Last month in this space, Michael Cox wrote about the rising influence of Barcelona on the top footballing sides in Europe. He wrote that we are now in a new tactical era far removed from the old defensive 4-5-1 made popular in the wake of Porto’s 2004 Champions League win and the triumph of Greece in the Euros later that summer. Pep Guardiola’s passion for football “played the right way” has directly/indirectly affected the game plan of various European clubs:

It’s unquestionable that the managers at the top end of the Premier League have been influenced by Barca, and this has contributed to the high-scoring games between the notional top six…

In the case of the Premier League Cox noted that while the “big” sides were attacking well, their defending left a lot to be desired. He suspected it had something to do with the lack of pressing by attackers farther up the pitch in order to take pressure off their defenders:

Perhaps the rise of the ball-playing centre-back is the primary reason for poor defending. It’s notable
that the ‘big six’ sides with the best defensive records, Manchester City and Liverpool, have the poorest set of ball-playing centre-halves. Opponents frequently stand off City’s because they don’t think they have the distribution skills to hurt them, whilst Liverpool’s have the worst pass completion percentage of any of the top six – 81%, 5.5% less than any other.

There’s nothing wrong with having good footballers at centre-back, but it means that the defending has to start from higher up. Having been inspired by Barcelona’s positivity in possession, Premier League sides now have to focus upon replicating their pressing.

But it seems to me this is but one of several problems with replicating a style Jonathan Wilson originally ascribed to Viktor Maslov at Dynamo Kiev in the mid 1960s. The system Barcelona plays requires more from its players than any other tactical approach in the sport. Movement in possession requires supreme awareness of teammates and versatility from players in covering positions left open in attack; pressing requires physical fitness that wasn’t possible in the game until professionalism and modern nutritional science allowed Dynamo Kiev and later Ajax in the 70s and AC Milan in the late 80s to experiment with it. Barca’s style in other words cannot simply be grafted onto a team on a whim with hopes for sustained success.

The problem it seems now is certain sides are making possession into a fetish, or at least that is the perception in the media. Paolo Bandini wrote in his Guardian column this morning of Luis Enrique’s trials at Roma:

Yet the great curiosity with Roma’s performance from there was that despite being a man down (and later more than one), they continued to both dominate possession and dictate the areas of the pitch in which the game would be played. Fernando Gago was subsequently shown a second yellow card with a quarter of an hour to play, before Krkic was sent off for handling on the line in the 85th minute, yet still Roma finished with 57% of possession, and with the ball having spent considerably more time in Fiorentina’s half than their own.

The only problem was, they appeared utterly incapable of turning such statistical domination into anything concrete. By full-time Roma had managed only two shots on target, both from Lamela. “Roma have transformed possession from being the means into an end in itself, from a strategy into their ultimate goal,” lamented Alberto Polverosi in Corriere dello Sport.

Not that all possession play is equal, but there is a growing consensus that holding the ball is better than inviting pressure only to send the ball forward in vain to a lone attacker in a defensive formation. Some tactical systems are more demanding than others. The roots of the current Barcelona side go back to Johann Cruyff’s time at the club, and the team’s success would not be possible without players with its technical ability.

That’s not to say possession as we understand it in the Barca sense cannot be exported; simply that it may take more time than fans and nervous chairman might allow.