Some of the anti-tactics writers opposed to the “New Seriousness” brought about by Opta data and formational charts believe it’s a load of distracting guff because because athletes “don’t play the game that way,” in terms of formations or lateral movements or space creation. Footballers work in intangibles—mood, passion, determination. For every Xavi, there is a Joey Barton.
Jonathan Wilson for example penned an interesting article for the Guardian yesterday on whether footballers consciously know what they’re doing before making a spectacular play:
…the tendency is to regard athletes and sportsmen as “nitwit[s] with useful … instincts” – to deny the extraordinary mental capacity, the processing speed, that underlies even quite basic acts. This was something that troubled the US evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould. “I don’t deny the differences in style and substance between athletic and conventional scholarly performance,” he wrote, “but we surely err in regarding sports as a domain of brutish intuition … The greatest athletes cannot succeed by bodily gifts alone …
Wilson overreaches later in the article by questioning the entire established notion of free will and moral agency because Rooney ‘decides’ to take overhead kicks at a speed faster than human consciousness. Goals of course are not executed in real time in the frontal cortex, the area of human reasoning and the most historically recent product of evolutionary design.
They are however the result of intentional practice, which very much involves the use of reason (“I should generally aim for an overhead kick if the cross is slightly behind my body in the area”). Practice is the means by which a complicated set of rational decisions becomes ingrained in our unconscious, so that we can do complex things without thinking about it. Football is a celebration of those few human beings who’ve managed to translate elite, technically difficult skill into habit, but all of us do this at some level in the course of our daily lives. If don’t think you have any elite skill sets, watch your ten month old kid attempt to eat dinner with a fork and spoon (NB: don’t do that). All we are is habit acquired from repeated actions, i.e. practice.
It’s the same with the complex, causal relationships involved in football tactics. It’s not necessarily the case that all modern footballers could give you a broad account of the importance of shifting from a 4-3-3 in attack to a 4-5-1 in defense, but they likely know precisely where to move and how quickly when caught out of possession high up the pitch.
Unfortunately, modern tactics are presented by coaches and managers in a highly technocratic way, which perpetuates the idea that managers are the smart guys while players are mere race horses who run where they’re told. Take Rafa Benitez’s needlessly jargon-filled tactics post this morning:
Football is part of a group of sports which are known as team sports, and as such can be characterized by the relationship between co-operation (between team mates) and opposition (against an opponent). In the development of the game we can consider 3 basic aspects: time-space aspect, demonstrated in the attacking phase by use of the ball individually and collectively to overcome barriers and opponents, and in the defending phase by the creation of barriers to delay and stop movement of the opponents and the ball with the objective of regaining possession; information aspect demonstrated by the creation of doubt in the opponent and confidence in team mates; and the organisational aspect established by the collective plan integrated with individual actions and vice versa.
This kind of technocratic language perpetuates the idea that football management is an elite intellectual skill held only by a handful of qualified UEFA license holders, whose job is to translate their ideas onto the “raw material”, i.e. the players. Benitez even speaks of controlling “environmental issues (personal and material resources, club characteristics, parental relationships etc)”, as if these were adjustable bars on the latest edition of Football Manager.
Some of the recent tactics analyses available perpetuate this idea as well. Take this video from YouTube account Dervyxable, on Athletic Bilbao’s use of pressing.
Pressing in and of itself is not some sort of elaborate tactical scheme (and neither is man-marking), but it’s presented here with arrows and circles as if the video-maker must reveal these “hidden truths” to the casual observer. But it’s all there without the need for elaborate explanation. Bilbao runs at opposition players to win back possession quickly.
This isn’t some ingenious tactic only the gifted few can master by way of managerial boffins like Pep Guardiola and Marcelo Bielsa. The reason it’s seldom used is because it’s exhausting for players to do throughout a ninety minute match. Their skill has been drilling their players so that they are physically able to keep pace, hardly the stuff of PhDs candidates.
Perhaps we could get over the notion that an open discussion of football tactics doesn’t reduce the game to a set of cold, indifferent numbers if we understood that it’s merely a descriptive language, rather than a prescriptive ideal. We should also move away from the notion perpetuated by more than one charlatan manager that understanding tactics requires years of elite study, or that players are dumb horses who need to be ordered around by a touchline professor.
the real question is, why are “football tactics” talked about at nauseam on this blog now?
Because I’m the editor!
Don’t Worry Richard, I love it….
And really isn’t that the only thing that matters?
” Bilbao runs at opposition players to win back possession quickly.”
you’ve clearly never played the game at a high level. it is much more complicated than that, or everyone would ‘run at opposition players to win the ball back quickly. until you get to around this point, it’s a great response though.
Blogger bingo, Richard!
Notched.
Personally I really enjoy these posts although i think that saying;
“All we are is habit acquired from repeated actions, i.e. practice.” is a huge leap to make. from a philosophical point of view.
I think part of the thing that Wilson is reaching for in that article is the notion that footballers seem to rely far less on “muscle memory” than a lot of other athletes, largely because the game is far more random and fluid than most sports, which makes imagination a crucial factor that separates the great player from the good.
The best players haven’t just developed better habits, they also have the ability to assess a unique situation on a seemingly instinctive level.
Just as the spear hunters referred to by Wilson could instantaneously launch their spear without any seeming calculation (and you can bet even back then there was some Messi like hunter who probably lob the spear gently into the air and land it directly into the spine of the rabbit) so a footballer can instantaneosuly make similar calculations.
Just because we don’tyet understand how that is done doesn’t mean that it negates free will.
What are ‘consciousness’ and ‘free will’ or ‘muscle memory’ and ‘habit’ and are they really all such easily separated categories? Its interesting that we seek to put ‘free will’ into ‘conscious’ decisions and create a scientific location for where it happens – the frontal cortex – but all of these concepts, even packed into their scientific categories, still remain cultural interpretations of human actions in particular a European-liberal world-view that values the concept of ‘free will’ to understand intentionality.
More than anything, ‘free will’ is seen when the ‘thought process’ of an individual can be ‘verbalized’ as a step-by-step process, similar to a science experiment. “What is your problem? What did you do? What did you do next?” Rooney’s response seems more intune with our expectations of “free will” than anything that would be going on in the moment of play. But then Rooney is equipped with language to express himself, language filled with ideology – what and how he speaks meaningfully is learned, what we read is mediated by the form of expression. Of course his speech is going to enter into the debate of what we think is meaningful. What happens to ‘memory’ – or rather how we recall ‘what happened’ – is going to come through our need to express to others and the language we have to make those expressions.
Similarly, tactics/play management is a culturally mediated environment – how to communicate in ways which create confidence, acceptance, and greater practice, as well as to motivate particular forms of practice, is a highly skilled and culturally aware talent. In some cases the ‘language’ of tactics can be highly successful, in others ‘motivators’ rather than tactics can change the situation. Not everyone/anyone is skilled in either (both) cases in specific/general contexts of football.
Through all of this, consciousness is what we culturally recognize it to be to ascertain a series of symbolic ‘value’ of actions. Hence Rooney articulates consciousness and Wilson wants to critique the “real” volition of the action. But it seems that both are part of similar processes of participating repetitively in social relationships that inform the meaning of the action.
For all the snotty response to mapavlich, he’s right. Pressing an opponent isn’t “running at them”. That’s the worst way to try to win possession.
I obviously simplified a bit, but I’d be curious to hear your take on it.
And I wouldn’t want to say that “running at them” isn’t a part of pressing. Running one man (or when you really have them under the cosh, possibly two men) _at the ball_ (or rather, at the cluster of opposing players gathered at the ball) is one important element of pressing.
But the key to a successful press is to shrink and shift the field. Not that you always try to shift the field all the way – for example, you don’t always press on the full field, for a very good reason, that being the halfway-line offside rule and player fitness.
Shrinking and shifting the field is about compressing space, which in football is a TEAM activity – it means players moving in concert with each other to deny space to opponents. That means both a practical and a theoretical understanding of how to move with each other. (I use “theory” here in the sense only of knowing what to do, as opposed to knowing how to apply it in a match).
It means keeping a high back line. It means cutting off angles of supply to the wings – which is all about positioning, especially as you have to prevent an opponent from switching the field. That’s the denial of space. And above all, pressing mean the denial of time. This has many variations, but it especially means aggressive tackling in the middle of the park. It is not enough to run at the man in possession – the opponent must know his possession will be physically challenged. Not to make him fearful, but to deny him time and force him to be uncreative. That’s technique – physically challenging possession is an important element of footballing technique.
There’s also the aspect of marking, which has applications to the denial of space and to the denial of time. Again, marking isn’t running at people – the technique of how to mark players is distinct from constraining space, but it’s important in pressing because there are certain times you mark opponents, certain times you spread through passing lanes, certain times you mark space (particularly for running players – the most effective way to mark a running player is to occupy the space he wants to run into; running at him is the worst thing to do here). That’s an element of knowing opponents, knowing what they want to do.
With creative, ball-playing opponents, you want to deny them clean possession. So running at them often isn’t enough; once they have the ball, it is already too late. One of the things about Man City that is so much fun to watch is how they treat the opponents’ creative players; players like Yaya and De Jong are always ferociously denying creative opportunities *when the creative players don’t have the ball*. They mark the man; not like I used to when I played and just shadow a guy around the field (I wasn’t much of a player, but I knew how to sacrifice my body) but by lurking – getting in his blind spot, playing over top of him to force him to shift and move into another player’s space, etc. One of the things you always try to do, as a pressing team, is actually move opponents together on the field – deny them a path to the ball except by getting into certain areas or channels. They move, by instinct, to the open lane and undefended space, only to see three of their same shirts heading the same way (and yes, then you run at them – that’s how you defend four guys with two players, by encouraging them together).
Then there’s the whole aspect of how you play with the ball. This is a very important aspect of a pressing game that is often ignored. You MUST attempt to play a possession-based game if you press extensively. Extensive pressing, full pressing, is anathema to a kicking game. (I could go on here about the failures of the English game from this standpoint but I won’t – besides, as a Watford supporter and Graham Taylor devotee, the truth hurts too much). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a field position game but there are two problems with it if you press (especially if you press high) – pressing players don’t naturally create the space they need to launch quick attacks, and giving the ball back too often deflates a press like nothing else – physically and emotionally. And the more fast transitions you have to make from offense back to defense, the more likely you are to make mistakes.
So when you press extensively, you need to emphasize your possession game as much as possible. You may even need to waste some time. That’s the thing that makes a football press so different from a basketball press (I have much more experience coaching and playing basketball than football) – in basketball, the press usually helps you create better quality scoring chances when you don’t get scored on. Because football has so many fewer scoring chances and so many fewer goals, you can’t press to trade four layups for five. The same emotional, mental and physical disintegration is there, but your goal is different – you want to get and keep possession, as opposed to trying to generate quick and easy scoring chances. Now, you WILL actually do that – a successful pressing team that denies time and space will usually, over 90 minutes, force the opponent into at least one fatal mistake even amongst professionals.
If you’re Barcelona, of course, and can transition from defense space to offence space in a rabbit’s eyeblink (I still have never figured out how they can stretch the field so fast on a change of possession) all bets are off… they can strike like a cobra and still press.
OK, this has been pretty disjointed but I thought it would be fun to set out some basic thoughts on the theory and technique of a pressing game. Ultimately, it is about team movement – it’s something you learn in training, the notion of understanding where you want opponents to go and where your teammates will be.
That’s a great video, by the way. I only just watched it now.
Bilbao’s running game is terrific, but it highlights an issue with the possession technique of the Barca defenders. They are backing off the ball when it’s played to them. This is a mistake – we often talk in football about the ball being faster than the man, but the ball’s largest speed advantage is early. A player who comes to get the ball played to him will have more time on the ball than the man who backs away from it (especially as backing way means complicating your control technique).
Barca usually have much more time, and Bilbao are using that against them – their normal possession technique is disrupted. But there is a fix, and it means spreading out more and coming to the ball. Barca spread better than any team in football; we saw them take the lessons from stuff like this in the Copa Del Rey final. Bilbao kept snapping into them, and Barcelona brought men TO the ball instead, and used their superior technique to get right at them, and also to deaden the ball.
By which I mean, you run at them through the middle of the park. The way to play a press is to run right through them; needing to snap into the ball, the pressing team will kick you, and you will get free kicks and other dead-ball situations. You must play the ball quickly and with attacking intent, even when leading. The first two goals in the Copa final were classic examples. The first was a dead ball – you can’t press a team on a corner kick. The second involved Iniesta running through the defense, waiting to be pressed, and laying the ball off into Messi’s path. who was also running at the defense.
There is another way, which is to switch the field and run them around until they drop. I guess there is no royal road. But if you try to lay back and invite a pressing team to come at you, you are generally asking for trouble. But of course the first instinct (not just footballers but everyone) of someone getting in your space, is to take a step back. And the step back is fatal (since not only are you ceding the initiative, he runs forward faster than you run backward; he gains on you with every step). So go to the ball, and go forward.
, one, two, three and over.