The Question
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THE QUESTION: THE GUARDIAN’S REGULAR IN-DEPTH LOOK AT FOOTBALL TACTICS By Jonathan Wilson CONTENTS The Question: Position or possession? .......................................................................................................................... 4 The Question: How did Bayern Munich outflank Real Madrid? .................................................................................... 7 The Question: What marks Pep Guardiola out as a great coach? ................................................................................. 9 The Question: Why is balance more important than symmetry in lineups? ............................................................... 11 The Question: Why is the back three resurgent in Italy? ............................................................................................ 13 The Question: Is the 3-1-4-2 formation on the rise? ................................................................................................... 15 The Question: Should a manager use tactics unsuitable for his players? ................................................................... 19 The Question: How best for Manchester United to combat Barcelona? .................................................................... 21 The Question: Is three at the back the way forward for Liverpool? ............................................................................ 25 The Question: How did tactics develop in 2010? ........................................................................................................ 27 The Question: Are Barcelona reinventing the W-W formation? ................................................................................. 29 The Question: What is a playmaker's role in the modern game? ............................................................................... 32 The Question: Is 4-2-1-3 the future? ........................................................................................................................... 35 The Question: What next for 4-4-2? ............................................................................................................................ 37 The Question: What have been the tactical lessons of World Cup 2010? .................................................................. 39 The Question: How important is possession? ............................................................................................................. 41 The Question: Why is pressing so crucial in the modern game? ................................................................................. 45 The Question: Why are so many wingers playing on the 'wrong' wings? ................................................................... 48 The Question: How will football tactics develop over the next decade? .................................................................... 52 The Question: How did a nutmeg change football tactics in the noughties? .............................................................. 56 The Question: Do formations have to be symmetrical? .............................................................................................. 59 The Question: Why are teams so tentative about false nines? ................................................................................... 63 The Question: Is the midfield diamond here to stay and how do you counter it? ...................................................... 66 The Question: Why are teams so tentative about false nines? ................................................................................... 70 The Question: Is 4-4-2 making a comeback? ............................................................................................................... 73 The Question: How is Brazil's 4-2-3-1 different from a European 4-2-3-1? ................................................................ 77 2 The Question: Are defensive forwards the future? ..................................................................................................... 79 The Question: Is the box-to-box midfielder dead? ...................................................................................................... 82 The Question: Why is full-back the most important position on the pitch? ............................................................... 86 The Question: Why are Manchester United conceding so few goals – and how do you score against them? ........... 89 The Question: What has happened to the classic goalpoacher?................................................................................. 92 The Question: Why has 4-4-2 been superseded by 4-2-3-1? ...................................................................................... 96 The Question: Why are Barcelona scoring so many goals? ......................................................................................... 99 The Question: Is 3-5-2 dead? ..................................................................................................................................... 102 3 THE QUESTION: POSITION OR POSSESSION? THE FLAW OF SPAIN'S TIKI-TAKA IS THAT A TEAM CAN CONTROL POSSESSION OR IT CAN CONTROL POSITION, BUT IT CAN'T DO BOTH Andrés Iniesta runs into trouble during the game against Italy, where Spain once again were the proactive side. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty Images When Herbert Chapman took charge of Northampton Town in 1907, he realised that dominating the ball was not in itself enough to win matches. What was more important was where you had it and in what circumstances. Accordingly he had his side sit deep, looking to spring forward and attack the space behind their opponents. He was the first theorist of counterattacking football, a principle he went on to employ with great success at Huddersfield and Arsenal. His style wasn't popular. Many thought his sides were simply lucky; others thought to play like that was unmanly, somehow improper, a betrayal of the spirit of the game. Chapman's revelation continues to shape football today. A clear pattern has emerged from the first round of group games at Euro 2012. Holland against Denmark, Germany against Portugal, Spain against Italy, Ireland against Croatia, France against England, the first half of Poland against Greece: each have featured one proactive team taking the game to the opposition; one reactive team sitting deep with compact lines absorbing the pressure, trying to restrict the opposition and looking to score either from counter-attacks or set-plays. Usually, particularly in a tournament in which the quality is as uniform as the European Championship, most teams would hover somewhere around the middle of the spectrum between proactivity and reactivity: what has been striking here is how readily each team has accepted its role. TACKLING TIKI-TAKA The tiki-taka of Spain and Barcelona is perhaps the cause. Against proactivity of that magnitude – even when used defensively – there is little the opposition can do other than to sit back and try to close the space. Some have tried to take Barcelona on, but the tendency has been for them to flare briefly and then crash, as Espanyol and Shakhtar Donetsk, among others, have found. Chile came closest at international level – for their coach at the 2010 World Cup, Marcelo Bielsa, is the high priest of proactive football. They were troubling Spain despite the dismissal of Marco Estrada when it became apparent that a 2-1 defeat for Chile took both sides through, at which time the game fizzled away. 4 It may be grating to hear every defensive display being described as a team "doing a Chelsea" – defending deep in compact lines has been going on since long before April – but it may be that Chelsea's displays against two highly proactive sides in Barcelona and Bayern Munich (who had the first and second best highest possession and pass-completion stats in any of the five top European leagues) confirmed in the minds of others that reactive football can be successful. (The claim defensive football is catenaccio is equally as annoying for a host of reasons, but let's start with the fact that catenaccio in its true form is funded on man-to-man not zonal marking and every side at this tournament is playing zonally). It's not even that the teams who played reactively were particularly negative. Italy were extremely lively once in possession. With Michael Krohn-Dehli swooping in from the left Denmark posed a persistent threat. England even, in the first half at least, had patches in which they moved the ball neatly in the French half. Reactive football can be thrilling, as Germany, who have become much more proactive over the past two years, showed at the last World Cup (actually Germany might have intended to be more proactive; it's just that against Australia, England and Argentina they faced opponents who defended so stupidly against them that it made sense to sit back and hit them on the break). What has been exposed over the past few months, though, is the flaw of tiki-taka, which is that a team can control possession or it can control position, but it can't do both. Or rather, can't guarantee doing both. This isn't to say that tiki-taka is finished, for all styles of play have their weakness. But for a couple of years it seemed invincible. What after all could you do when the ball was being pinged about midfield at 25 passes a minute? Real Madrid under José Mourinho tried unsettling Barcelona by pressing, but that left space behind the back four. He tried spoiling, but Barcelona are adept