4 years ago by dkarl
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.
4 years ago by duxup
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.
4 years ago by protomyth
Well, UND having Ed Belfour did help to keep the scoring down.
4 years ago by hencq
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.
4 years ago by hansoolo
Is "gegenpressing" used in English?
4 years ago by bodyfour
It has been since JĆ¼rgen Klopp started working here.
4 years ago by bachmeier
> 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.
4 years ago by jonwinstanley
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.
4 years ago by barrkel
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.
4 years ago by notahacker
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.
4 years ago by bachmeier
> 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.
4 years ago by lordnacho
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.
4 years ago by vp8989
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.
4 years ago by barrkel
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.
4 years ago by heyheyhey
I love watching defensive football, teams like Atletico Madrid defeating the Barcelona in the 15-16 Champions League finals.
What I hate watching is the time-wasting, injury faking shenanigans that defensive teams also do. Unfortunately, it's a part of the game due to football's insistence on using a running clock, which makes zero sense from a competitive aspect and needs to be changed.
4 years ago by nemo44x
> Unfortunately, it's a part of the game due to football's insistence on using a running clock, which makes zero sense from a competitive aspect and needs to be changed
Can anyone explain why this is, either than historic reasons like "it's the way it has always been done."? It seems a bit odd in today's world that they don't have a clock that everyone can see and the ref having the ability to signal to stop and start it.
And perhaps it's just accepted but I've often found it strange too that in extra-time the ref will usually let play continue through the time while a team is on the attack and only ending the game after the defense has killed the threat. It seems like a lot of discretion for a single person, the ref, to have.
4 years ago by bodyfour
From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#Duration_...
> Added time was introduced because of an incident which happened in 1891 during a match between Stoke and Aston Villa. Trailing 1ā0 and with just two minutes remaining, Stoke were awarded a penalty. Villa's goalkeeper kicked the ball out of the ground, and by the time the ball had been recovered, the 90 minutes had elapsed and the game was over
If you didn't let the ref continue the game to their discretion it would make time-wasting tactics even worse. At least now if a team is adjudged to be taking the piss with the timewasting the ref can just mentally tack another minute or two onto the game. It's good that there isn't a "hard stop" that will end the game even if an attack is in full flow.
4 years ago by nemo44x
Right but what Iām saying is why canāt the ref just stop the clock with a hand signal when the ball isnāt in play and restart it when it is? Every other sport with a clock that Iām aware of does this.
4 years ago by heyheyhey
> At least now if a team is adjudged to be taking the piss with the timewasting the ref can just mentally tack another minute or two onto the game.
But anyone who regularly watches football knows that stoppage time is ridiculously inconsistent. A half can have 3 goals and VAR reviews and only have 4 minutes of stoppage time. Then within those 4 minutes, the winning team will take 30 seconds per goal kick and then the ref will blow time at 4 minutes on the dot.
Again, it makes zero sense from a competitive aspect.
4 years ago by tomc1985
A starting and stopping clock is one of the things I absolutely can't stand about American football. Games last entirely too long because of it. One of the things I like most about soccer is that games start and end quickly, and I can do other things with the evening. When I was a student in Europe I could meet up with some friends at a bar after class and be home in time for dinner.
4 years ago by jonwinstanley
Itās definitely been considered but football has some entrenched traditions and this change would be hard to get through. I donāt think fans would want it.
The rules state that the referee should add on any wasted time at the end, but it rarely seems to happen particularly accurately.
4 years ago by kamarg
FIFA is currently trialing a 30:00 half with a countdown clock that stops when play is interrupted. Along with that throwins would become kickins, teams have unlimited substitutions, a yellow card would result in a five minute penalty similar to hockey, and the ability to self-kick (dribble) on set pieces.
The trials took place at the end of July this year at a youth tournament.
You can read a bit more about it at https://theathletic.com/2730341/2021/07/27/the-future-of-foo... if you have a subscription.
4 years ago by nemo44x
Agreed but VAR is a thing abd I donāt hear too much griping over it. Then again it is used sparingly.
4 years ago by approxim8ion
Good defensive football is a joy to watch. It's a feat of organization and doesn't necessarily mean the teams don't score at all, or don't score good goals.
Someone like Antonio Conte has a pretty defensive style and his teams often rank very low (good) in goals conceded, but they are also almost always in the top 2-3 teams in terms of goals scored.
More recently, Thomas Tuchel's defensive reorganization of Chelsea this last season completely changed their approach to the game and won them the Champions' League.
4 years ago by unabridged
I've always wanted to see soccer played with two balls on the field. I think it would be many times more interesting.
4 years ago by ardit33
haha... that would be wild. I bet it would look more like a middle school kids game, with two groups of each team chasing the two different balls.
4 years ago by jabl
If anyone is interested in the historical development of football tactics there's a pretty good book that covers it called Inverting the Pyramid, by Jonathan Wilson.
The title of the book refers to the broad trend going from a few defenders and lots of strikers to the modern game with the opposite.
4 years ago by kome
Great article! Thanks for sharing. This is potentially a great introduction to football for people who doesn't care about football (like USians)
4 years ago by User23
The funny thing is that the name soccer is of English origin[1] and is the more precise term, since it's short for Association Football. However, when one just says football it could be any number of ball games that involve using the feet at least some of the time[2].
[1] https://www.lexico.com/explore/whats-the-origin-of-the-word-...
4 years ago by mellosouls
The first point is true; the second less so. If you use the term "football" most of the world will make the assumption you mean football, as opposed to any national derivatives of it or other games.
4 years ago by phamilton
What's more fun is the theory that "football" is not about how one contacts the ball but more about how one plays on foot rather than on a horse. The term "football" was derisive towards the games peasants play vs nobility playing games like polo.
4 years ago by jonwinstanley
I like this theory but in England, the standardised game was played mostly by the wealthy nobility around the years 1850-1880.
Working class people, such as in the teams from mill towns like Preston, Darwin and Blackburn joined the FA cup later on.
4 years ago by undefined
4 years ago by dzonga
defensive football is beatiful no doubt. but there's certain coaches like Diego simone, who take it to the extreme and end up implementing terrorist football. end of day, I would rather watch a defensive team, with creative flair upfront. not the current state of football with endless passes while trying to retain possession.
4 years ago by russellbeattie
Still trying to figure out that thumbnail... Two blue, one white, one red and one green jersey. Definitely some version of soccer I wasn't aware of.
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