My thoughts on Tactics.

Blogger #18

The basic premise of football is very simple. As it is so often expressed, it’s 22 men trying to kick a ball between a couple of pairs of sticks. And yet, for such a simple game, football has proved to be remarkably difficult to analyse since its inception almost 150 years ago.

At the base of all football analyses and our attempts to impose order on the chaos that is football, lies tactics. There have always been attempts to invalidate the notion of tactics in football and its influence over players and individualism as illustrated by Kevin Keegan's famous assertion that his tactics for winning a match were to "score more goals than the opposition". The statement does make sense and you won’t find a soul that disagrees with it, but the assertion downplays the impact of tactics on the game, a game where we repeatedly find smaller, but well-organised and well-prepared teams beating bigger teams with more skilful players. So to think that it's not the formation that matters but the players is to misunderstand what tactics and formations are. Even if there are no 'tactics', there are still tactics. Which is to say, even if players run around like headless chickens kicking the crap out of each other, that would still be a form of tactic, that is, an approach to a game, whether it was communicated by a coach or just simply 'performed' by the players. We can never play a game of football without both players and tactics.

This is where arguments between the importance of a system versus individualism are often misguided. The idea that the distribution of players on the pitch and the relationship between them is irrelevant is ridiculous, but so is the idea that players are mere pieces on a board that can be commanded around like in chess. Of course individual talent, personality and attitude matters. For example, a pressing game needs very fit, disciplined players. And nowhere else is this conflict better represented than at Real Madrid, and in particular, by Cristiano Ronaldo.

Madrid have an unique approach to the transfer market. The ‘Galacticos’ favour stars over system. They tried to sign the world’s most exciting players and try to cram them into the same side. There is no real system, no project. It’s more about exploiting individual qualities. Figo, Zidane, and Raul don’t track back, so place Makelele in front of the back four to defend. It’s more reactive than proactive and begs the question of the point of tactics and teamwork.

Gary Neville once explained in a brilliant article how frustrating he found it to play behind Ronaldo. Here was a player who rarely stuck to his designated position and did little in terms of tracking back, and yet Neville goes on to say that these drawbacks were more than made up for by Ronaldo’s efficiency in going forward. And he wasn’t exaggerating. Ronaldo is an exceptional player, and his stats are astounding – 164 goals in 151 league appearances. He can beat any defender one on one, his finishing is clinical, he’s great in the air and can easily hold himself in a physical battle. But for all his brilliance, his weaknesses as mentioned above, can and will be exploited by the best teams (as Dortmund did). This is not to say that Madrid will never beat the top teams with Ronaldo playing. These weaknesses could of course be rectified by playing him as a striker. But the dynamics of that position could result in reducing his effectiveness. The point here is that most sides with a player like Ronaldo in it, playing in the role he is now, will struggle to reach the level that Barcelona did under Guardiola (or Bayern now), Milan under Arrigo Sacchi, or the Dutch side in the 70’s. That Dutch side failing to win the World Cup in 1974 is still a huge story, that’s how good they were. They're remembered as one of the great all-time teams and their system has influenced football ever since. Nobody cares about the teams that beat them. These teams favour the collective over the individual, placing an almost unhealthy emphasis on team work and collective player positioning.

When it comes to understanding such detailed and fine methods, one of the ways we have developed for interpretation and our own understanding is formations. But how far have we progressed in beginning to understand the nature of these tactics and the meaning of those series of numbers that denote formations?

This brilliant analysis of Liverpool’s formations (their 4-2-3-1 and 3-4-1-2) shows us the fickle nature of formations. Positional labels, formations and styles of play are actually no more than simple rules of thumb to help us try to make sense of the mess. The designations we give formations are useful starting points, but that's all. They give a general idea of the structure of a team, a game and of the relationships between the players.

Pirlo and Yaya Toure, for example, play in the same position, and yet their roles, styles, physique couldn't be more different. We call them both DMs and leave it at that. Hence while the tag given to a player may be useful in assigning him a position on the pitch, it still doesn’t tell us his role in the team. We usually consider a holding midfielder as the one that plays as the deepest midfielder in the side. But that doesn’t have to mean that the holding midfielder is a defensive midfielder. For example, consider Alonso and Mascherano. Alonso would sit deep and collect the ball from the defenders, or make himself available to keep play ticking over, spreading the ball all over the pitch whereas Mascherano who was the main ball-winner would be charging about all over the pitch, often playing higher up the pitch than Alonso. But who was the defensive midfielder there?

Another instance that exemplifies the curious nature of tactics is the 2005 Champions League final. It’s one of the games that always stays in mind where the most attacking substitution Liverpool made was bringing on a defensive midfielder. That showed us that a player used in the right formation or tactical plan, can actually have a multiplying effect on the abilities and qualities of the team as a whole.

Marcelo Bielsa, someone whose theories and ideas have had an enormous influence in shaping modern day tactics, once said that the job of a manager was to allow the player to show his best virtues, that is, put the player in a context that allows him to make the best choices. The best dribbler isn't always the most skilful one, but instead the one that choses to dribble when he is in an advantage. To make that choice, he has to be an intelligent player (an individual attribute).

Of course, this isn’t to say that if you have intelligent and smart players, there’s no need for tactical innovation because all you’ll then need is skilled players. It took someone to come in and fine-tune a tactical system to perfectly complement the great attributes of players such as Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets before Barcelona could be considered one of the all-time great sides. Xavi was around for ages but was never thought of as the great midfielder he so clearly is. I remember seeing Chelsea v Barcelona in the last Mourinho era and thinking that the midfield was pretty evenly matched. His talent (or intelligence if you prefer) required the implementation of a tactical system and a footballing philosophy which maximised his potential. Xavi, Iniesta, Messi and Busquets would not be where they are without Guardiola and Barcelona would not be the team they are without them.

This is the wonderful thing about tactics. In the right system, any player can be made to look ‘intelligent’. A slight issue I have with intelligence here is the much bandied notion that intelligence cannot be taught. For example, in the case of Barcelona, it’s not unreasonable to say that the automatisms that the home grown players have were inculcated at La Masia. That's not instinct or intelligence. Its education. Intelligence really IS something that can be taught. The brain is a muscle that needs training. Barring actual real problems at birth, everyone should have the capacity to become an intelligent footballer. A great deal of that training needs to take place at a young age granted, but there is still a lot of 'fine-tuning' that is possible later. Of course, I’m just talking about intelligence on the football field. Anyone listening to Xavi's inane self-righteous ramblings about playing the right brand of football and games being awarded to teams with more possession knows that the man isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the box. The much maligned Gervinho has often been Ivory Coast's best player. Hazard called him the best player he’s played with. No one would have accused him of lacking 'intelligence' there. Perhaps the problem isn’t Gervinho, but that's another topic altogether.

Tactics provide a player with possibilities given by his context and position on the field, like having constantly various free pass options. You know that every time you get the ball near your area, you have to make a long pass forward to the right; or you know that in certain moment a certain player will get behind you as a free pass option. That frees the player from the anomic sentiment that is so commonly seen in the worst teams, players that are so free of tactics that don't have a clue on what to do or where to move.

But there’s a flip side to everything and this is no exception. Positions and formations will continue to divide, sub-divide and reform, but the ability of great leaders to inspire players to cross the boundaries of their comfort zones is the constant in sport. This represents the shortcoming of tactics and good ‘tactical’ managers like Bielsa and to an extent, Villas-Boas. Some managers, despite being great students of the game and wonderful tacticians, fail to fully understand the human side of the game. Take two teams with an equal amount of talented players and avoid using a silly, unbalanced system and one of the crucial differentiating factors will be the manager's ability to inspire players to perform beyond the "norm". Shankly, Lippi, Guardiola, Ferguson, and Mourinho are a few names that spring to mind as managers with an ability to enthuse players to run an extra few yards when chronically fatigued, to react first to a loose ball, to commit more bravely to an aerial challenge or to keep faith that they will persevere when they are losing.

Such intricacies provide us with so many options, so many ways to look at the same football match, that we’re able to form wildly varying conclusions and read differing reviews about the same game. A lot of score lines come down to luck - little things like hitting the woodwork rather than scoring, shots being deflected to take them past the keeper and fouls going unnoticed by referees - but a lot of analyses of teams' performances usually start at the result and try to explain the game from there. So if a team defend for long periods without conceding then nick a goal on the counterattack due to a defensive slip-up from the opposition, they are heralded for their smart play and wise tactics. But if they defend for long periods only to concede from a deflected shot near the end of the game, they are criticised for being defensive. I suppose results have to be factored in to any discussion of football matches, but it can lead to silly conclusions. 

All these variations and theories to play the same game shows us how astonishingly complex this simple game is. Such is the beauty of the game that the result almost – almost – becomes irrelevant. No one watches only the dying seconds of a football match, just to look at the scoreboard. We watch for 90 minutes, we watch the process, the tactical battle, unfold. It’s so much more than just saying win – good, lose – bad. It provides us with ample opportunity for endless hypothesising, for which we should all be thankful, otherwise we'd might have to spend our days doing, you know, work. And that, perhaps, is the reason why we all love this game. It will be grasped by all and yet I don’t think anyone will ever come to fully understand it.