7 ms·

Ironically, the most unrelentingly boring and defensive style of soccer is to be on offense most of the game, by maintaining possession and doing nothing with i

by dkarl 5y ago

Ironically, the most unrelentingly boring and defensive style of soccer is to be on offense most of the game, by maintaining possession and doing nothing with it. I say "ironically" because teams that maintain possession and "build slowly" usually receive credit for aspiring to play beautiful attacking football. When it works, and the offense circulates the ball around in nimble interchanges until they pounce on an almost imperceptible defensive error and pry open successively larger holes by quick intelligent passing until they have a high-percentage shot on goal, it can be sublime. This is how Barcelona played some of the most beautiful football of all time. It is often compared to picking a lock, since this slow, methodical style gives the defense time to sit back and prepare for you, which means you are attacking a defense at its best and most organized. However, many Barcelona-wannabes aren't as great as Barcelona was, and for them the practical function of maintaining possession and "attacking" is not to score but to prevent the other team from scoring. (Spoiler alert: this is the punch line of the essay.) A team that spends most of the game "on the attack" may produce nothing but boring, sterile, fruitless possession, while their opponents spend relatively less time on offense, but more productively, because when they get the ball they directly attempt to do something with it. For those who follow MLS, yes, I am an Austin FC fan. Fingers crossed that our new signings add some quality to our attack.

duxup 5y ago
There was a college hockey rivalry between North Dakota and Minnesota years ago that had this crazy contrast of styles. You'd have games with North Dakota with 12 shots on goal (crazy low numbers) and Minnesota with 40 or more shots on goal. The results, the games were still 3 to 4 and so on and very competitive. North Dakota would setup and just pass and pass. Minnesota would hang back defensively and wait for them to take their shot and try not to make a mistake. Minnesota would get into the offensive zone and just pepper away with shots at the goal and North Dakota would buzz around trying to scramble for that puck. It was amusing because it was such a contrast of styles with each end of the rink playing entirely different. And yet they were very close / fun games. Fortunately in hockey it doesn't really slow things down quite like soccer when you take your time.
- protomyth 5y ago
  Well, UND having Ed Belfour did help to keep the scoring down.
dekervin 5y ago
You can think of different football styles as differents areas of a multidimensional space. Depending on your players strength, an area is better suited for your team. But the thing is, each of those area has a local maxima. You excelently described barcelona style circa 2010. But to play it and expect to win you need Iniesta AND Xavi BOTH. because you have to be able to take advantage of those 4 to 8 opportunities in a match against a top opponent. Those player must have the psychological strength to not flinch when the opportunity present itself, must have the technical ability to execute what they want and you need at least 2 of them if you want to pursue intelligently whatever tactical advantage you gain. In the spanish team you had iniesta, xavi and silva. Those player are exceedingly rare and are not simply good technical players, the share a common understanding of the "chess game" they are playing . The danger is if you don't recognise you don't have those player, possession football puts you at a disadvantage against a team with offensive talent, organisation and defensive will ! ( think France 2018 )
- pertymcpert 5y ago
  > You excelently described barcelona style circa 2010. But to play it and expect to win you need Iniesta AND Xavi BOTH. I agree, although at the risk of extending this to the entire midfield/defence, a deeply technical holding midfielder to create the midfield passing triangles with Xavi/Iniesta in Busquets is crucial.
hencq 5y ago
As you say, teams have learned to defend against the tiki taka style of offense by playing a very compact organized defense. This leads to this whole slow, boring game. However, in a way that's already old-fashioned. Teams have moved on from that and started to play more gegenpressing. Here the philosophy is to win the ball early in the opponent's possession so they're unorganized defensively (because they were organized for attacking). This is for example how Liverpool plays. Many people classify it as defensive soccer, but the idea behind it is actually very attack oriented. So much so that at the extreme end some people advocate for deliberately losing the ball (on the opponent's half), with the idea of winning it back quickly. The idea here is to force the opponent into having to attack and thereby ruin their defensive structure. I guess the main point is that tactics in soccer are continuously evolving with coaches trying to find weaknesses in their opponent's style and thereby developing new strategies for others to react to.
- hansoolo 5y ago
  Is "gegenpressing" used in English?
  - bodyfour 5y ago
    It has been since Jürgen Klopp started working here.
shoto_io 5y ago
It depends I'd say. Bayern played a lot like this in 2020, which also lead them winning the Champions League. The key difference to what you describe was that they circulated the ball waiting for a chance to play an extremely fast attacking leading to a goal. Like an explosion after a few rounds of slow passing.
- sveme 5y ago
  That was indeed brilliant. Loved to watch that. Explosive attack, instant chaos. Wonderful football. Reminded me of Bayern playing under Heynckes, very similar in style.
- 988747 5y ago
  The key thing here is: Bayern has the best striker in the world, Lewandowski. So they will keep passing the ball around, until the opportunity arises to pass to him, and he knows what to do with such gift. Spain in the Euro tried to play the same tactics, but they lack a good striker, making the whole game incredibly boring.
- dekervin 5y ago
  I totally disagree, bayern 2020 made every pass and run with the intent to score, almost never to hold the ball. Every pass is intended to open your defense. If you react well they try something else. If you don't well ... sorry for you. Just look at their chapions league final goal. Or even look at their 2021 first match against PSG. Barcelona was in the strangulating business. Bayern was in the smashing things open business.
lordnacho 5y ago
Perhaps the key is that possession and attacking are not actually as connected as it seems to the casual observer. If you get the ball back in your own box, are you defending or attacking? My problem with the tiki-taka is exactly what you describe. Pass it around but do very little, wear out everyone's patience while you wait for a gap to open up. Even recent versions of Barca and Spain have felt this way at times, the difference between doing it positively and negatively seems to be pretty razor thin.
- vp8989 5y ago
  The evolution from this seems to be to overload just one side of the pitch (or effectively just a quarter of it, instead of the entire opposition half) while leaving a wide attacker on the other side for a quick switch of play. The defending team is then forced into either committing more defenders into the overloaded side (and leaving 0 or 1 defenders to cover the lone winger) or staying symmetrical and thus likely not impeding the buildup enough. This is basically how Italy played in the Euros, overloading the left and leaving Chiesa open on the right thus creating valuable opportunities for him to take on a defender 1:1 with lots of space behind them. This is probably the best you can do if you want to have high possession without constantly running into brick walls.
  - barrkel 5y ago
    Spinazzola was one of Italy's best players until he got injured. He practically acted like an extra player, converting from a back to a forward as the team pushed on. Again, overloading the left. The Italy-Spain match was one of the best I've ever watched. But if Spinazzola hadn't gotten injured, I think Italy wouldn't have had to rely on penalties for Spain and England.
bachmeier 5y ago
> This is how Barcelona played some of the most beautiful football of all time. I'm going to go out on a limb and say having way more money than almost all of your opponents had something to do with it too. Oh, and having Messi might have been of some importance as well. I'd like to see some data that shows I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything to suggest it's helpful to possess the ball at midfield. If anything, you open yourself to easy counterattacks. Possessing the ball in front of the other team's goalie is a different story, but of course that is many times harder to do.
- jonwinstanley 5y ago
  Agreed, Barcelona between 2008-2012 had several of the greatest players on the planet at the time, and almost all had come through their own academy. Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol and Busquets. Plus in Guardiola, one of the greatest managers of all time.
- barrkel 5y ago
  Possessing the ball in midfield isn't useful if the opposing team is entirely between you and the goal. If, however, you pass through the other team's forwards to your midfield, then it's different; you've taken some of the opposition out of the game for a time. On the other hand, your midfield will be immediately under pressure and they have to do something with the ball. All too often, you see midfield players simply pass it back to the back four, resulting in a gradual press rather than risking an attack.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Possessing the ball in midfield means you have an opportunity to move the ball closer to the opponents' goalkeeper, or the option of keeping it safe so that the opposition don't possess it near your goalkeeper. Having the ball in midfield over a period might only give you a very marginal chance of scoring at the end of it, but not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent that needs to score.
  - bachmeier 5y ago
    > not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent that needs to score That depends heavily on who you're playing. There's no such thing as possessing the ball for the entire game. A team with a strong counterattack only needs one pass to be off the mark to score.
Someone 5y ago
I don’t see the continuous probing of a defense as “doing nothing”. A boxer will feint a zillion attacks, too, before going for the real one. That’s not “doing nothing”. It only becomes sterile if the team in possession of the ball plays the ball around without doing real probing. On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it.
- dkarl 5y ago
  True, my team might be compiling a detailed dossier of each opposing team's defensive weaknesses so we can make a clean sweep of the league next year. If so, we are playing our cards very close to the chest.
- partomniscient 5y ago
  >On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it. But it underwhelms the fans, and bores the team-neutral audience, because unless they read the game at that level of nuance - that the team is just passing it around the box. I think maybe Cruyff had a point when the article mentions: Unfortunately, I abandoned the book after a long paragraph on page 89 in which Cruyff explains why, in his opinion, the most important thing in football is not victory, but entertaining the crowd. My personal opinion that the refereeing has been woefully inadequate and getting worse, and VAR which was an attempt to improve things has actually made things worse. Does the sport even matter when one mistake by an official drastically changes the outcome. High scoring sports like basketball mitigate this issue most of the time because the better team is likely to win by more than 1 or 2 points. I'm boycotting football until after the next World Cup, but it was nice to hear that the Euro finals was one of the best refereed matches in a long time. Pity the ref. himself retired afterwards.
  - Someone 5y ago
    I think the goal of any sport should more be engagement than entertainment. For entertainment, go to a circus, movie, or theater. Also, any sport at top level suffers from common people not being able to see what’s happening. That’s unavoidable. For example, at Olympic level, a hurdler having to shorten a pace by a few cm at one hurdle can make a decisive difference. In gymnastics, I doubt any layman can, given a video stream, rank the top competitors the way the jury does (would be an interesting experiment to do) Also IMO, rules that more reliably let the better team win work against engaging the crowd. Nothing better for user engagement than that ‘goal’ in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

by dkarl 5y ago

duxup 5y ago

There was a college hockey rivalry between North Dakota and Minnesota years ago that had this crazy contrast of styles. You'd have games with North Dakota with 12 shots on goal (crazy low numbers) and Minnesota with 40 or more shots on goal. The results, the games were still 3 to 4 and so on and very competitive. North Dakota would setup and just pass and pass. Minnesota would hang back defensively and wait for them to take their shot and try not to make a mistake. Minnesota would get into the offensive zone and just pepper away with shots at the goal and North Dakota would buzz around trying to scramble for that puck. It was amusing because it was such a contrast of styles with each end of the rink playing entirely different. And yet they were very close / fun games. Fortunately in hockey it doesn't really slow things down quite like soccer when you take your time.

protomyth 5y ago
Well, UND having Ed Belfour did help to keep the scoring down.

dekervin 5y ago

You can think of different football styles as differents areas of a multidimensional space. Depending on your players strength, an area is better suited for your team. But the thing is, each of those area has a local maxima. You excelently described barcelona style circa 2010. But to play it and expect to win you need Iniesta AND Xavi BOTH. because you have to be able to take advantage of those 4 to 8 opportunities in a match against a top opponent. Those player must have the psychological strength to not flinch when the opportunity present itself, must have the technical ability to execute what they want and you need at least 2 of them if you want to pursue intelligently whatever tactical advantage you gain. In the spanish team you had iniesta, xavi and silva. Those player are exceedingly rare and are not simply good technical players, the share a common understanding of the "chess game" they are playing . The danger is if you don't recognise you don't have those player, possession football puts you at a disadvantage against a team with offensive talent, organisation and defensive will ! ( think France 2018 )

pertymcpert 5y ago
> You excelently described barcelona style circa 2010. But to play it and expect to win you need Iniesta AND Xavi BOTH. I agree, although at the risk of extending this to the entire midfield/defence, a deeply technical holding midfielder to create the midfield passing triangles with Xavi/Iniesta in Busquets is crucial.

hencq 5y ago

As you say, teams have learned to defend against the tiki taka style of offense by playing a very compact organized defense. This leads to this whole slow, boring game. However, in a way that's already old-fashioned. Teams have moved on from that and started to play more gegenpressing. Here the philosophy is to win the ball early in the opponent's possession so they're unorganized defensively (because they were organized for attacking). This is for example how Liverpool plays. Many people classify it as defensive soccer, but the idea behind it is actually very attack oriented. So much so that at the extreme end some people advocate for deliberately losing the ball (on the opponent's half), with the idea of winning it back quickly. The idea here is to force the opponent into having to attack and thereby ruin their defensive structure. I guess the main point is that tactics in soccer are continuously evolving with coaches trying to find weaknesses in their opponent's style and thereby developing new strategies for others to react to.

hansoolo 5y ago
Is "gegenpressing" used in English?
- bodyfour 5y ago
  It has been since Jürgen Klopp started working here.

shoto_io 5y ago

It depends I'd say. Bayern played a lot like this in 2020, which also lead them winning the Champions League. The key difference to what you describe was that they circulated the ball waiting for a chance to play an extremely fast attacking leading to a goal. Like an explosion after a few rounds of slow passing.

sveme 5y ago
That was indeed brilliant. Loved to watch that. Explosive attack, instant chaos. Wonderful football. Reminded me of Bayern playing under Heynckes, very similar in style.
988747 5y ago
The key thing here is: Bayern has the best striker in the world, Lewandowski. So they will keep passing the ball around, until the opportunity arises to pass to him, and he knows what to do with such gift. Spain in the Euro tried to play the same tactics, but they lack a good striker, making the whole game incredibly boring.
dekervin 5y ago
I totally disagree, bayern 2020 made every pass and run with the intent to score, almost never to hold the ball. Every pass is intended to open your defense. If you react well they try something else. If you don't well ... sorry for you. Just look at their chapions league final goal. Or even look at their 2021 first match against PSG. Barcelona was in the strangulating business. Bayern was in the smashing things open business.

lordnacho 5y ago

Perhaps the key is that possession and attacking are not actually as connected as it seems to the casual observer. If you get the ball back in your own box, are you defending or attacking? My problem with the tiki-taka is exactly what you describe. Pass it around but do very little, wear out everyone's patience while you wait for a gap to open up. Even recent versions of Barca and Spain have felt this way at times, the difference between doing it positively and negatively seems to be pretty razor thin.

vp8989 5y ago
The evolution from this seems to be to overload just one side of the pitch (or effectively just a quarter of it, instead of the entire opposition half) while leaving a wide attacker on the other side for a quick switch of play. The defending team is then forced into either committing more defenders into the overloaded side (and leaving 0 or 1 defenders to cover the lone winger) or staying symmetrical and thus likely not impeding the buildup enough. This is basically how Italy played in the Euros, overloading the left and leaving Chiesa open on the right thus creating valuable opportunities for him to take on a defender 1:1 with lots of space behind them. This is probably the best you can do if you want to have high possession without constantly running into brick walls.
- barrkel 5y ago
  Spinazzola was one of Italy's best players until he got injured. He practically acted like an extra player, converting from a back to a forward as the team pushed on. Again, overloading the left. The Italy-Spain match was one of the best I've ever watched. But if Spinazzola hadn't gotten injured, I think Italy wouldn't have had to rely on penalties for Spain and England.

bachmeier 5y ago

> This is how Barcelona played some of the most beautiful football of all time. I'm going to go out on a limb and say having way more money than almost all of your opponents had something to do with it too. Oh, and having Messi might have been of some importance as well. I'd like to see some data that shows I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything to suggest it's helpful to possess the ball at midfield. If anything, you open yourself to easy counterattacks. Possessing the ball in front of the other team's goalie is a different story, but of course that is many times harder to do.

jonwinstanley 5y ago
Agreed, Barcelona between 2008-2012 had several of the greatest players on the planet at the time, and almost all had come through their own academy. Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol and Busquets. Plus in Guardiola, one of the greatest managers of all time.
barrkel 5y ago
Possessing the ball in midfield isn't useful if the opposing team is entirely between you and the goal. If, however, you pass through the other team's forwards to your midfield, then it's different; you've taken some of the opposition out of the game for a time. On the other hand, your midfield will be immediately under pressure and they have to do something with the ball. All too often, you see midfield players simply pass it back to the back four, resulting in a gradual press rather than risking an attack.
notahacker 5y ago
Possessing the ball in midfield means you have an opportunity to move the ball closer to the opponents' goalkeeper, or the option of keeping it safe so that the opposition don't possess it near your goalkeeper. Having the ball in midfield over a period might only give you a very marginal chance of scoring at the end of it, but not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent that needs to score.
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > not being able to get the ball back is an absolutely massive disadvantage for an opponent that needs to score That depends heavily on who you're playing. There's no such thing as possessing the ball for the entire game. A team with a strong counterattack only needs one pass to be off the mark to score.

Someone 5y ago

I don’t see the continuous probing of a defense as “doing nothing”. A boxer will feint a zillion attacks, too, before going for the real one. That’s not “doing nothing”. It only becomes sterile if the team in possession of the ball plays the ball around without doing real probing. On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it.

dkarl 5y ago
True, my team might be compiling a detailed dossier of each opposing team's defensive weaknesses so we can make a clean sweep of the league next year. If so, we are playing our cards very close to the chest.
partomniscient 5y ago
>On the other hand, some probing may be so subtle that it takes an expert to see it. But it underwhelms the fans, and bores the team-neutral audience, because unless they read the game at that level of nuance - that the team is just passing it around the box. I think maybe Cruyff had a point when the article mentions: Unfortunately, I abandoned the book after a long paragraph on page 89 in which Cruyff explains why, in his opinion, the most important thing in football is not victory, but entertaining the crowd. My personal opinion that the refereeing has been woefully inadequate and getting worse, and VAR which was an attempt to improve things has actually made things worse. Does the sport even matter when one mistake by an official drastically changes the outcome. High scoring sports like basketball mitigate this issue most of the time because the better team is likely to win by more than 1 or 2 points. I'm boycotting football until after the next World Cup, but it was nice to hear that the Euro finals was one of the best refereed matches in a long time. Pity the ref. himself retired afterwards.
- Someone 5y ago
  I think the goal of any sport should more be engagement than entertainment. For entertainment, go to a circus, movie, or theater. Also, any sport at top level suffers from common people not being able to see what’s happening. That’s unavoidable. For example, at Olympic level, a hurdler having to shorten a pace by a few cm at one hurdle can make a decisive difference. In gymnastics, I doubt any layman can, given a video stream, rank the top competitors the way the jury does (would be an interesting experiment to do) Also IMO, rules that more reliably let the better team win work against engaging the crowd. Nothing better for user engagement than that ‘goal’ in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.