Possession vs counter-attack: Who wins?

Bayern Munich’s Thomas Muller celebrates after scoring against Barcelona in the 2013 Champions League semi-final

Counter-attacking football

Many people deride counter-attacking football as reactionary and lacking much creativity on the counter-attacking team’s part – these people probably think of Sam “Allardici” Alladyce’s preferred ‘strategy’ of hoofing it up to the big guy up top – or route one football – as counter-attacking football. They cannot be more wrong.

While it is essentially true that a counter-attacking side is dependent on a solid defence and does sit back and allow the opposition to come at it, the hallmark of a great counter-attacking team is what they do when they get the ball (usually well within their half). Uncoiling with the ferocious velocity and cold-blooded ruthlessness of a viper strike, the great counter-attacking sides were and are based on a great physical phenomenon that few defences can handle – extreme speed.

The thrust of the strategy lies in using this speed effectively with intelligent runs taking out defenders and creating space and visionary (and immediate) distribution from the back and the midfield, providing the perfect base for the cutting edge finishes that are generally fast, simple and uncomplicated.

While most teams will make opportunistic use of an opposition’s slip-up or shoddy move to try and engineer a counter-attack, some, like the exhilarating Romanian side of USA ’94, base their entire game-plan around it.

Romania and the art of the counter

The goal that the utterly magnificent Gheorghe Hagi rammed in against a stunned Argentina perfectly epitomizes this brand of football.

As soon as Illie Dumitrescu recovers the ball deep in his own half after a failed Argentinian corner, there is no dithering or hesitation. He turns and immediately accelerates straight through the heart of the midfield while alongside him, as if set off by a rocket-powered clockwork mechanism, his teammates set off at a blindingly fast pace too. Tibor Selymes on his right flies past him in a sweeping arc that takes him to Dumitrescu’s left, dragging the covering defender ever so slightly to the left along with him.

That’s all the space Dumitrescu needs as he jinks to the right just as he reaches the penalty box, taking out the man chasing him (Jose Basualdo – who had lost the ball in the first place), and pauses for just the right amount of milliseconds before calmly playing the ball out to the man he knows is arriving to his right. Gheorghe Hagi, the magnificient wizard of the Carpathians, arrives perfectly in time to smash the ball into the Argentinian net with extreme prejudice.

10 seconds. 10 seconds is all it took to get the ball from their own half to the opposition net. Direct, fast, intense – this was counter-attacking football at its best.

The great East European sides of the past like the magnificent Red Star Belgrade team of the early ‘90s were also teams that had been set up with the one thought in their collective mind – precision engineered counter-attacks.

The three great Manchester United sides under Alex Ferguson were also heavily indoctrinated in the religion of the counter-attack. In the 26 years that Ferguson was in charge, United scored well over 100 goals on the counter. The team used the extreme pace of the wingers (Ryan Giggs, Andrei Kanchelskis, Cristiano Ronaldo et al), the great distribution skills of the keepers (Peter Schmeichel and Edwin Van der Saar) and the vision of the midfielders (Eric Cantona, Paul Scholes, Roy Keane) to great effect as they mastered the art of the counter and high-paced one-touch forward passing to rip apart defences time and time again.

While Jose Mourinho is derided for negative football these days, much of his best football came when his teams attacked at high speed – think Arjen Robben at Chelsea and Ronaldo/Angel Di Maria at Real Madrid – and had visionary distribution from the middle: Deco at Porto, Sneijder at Inter and Alonso at Real. Bayern Munich’s great side under Jupp Heynckes too used the counter to wonderful effect, especially when they eviscerated Barcelona 7-0 over two legs of the 2013 Champions League semi-finals.

Ancelotti’s Real Madrid did the same to the now Guardiola-marshaled Bavarians the next year at the same stage of the same tournament, when they ripped them apart with a display of scarily fast counter-attacking (fate, irony, destiny, Pep Guardiola being taught a lesson in not trying to fix something that clearly isn’t broken at all, call it what you will).