The two ways of playing football

MADRID, SPAIN – AUGUST 29: Leo Messi Victor Valdes and Jordi Alba of FC Barcelona react during the Supercopa second leg match between Real Madrid and Barcelona at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu on August 29, 2012 in Madrid, Spain.

It’s astonishing how wide-ranging different football teams look towards possession. Clearly, no team is more genuinely dedicated to possession in all circumstances than Barcelona, even though that devotion can be detrimental to them, as it did in the recent Clasico and the Champions League semi final. Barcelona’s system as we all know is the tiki-taka. It’s a ridiculous sounding verbalization, isn’t it? Tiki-taka hardly brings to mind pictures of magnificence, of trophy cases filled with silverware except if you are Barcelona and you have earned thirteen gems in four terms under Pep Guardiola.

On the subject of possession, I noticed another tactic engaged in last season in the Premier League match between Sunderland and Blackburn. In the remaining half-hour of their match with Sunderland, Blackburn made no effort to have power over the ball, at all. Steve Kean just backed his players against their goal and let Sunderland pound away. But Sunderland got two goals in the last ten minutes and furnished Martin O’Neill his first win with the team.

BLACKBURN, ENGLAND – MARCH 20: Blackburn player Yakubu (l) blocks a clearance from Sunderland defender Wayne Bridge during the Barclays Premier league game between Blackburn Rovers and Sunderland at Ewood park on March 20, 2012 in Blackburn, England.

Kean may have cost his team the game by forfeiting possession from, but it’s impeccably sensible to turn your back on a possession-based game: you can’t hold on to the ball just by yearning for it — there are individuals on the playing field striving to procure it from you — so if you intend to keep a hold of it, you require players who:

(a) Have exceptional on-ball deftness.

(b) Have good positional awareness, together with knowledge of the probable locations of teammates and adversaries correspondingly.

(c) Have confidence in their teammates and trust that they will do the appropriate thing when the ball approaches them.

(d) Aren’t by a long way nervous.

You ought to have players with these qualities in every part of the playing field. The Barca method succeeds only as the back four are as secure with the ball at their feet as other teams’ attacking midfielders. The trouble with defending against opposition like Barca is that their other players are unvaryingly untouchable when they have the ball (Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Fabregas – anyone wanna defend?), so a high-pressing game is in all probability the challenger’s finest opportunity to get anything out of the game, that is, if their forwards have the doggedness and the stamina to persevere with it for the entire game which is very uncommon. When you come right down to it – when you play Barca, you’re screwed (more often than not), but we all are familiar with that by now.

MADRID, SPAIN – AUGUST 29: Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona celebrates with his teamate Xavi Hernandez

The exquisiteness of Barcelona’s style of play has gotten everybody’s head in the clouds these days: Martin O’ Neill said that he wanted Sunderland to play that way. Sounds terrific, Martin: all you have to do is to arrange a world-class football academy, sign gifted players when they are like eight years old, ward off all endeavours to embezzle them away from Wearside, and when they’re fully developed, elevate them to the first team. By the time you’re 75 it’ll all be in position! All you’ll require then is to play every match against sides controlled by Steve Kean.

What the game of football needs is not more managers who want to play like Barcelona or teams managed by Steve Kean, but an innovative army of tacticians who put genuinely inventive thoughts into crafting an opportunistic, counter-attacking, possession-unconcerned style that can be inculcated into players who haven’t spent fifteen years together trying to play football and who may not have the skills needed to play keep-at-bay for ninety minutes. Players in such a system would need, above all, the watchfulness to look for openings to upset possession, the serenity to wait for those split second moments without becoming sidetracked or over-aggressive, and the audacity to take instantaneous advantage of any momentary failure. Exceptional enough qualities, I guess, but they can be taught, and taught to players who lack profound knowledge of their teammates — as will more often than not be the state of affairs in the ever-changing world of contemporary professional sports.

In spite of everything, we still don’t know whether the Barcelona model will be sustainable in the long run even by a team like Barcelona, though at least the standard of their future looks attractive and damn brilliant, bearing in mind the way their kids play. Barca’s opponents have to hope that the team has more economic predicament than its bosses have been prepared to acknowledge. But, whatever the case may be, it would be imprudent to think that this model can be put into practice anywhere else; owners and managers should austerely plunk the attention from their minds, and along with it a tactical approach based primarily on possessing the ball.

In this one case, tactics are attached compactly to a system that can’t be simulated. It’s time for one and all to think outside the box — to use a phrase — and that measures, most of all, how to play well and how to be dangerous when you don’t have the ball all the time.