Design. Architecture. Football.

So I think one reason people find football aesthetically and formally appealing - leaving aside other obvious reasons - is to do with this see-saw balancing act; when the fragile beauty of design can be denied so effortlessly by the combination of chance, improvisation, circumstance and irrational passion. It's the call-and-response tension between these forces that makes the game at the highest level so thrilling. And it's this tension which is reminiscent of adaptive design ideas discussed here previously; that design isn't the end of the process, but the beginning; that interpretation and improvisation will define the end-product, not the original design - in architecture, in music, in football.
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Reference to Winners' book; Winner describes how Dutch football's pervasive and serious discussion of space and systems is an entirely predictable product of its culture.