Possession?

Hello, again! Today I decided to analyze the way different teams and managers use possession. How they react when losing the ball, what they try to do when with and without the ball. Compare different styles, mix of plays and everything about possession based tactics. There are many different ways of play but I’ll draw attention just to two of them. The two antipodes of football: Tiki-taka and “parking the bus”. Let’s start with the defensive minded. They prefer to let the opponent have the ball, stay compact in the back and try to hit with a fast counter attack. Probably the best in the world in this type of play is Jose Mourinho. He has ruled European football for almost 20 years now, won championships all across Europe. He’s champion of Portugal, England, Italy, Spain, two times European champion and probably hasn’t changed his style in all those years. His favorite types of games are always when his team is the underdog in the game. He’s mastered the art of deep defending hitting with counters and upsetting the so called giants. In those kind of games, he can position his team deep in the back, use his favorite duo of defensive midfielders, keep the full backs near the central defenders, keeping the lines of defenders and midfielders close to each other. In this kind of games discipline is the most important thing, every player has his own tasks. He is often accused of “parking the bus”, destroying football, but almost every time he did that his team delivered. Of course this type of play has its minuses, like when you are the favorite in the game, you have to dictate the game. In these type of games, usually you need either individual brilliance or change of tactics. This is where a lot of teams that play like this struggle. Let’s take for example Ole’s Manchester United: they play good when they’re the underdogs, feel comfortable when defending and patiently waiting for a chance to steal the ball in the final third a quickly counter attack. The problem with them is when they have to control the ball, organize the game, put the opposition defense under pressure. This is where the difference between good managers and bad managers is. To adjust your team’s tactics against different opponents, because if you lead a team with ambition you can’t play like you’re always the underdog. This way of playing can win you cups, but if you don’t have the individual brilliance you’ll have a hard time in the long term league. Of course there are always exceptions (Leicester). Let’s see some of the best defensive displays I’ve ever seen:

A vintage away game against bottom placed team in the Premier league. Liverpool were all over the place, attack, attack, move the ball from side to side, doing everything in their power to break through Burnley’s deep based defense, nothing works. Burnely make 2 quick counters, 2 goals, 3 points. Perfect deep defending display.

In 2012 when European champions Barcelona visited Glasgow for a group game against Scottish champion Celtic no one expected anything but a win for Barca. Fraser Foster’s heroics at goal, great defensive display and Champions league debutant’s Tony Watt goal won it for Celtic. Barcelona were attacking, shooting from all kind of positions, creating one-two passes, but they got nothing but a late Messi consolation goal. Probably the best fan atmosphere at the stadium. But what was the reason behind this win? Fan atmosphere, Barca’s lack of sharpness or Neil Lennon’s great tactics? Doesn’t matter this will forever stay in history as one of the best defensive displays ever.

And it won’t be complete without a classic Mourinho game. Two of the antipodes of football collided, Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. Man City had all of the possession, Spurs got all the points. Tottenham defended well, waited patiently, struck twice on counter attacks and climbed joint top of the table, presenting themselves as genuine title contenders. That’s all for the defensive displays, of course there are a lot more and you can give your examples in the comments below, but let’s move on to the next style of play. Possession based. Probably the best example of this style of play are Barcelona and Pep Guardiola. They prefer to have the ball, move it around, try to squeeze the opponent into their box, find corridors for the through ball, pass to the flank then cross from there or shoot from distance. But they don’t do that with any means necessary, if they can’t find the best move now, just pass it back, let the defenders move the ball across field, try again and again until you find the best possible solution to brake opposition defense. And in their day they are unplayable, but when things don’t work in their way… we saw in the previous part of this article. But let’s focus on the part where everything works as expected. If you don’t let your opponent have the ball, you can’t concede a goal. This gives you a great base for building your attacks. When Pep’s team execute this type of play they’re really tough to defend against. They pass the ball around, make you chase it and most of the times it’s like chasing windmills, the ball is moving so fast, so good that it’s almost impossible to defend against. When Pep arrived in Man City there were a lot of questions if he’ll be able to transfer his style of play from Spain and Germany. The teams are better in England, the defenders are tougher… Well it took him a year to build the team and style of play, but when he did he just cruised through the league winning astonishing 198 points over two seasons. Team’s movement, passing and changing places of the attacking players were unmatchable. They played fast flowing football with a lot of different options in attack and a lot of different goal scorers, it was just that the danger was coming from every player, they had 13 players scoring a goal in the Premier league this season. Let’s take a look at some of the best attacking displays in the last couple of years.

Mourinho’s debut in El Classico, against Pep’s Barcelona. Everybody was expecting a great competition between two of the best teams in the world. What we got was a massacre, Barca were so much better, so much quicker, did everything so much better than their opponent. Mou got a though severe welcome to the El Classico and the biggest defeat in his managerial career.

2011 Champions league final, Barca gave Sir Alex’s United a lesson they’ll always remember. Absolute masterclass and probably the most one sided final in the history of the competition.

When Juventus and Barcelona collided in the 2015 Champions league final both teams were on the verge of completing a treble. Juventus were relying on their iron defense, while Barcelona loyal to their possession based tiki-taka like tactics. It was a good intense game but at the end Barca’s patient play, moving the ball around, opening spaces in the tough Juve defense worked and the Catalonians their 5th European cup and 2nd treble in club’s history. Probably this is the last great possession based display. After this game, maybe because of the decay of this Barca team, or maybe because the game changed and teams found out different ways to play against tiki-taka, no other team managed to reach the heights this Barcelona did. Most of the teams started to play more direct football. Possession based attacks were replaced with vertical passes. Counter pressing became more popular. Did tiki-taka die? Will like everything old just come back at some point? I guess we’ll see in the future. For now the future is in the safe hands of direct football and managers like Klopp, Lampard, Gerrard, Flick, Zidane etc.