6 tactics that changed the football forever

#2 PARKING THE BUS

Inter Milan vs. Barcelona: 2nd Leg of 2010 Champions League Semi-Final

“Parking the bus” is a derogatory term used for describing a defensive display of football. This essentially means all the players defending behind the ball for the whole time and Playing reactively for a lucky break. Reactively does not necessarily mean derogatory. Heynckes’s Bayern played reactively when they beat Barcelona by 7-0 (Aggregate).

Almost all the best teams these days use this tactic against strong opponents or after getting a lead. But managers are most likely to deny that as it is often called Anti-Football. One of the famous examples of this would be Inter Milan vs Barcelona where Jose Mourinho featured a 4-5-0 formation. Mourinho’s Inter displayed a strong organised defensive play. While Mourinho did not invent this, he definitely brought this in English football and he is the ‘Master’ in this.

This is often confused with Catenaccio system, but in reality, they are not same at all. Although both are defensive in nature, the key difference is the use of Libero. Earlier, it has been described that the Libero plays the most crucial role in a Catenaccio system. But in “Parking the Bus” there is no place for a sweeper.

Atletico de Madrid won their 10th La Liga by using slightly modified version of this tactics

Although it has been called “Anti-Football” and ‘boring’, it is definitely not an easy task to execute in a match. The players need to hold their position behind the ball and adjust their positioning constantly with the position of the ball. Lately, in the 2013-14 season, Deigo Simeone in Atletico de Madrid had successfully executed this tactic which led them to the La Liga title and Champions League Finale. They lost the finale against their arch-rival, Real Madrid.