just months to make up his mind. The clock is running on Wenger's contract, Arsenal is under constant speculation that the American Stan Kronke is still buying up shares with a view to another takeover of an English club.

David Dein, Wenger's best friend on the board until he was forced to resign because of his links to Kronke, hovers in the wings.

If Kronke wins control, and if Dein is restored, Wenger will probably start his real post-Henry regeneration of the new Arsenal.

Meantime, whisper it quietly because assurances out of Stamford Bridge are notoriously deceiving, the suggestion is that Jose Mourinho intends to buck the trend towards pragmatism.

Granted one more crack at the Champions League, he has acquired Florent Malouda and says he will broaden Chelsea's narrow football this season by playing open football on both wings.

Mourinho, arch-pragmatist, taking a swing to attacking football in the year that the rest go defensive?

The Champions League next May ends up in Moscow, and he knows what his paymaster Roman Abramovich wants most.

Can it be that, against recent form and against his own instincts, he will become the champion of open play this season?

Attacking football dead? Swings and roundabouts, some go forward, some go back, and some dare to be different.

It need not be a season of dull, defensive, despair.

stsports@sph.com.sg