The origins and proliferation of tiki-taka: what makes it so effective?
The Spanish National Team won the World Cup in 2010 and the European championships in 2008 and 2012 using a style of football that is known as Tiki-Taka. The style was popularized and brought to its highest version at club level by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side from 2008 to 2012, which brought him and the club three La Liga and two Champions leagues.
Tiki-taka in its simplest form is a style based on retaining and circulating possession of the ball. Described by Sid Lowe of The Guardian as “the nonsensical phrase that has come to mean short passing, patience and possession above all else”, tiki-taka has been seen both as a positive and negative; at its best, it generates stunning movement, fluidity and incisive attacking football of great skill; and at its worst, it can be sterile and tedious.
Indeed, the origins of the phrase may have those connotations — Javier Clemente, an extremely pragmatic Spanish coach of Athletic Bilbao in Spain, apparently coined the term as a criticism. But it was Andres Montes, a Spanish commentator, who brought the basque term to a wider audience during the Spain vs Tunisia game in 2006, saying “Estamos tocando tika-tika tiki-taka”, which roughly translates to, “we are playing with light, quick steps”.
The origins of the Spanish and Barcelona obsession with possession can be traced to the influence of Johan Cruyff, whose philosophy of Total Football prized possession of the ball and use of space above all else. Cruyff, and fellow Dutch managers Louis Van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard, brought this appreciation of possession and space with them when they coached the Catalan Club, marrying it to a stylistic focus inherent, but latent, in the club’s DNA.
Their influence on Pep Guardiola and a generation of players from the club’s famous La Masia development complex meant that Barcelona was primed to play the style. A coterie of superbly talented, but diminutive creative players also forced Barcelona’s hand, to a degree: they couldn’t compete purely with physicality, but intelligent, technical players like Xavi, Andreas Iniesta, Pedro and of course, Lionel Messi flourished under tiki-taka. Guardiola, the deep-lying playmaker turned tactician, said that “In the world of football, there is only one secret: I’ve got the ball or I haven’t.” This mantra of keeping and taking care of possession was articulated by two of his best players: Andreas Iniesta and Xavi. Xavi would say, “I get the ball, I pass the ball. I get the ball, I pass the ball”. And Iniesta, “ Receive, pass, offer. Receive, pass, offer.”
Barcelona and Spain tended to line up in a 4–3–3, the formation that seemed best suited for the style and for rotation of the ball by creating overloads. Because tiki-taka was more than just possession for its own sake, it needed to generate chances. Hence, it incorporated 3 other factors that were crucial to its success: pressing, the “false nine”, and positional play.
Pressing was an obvious addition: any team which prizes possession will work extremely hard to regain the ball after it is lost. Again, there was a direct continuity here from the ideals of Cruyff, who wanted to make the pitch as small as possible in defence, while former Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa’s influence on Pep is also apparent. By choking the opposition, especially when they’ve just won the ball back, they are at their most vulnerable immediately having regained possession, making pressing the best way to regain possession and begin another attacking sequence.
The false nine role had a player drop off into spaces between defensive and midfield lines causing problems for markers: follow the player, and create space for runners in behind their position; or leave the player and there is an unmarked attacker able to receive and pass, or receive and run or shoot. This was a natural addition to the emphasis on movement inherent in tiki-taka.
As was positional play. Positional play is, simply put, the idea that the pitch is divided into zones and no more than 2 players should occupy the same zone vertically and no more than 3 players horizontally. Guadiola did this by painting lines on a training pitch to show players what the zones were. The purpose is to encourage players to find zones where they are free to receive and pass, and that players should achieve a degree of almost automation in terms of finding spaces, and then moving elsewhere into free space as the ball moves around the pitch. This injects the fluidity and creation of space that stops tiki-taka simply being an exercise in possession football, as players are constantly on the move, rotating, changing, and finding space, but with shared understanding of what the purpose of this is, and how each player relates to the others.
This is the key aspect of Iniesta’s quotation offering — putting yourself in a position to receive the ball by moving — it is the only thing that stops tiki-taka simply being a passing exercise. As Jonathan Wilson of The Guardian puts it, “the focus was on the creation and exploitation of space, generated by movement off the ball and by technique good enough that defenders could be lured towards a forward before a pass would be released”. Possession was the means, not the end.
While tiki-taka is most associated with Spain and Barcelona, not least because they shared so many players, its reach went further. Guardiola brought aspects of the game to Bayern Munich, and Manchester City, while the Premier League saw Brendan Rodger’s Swansea City and Liverpool sides, as well as Owen Coyle and Ian Holloway at Bolton and Blackpool. The influence of tiki-taka can now be seen in goalkeepers and defenders having to be far more comfortable in possession and needing to pass the ball well.
Tiki-taka at its best was unplayable before other tactics evolved — lightening quick interchanges between technically gifted players employing almost rehearsed attacking moves but with added brilliance of game changers like Iniesta and Messi. It brought about major tactical changes in top level football, as coaches scrambled to figure out ways to beat it. It also sparked a wider interest in possession and pass completion numbers. Tiki-taka had its roots in Total Football but as an evolution of that style it changed the game just as much and has had lasting effects on the way football is played and understood.
