Así gana el Madrid: the tactical identity of the greatest club in the world
There isn’t much doubt about Real Madrid being the greatest club in the world. Well, at least it is the greatest winner: Real Madrid has the most Spanish League titles (35), the most Champions League titles (14) and the most Club World Cup titles (8, joining the 3 Intercontinental Titles to the 5 FIFA Club World Cup titles), and has already won 100 titles throughout its history. Real Madrid was elected by FIFA as the greatest club of the 20th century and has been doing pretty great so far within the 2 first decades of the 21st century: 8 Spanish League titles, 6 Champions League titles and 5 Club World Cup titles.
Because of that, Real Madrid has been widely regarded as an inherently winner, that has an endless hunger for titles and a cold winning mentality as its main guides. This idea is deeply supported by the Real Madrid board for reasons we’ll discuss later, and a lot of the way the club promotes itself (either from the fans or from the institution) references this ludic aspect of a ruthless mentality and resilient philosphy.
However, there is an aspect that is deeply disregarded not only by those who follow Real Madrid, but also from Real Madrid’s institution itself: the club’s tactical philosophy, something so admired and praised in clubs like FC Barcelona, Ajax Amsterdam or Bayern München, that have developed a wide range of mechanisms to perpetuate it on their respective clubs throughout the years (like applying it on their youth teams and only hiring coaches that are compatible to it). It isn’t hard to find fans, journalists, directors, players or even coaches talking about Real Madrid no having nor wanting to have a well defined tactical philosophy, and that Real Madrid’s philosophy is winning and winning only. Even though this is widely spread, this idea is deeply flawed and I’ll adress this here.
The goal of this piece isn’t to force a tactical philosophy down Real Madrid’s throat, but to take a deeper look on the best teams of the club’s history, to draw a line between them and to point out that the winning spirit and the ruthless mentality of los blancos has always been there, but was never alone. That maybe, even without realising, the creation of the idea of a galactico club also created a distinct tactical philosophy that adapted itself throughout the years, but never lost its essence. And that, to support the club, the mental and winning pillar was just as important as the sporting pillar.
1. The pillars of Real Madrid
In the early years of the Second Spanish Republic, Real Madrid won their two first LaLiga titles (1931/1932 and 1932/1933) and started to put themselves as an emergent club, ready to assume a leading position in a still young and barely professional spanish football. This feeling would only get stronger in the following years, when Real Madrid won the Copa del Rey twice (1934/1935 and 1936/1937).
However, the Spanish Civil War would leave the club in shambles. Real Madrid had to rebuild themselves from scratch and go through a bitter 10-year period with no titles. Their instalations were destroyed, their trophies were stolen, the stadium’s stands were disassembled and the club was “about to be dismantled by Franco” (Gregorio Peces-Barba, spanish politician) because of former connections with left-wing parties during the Republic. Furthermore, by the end of the Civil War, Real Madrid had only 5 players on the team; the remaining players ended up exilated, incarcerated or even executed.
Santiago Bernabéu took over as Real Madrid’s president in 1943, 4 years after the end of the Civil War, and saw a club in a deep crisis. To raise enough funds for the institutional reconstruction of Real Madrid, Bernabéu resorted to the issuing of mortgage obligations with the club members (around 40,000 people at the time) within a period of 20 years and using Real Madrid’s own assets as collateral. With all the funds raised, Bernabéu initiated a total revamp of the club: he rebuilt the stadium and called it the Nuevo Estadio Chamartín (the New Chamarín Stadium; later, it would be renamed to Santiago Bernabéu Stadium to honor the president) and the clubs instalations went through a strong revitalization. Thereby, Bernabéu put Real Madrid between the most modern and well structured clubs in Europe.
Real Madrid would play in their brand-new stadium in the late months of 1947, a short while after the club ended the now 10-years long period with no trophies conquered after winnigh the 1946 Copa del Rey. Real Madrid’s supporters and board could finally breathe after the stormed that almost destroyed the club had finally passed. But Santiago Bernabéu didn’t rest; in fact, he was already planning his next step as Real Madrid’s president. With a well-structured club and a new, modern stadium that boosted Madrid’s revenue exponentially, Bernabéu decided to aim higher.
1.1. The sporting pillar: countercultural in Spain
The 1953/1954 season probably is the foundation stone of the Real Madrid we know today. After the huge revamp on the club, Bernabéu started to improve the team in a sketch of what we today call the Galácticos. During the late 40s and the early 50s, Bernabéu brought important players such as the Spaniards Luis Molowny, José María Zárraga and Joseíto or the Argentinian Roque Olsen. However, the most relevant signings were those of a young, talented Spanish winger that came from Racing Santander and an elite Argentinian playmaker that left the Colombian football: in 1953, Francisco “Paco” Gento and Alfredo di Stéfano joined Real Madrid.
The arrival of Alfredo di Stéfano and Paco Gento at Real Madrid represented the climax of the reconstruction of the club. If in the first post-Civil War years Real Madrid was concerned only with surviving as an institution and the 1940s showed a club that prioritized improving its structure as a whole, the first half of the 1950s marked a Real Madrid that, already among the most modern and well-structured clubs in Europe, sought to assemble a team that could live up to the organization, modernity and solidity that the club now showed. The money that the Nuevo Estadio Chamartín brought along alongside the new institutional model that the club had, Real Madrid left aside the position of “emerging club” on the national scenario and began to present a solid project that could take los blancos to the top of Europe. A renovated, modern club with more power to invest was the perfect scenario to attract players from all around the world and, finally, build a team equal to what Santiago Bernabéu had always dreamed of. After more than 20 years, Real Madrid were ready to win the Spanish League once again.
However, a specific signing that Santiago Bernabéu made in that period usually goes unnoticed, as it didn’t have the same appeal as Gento’s dribbling, Roque Olsen’s goals or Di Stéfano’s genius. In fact, this signing didn’t even enter the pitch, but it was as important (or more important) than almost all the players that did. After former Spanish player Juan Antonio Ipiña stepped down as Real Madrid coach at the end of the 1952/1953 season, Santiago Bernabéu decided that a top tierteam needed a coach that could live up to the squad. For this reason, Real Madrid’s president opted for an unorthodox and relatively risky decision: probably inspired by Héctor Scarone, the Uruguayan who had coached Real Madrid just before Ipiña and coached Di Stéfano at Millionarios, Santiago Bernabéu decided against hiring another Spaniard to lead the team and once again looked fondly to South America. In May 1953, the Uruguayan Enrique Fernández Viola took over as the coach of Real Madrid, ready to shape the tactical identity of the club into something that was countercultural in Spain but that, at the same time, would become the foundation stone of Real Madrid’s success.
Spanish football emerged under direct English influence in the southwest region of the country, where English miners who worked near the Tinto River began to spread football throughout the region, but it was in the Basque Country where it was actually established. Athletic Club, founded in the city of Bilbao in 1903 by Britons who worked there, was the first big powerhouse in Spanish football and remained like so for several decades. Its stadium, San Mamés, was the first football stadium built in Spain, in 1913. The 1910s were essential for Basque football and, consequently, Spanish football as a whole: under English influence (especially Mr. Shepherd, the first coach in the history of the Athletic Club), the Spanish tactical identity was becoming something very similar to what was played in England at the beginning of the 20th century. A vertical game, with long passes and a lot of physical strength, which sought to widen the pitch and attack the opponent directly and quickly, taking advantage of the width of the pitch to create wide combinations that allowed the play to develop more quickly. In short, Spain embraced England’s positional and vertical tradition: wide attacks, with players far from each other in order to exploit the width of the attack, long and direct passes and more fixed positions, aiming more at verticality than at the combination of passes. The 1920 Olympic Games, held in Antwerp, consecrated this style after Spain’s 3–1 win over the Netherlands that got the Spaniards the silver medal. The next day, a Dutch newspaper, comparing the physical and aggressive style of the Spanish team to the ferocity of the Spanish troops that invaded Antwerp in 1576, called the Spanish team la furia (the fury). The term very well synthesized the style that the Spanish people were beginning to embrace, praising the vigor and the will of the national team, and ended up becoming so popular that it’s still used today.
However, when deciding the style he wanted Real Madrid to follow, Santiago Bernabéu looked at the traditional la furia skeptically. With the rebuilding process of the club completed, the president wanted to transform Real Madrid into a talented and attractive team that would have great players and play a kind of football that did justice to the individual talents he had been hiring. Therefore, the physical, aggressive, reactive and excessively vertical football that la furia represented caused distrust in Bernabéu, who believed that this style would end up suppressing a talented team in favor of intensity and aggressiveness. For this reason, Bernabéu turned his attention to a new style that was still in its infancy on Spanish soil: by the Scottish influence from the British coaches at Athletic Bilbao and by the Hungarian influence from the players László Kubala, Sándor Kocsis and Zoltán Czibor in Barcelona, the Danubian game was finding its way into Spain.
“We played football as Jimmy Hogan taught us. When our football history is told, his name should be written in gold letters” — Gusztáv Sebes, coach of the 1954 Hungary side that reached the World Cup final.
The Danubian Game was a footballing school of thought founded almost single handedly by the Englishman Jimmy Hogan, a coach who lost faith in England’s vertical and physical style, fell in love with the Scottish passing game and made spreading this style across Europe his main life goal. His influence on football practiced in Central Europe (mainly in Austria and Hungary; hence the name “Danubian game”, which refers to the Danube River) would be something that would change football in the old continent forever. Hogan’s idea, which would quickly become the footballing philosophy of these countries, was that the game should not develop from a stretched-out team that advances on the pitch with long passes and vertical plays, but rather by bringing players closer together in order to produce short and progressive touches. The team’s priority should not be dominating the spaces on the field, where each player had their position demarcated and such position should be respected, but rather mastering time, that is, mastering the interactions and relations of mobility between players. Each player must perform his own role, and the team advances on the field from that. Hence, this style would later be called role-driven attack (by József Bozsik) and relationalism (by Jamie Hamilton). Mastering the time of the players’ actions, of the relations of mobility between them, was something that valued individual talent much more, since there are no positional “ties” that limited the interactions between the players. In addition, this style induced a much slower game, where time sought to advance on the pitch through short passes between players very close to each other, far from forcing long and vertical passes to more distant players. That attracted the attention of Santiago Bernabéu, but the president didn’t target the Scottish version of Athletic Bilbao nor the Hungarian version of Barcelona. Bernabéu targeted the South American version of the role-driven attack.
“Like tango, football flourished in the favelas. On the canchas of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, a style was born. A unique way of playing football was paving the way, while a unique way of dancing was asserting itself in the milonguero courtyards. The dancers drew filigrees, making flourishes on a single brick, and the football players invented their language in the tiny space where the ball was not kicked, but held and possessed, as if the feet were hands weaving leather. And at the feet of the first native virtuosos, the touch was born: the ball was played as if it were a guitar, a source of music” — Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist.
Thousands of miles away from Jimmy Hogan, from the Scottish passing game, from the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s and from the Magical Magyars of the 1950s, a footballing school of thought was also finding its way from the control of time. South American street football, which was an ode to the inventiveness and improvisation of those who practiced it, turned out to be very fertile ground for a relationist, artistic kind of football that valued talent above anything else. In the narrow streets of the favelas, a new football emerged and the Argentine, Uruguayan and Brazilian style was consolidated: aiming to control time in order to boost the relations of mobility and interactions between its talented players, South America built its own role-driven attack, which still had the clustering of players, the organization based on the player’s roles and the short and progressive touches as the foundation stone, but bet more on ball carrying and individual plays than the Hungarian version, which preferred to follow greater tactical rigor. The South American culture was a gold mine for Bernabéu: He had found his Holy Grail. The talents of Roque Olsen and Alfredo di Stéfano showed the way, as the answer layed in South America.
The signing of Enrique Fernández symbolized a break with traditional Spanish football and the first step towards Real Madrid’s tactical identity. Although he wasn’t the first South American to coach los blancos (the also Uruguayan Hector Scarone had done it 2 years earlier), he was the one who imprinted South American culture on the soul of Real Madrid. The disruptive talents of the likes of Joseíto, Molowny, Gento, Roque Olsen and Di Stéfano formed a perfect setting for the implementation of the South American role-driven attack, and the success of that team ended Real Madrid’s 20-year period without winning the Spanish League. There was not, within Enrique Fernández’s ideas, the concept of fixed positions or of controlling spaces: the team organized itself from the roles of the players. Molowny and Di Stéfano were the team’s main playmakers and approached on left side of the pitch to exchange passes, carry the ball the ball from the defensive midfielders to the attackers, perform “one-twos”, control the pace of the game and command the team’s plays. Gento was a classic winger, but Enrique Fernández’s role-driven attack meant he couldn’t be sticked to the touchline: tying a disruptive and inventive talent like Gento to the left flank would be heresy. Thus, the young Spaniard was free to leave his wide position and create combinations with Molowny and Di Stéfano on more central areas. The same was true for Joseíto, the right winger: the plays normally developed in the left side (since that was the side where the most talented players on the team preferred to roam), but that didn’t prevent Joseíto from constantly participating in them. That’s why the Spaniard left the right wing and, through a diagonal movement, approached the area of the ball and had complete freedom there: he could act as an extra playmaker alongside Molowny and Di Stéfano or behave as an goalscoring striker like Roque Olsen. The defensive midfielders weren’t left out either: Zárraga, the left defensive midfielder, positioned himself deeper and wider on the pitch, practically like a left-back, while Miguel Muñoz, the right defensive midfielder, made a diagonal movement to also position himself in a deeper, but more central position.
With a team of asymmetries, diagonals, one-twos, short touches, players performing their own roles and presenting an enormous variation of movements, Real Madrid began to pave not only its history, but its culture. At the end of the 1953/1954 season, the South American style was already irreversibly imprinted in the soul of los blancos, and not even the sacking of Enrique Fernández in the middle of the 1954/1955 season would be able to change that. The Uruguayan’s successor ended up being José Villalonga, a Spaniard who was part of Enrique Fernández’s coaching staff and didn’t seek to break the Uruguayan’s work to implement a more Spanish style, but associated it with his specialty (physical preparation) to build a team equally artistic and inventive, but even more solid. The South American imprint on Real Madrid was so strong that after José Villalonga left the club because of disagreements with Santiago Bernabéu, the two coaches who followed him were both South Americans who faithfully followed the South American way of playing football.
1.2. The mental pillar: 90 minutes in the Bernabéu is a very long time
“Real Madrid’s white shirt can be stained with sweat, dirt and even blood, but never with shame” — Alfredo di Stéfano.
I will dedicate this session not to a historical-cultural analysis like the previous one, but to a chronicle, as this chapter in Real Madrid’s history can’t be explained from a logical point of view. Actually, much of what makes Real Madrid the club it is today doesn’t make any sense, as Real Madrid is not a club that makes a point on being understood, only on being felt. The mystique of the white shirt, of the great European nights and, above all, the mystique of the Santiago Bernabéu are fundamental elements of what Real Madrid is today.
Real Madrid has countless stories worth telling, such as the time Real Madrid, in a clash against Partizan Belgrade, thrashed the Serbs 4–0 in Spain, but was losing 3–0 because of a bad choice of boots and uniforms to deal with the cold and hostile climate in Serbia. Seeing an apathetic and astonished team on the pitch, Alfredo di Stéfano decided to “do it himself” and started playing as a centre-back halfway through the second half (the change ended up working, and the game ended 3–0 for Partizan). Or the numerous comebacks in the 2006/2007 Spanish League, where Real Madrid won points in the last 10 minutes in 19 different matches and managed to win the trophy. There are countless others, all of which sum up the club’s winning spirit very well, but none like the 1985/1986 UEFA Cup.
The crazy campaign in the 1985/1986 UEFA Cup began by giving a small sample of what would come next: in the first game of the first round (the competition did not have a group stage at that time), Real Madrid was surprised by AEK Athens and was defeated 1–0 in the first leg, played in Greece. The second leg, played at the Santiago Bernabéu, showed all the strength of a team that had the likes of Butragueño, Hugo Sánchez, Chendo, Santillana and Juanito, and Real Madrid thrashed AEK 5–0. In the next round, a 2–1 victory in the first leg and a goalless draw in the second leg secured Real Madrid’s victory over Soviet club Chornomorets Odesa.
The first leg of the round of 16 of the UEFA Cup seemed to determine the end of Real Madrid’s participation in that edition. In Germany, Borussia Mönchengladbach trashed los blancos 5–1. Juanito, already a veteran of the team, left the field directly to the locker room and, there, raged with his teammates about the defeatist posture of the team in Germany. The second leg would end up becoming one of the great chapters in Real Madrid’s history: with two goals from Santillana and two goals from Valdano, los blancos returned the trashing of the first leg and won the game 4–0 and securing their place in the next round by the away goal rule in what is still one of the most impactful results in the history of the club. The quarterfinals were also reasonably peaceful and, despite a scare in the second leg where Real Madrid lost 2–0, the 3–0 victory over Swiss club Neuchâtel Xamax in the first leg guaranteed their place on the semifinals.
The great story of that season would come in the semifinals: Real Madrid would face Internazionale of players like Tardelli and Rummenigge, one of the best teams in that competition and that had scored, until then, 16 goals in 8 games. The first leg was played at the San Siro, and Real Madrid were once again categorically beaten by Internazionale with two goals from Tardelli and an own goal by Salguero, while Valdano’s lone goal discounted for los blancos. The 3–1 final result ended up seeming not drastic enough because of Inter’s utter superiority, and Real Madrid seemed to have used up all their luck against Borussia Mönchengladbach. However, the mood after the defeat was drastically different from the funereal one that marked the end of the first leg against Borussia. The best symbol of this was Juanito who, instead of raging at the Real Madrid players, turned to the Internazionale players who were celebrating the result and said in Italian: “90 minuti en el Bernabéu son molto longo”.
“Half an hour before the match started, the whole squad was convinced that we would qualify” — Emilio Butragueño.
It turned out that the 90 minutes that Juanito had predicted turned into 120. The players entered a packed Santiago Bernabéu, and the 120,000 fans had the same feeling as Real Madrid players: the team was going to qualify. Players behaved like lions on pitches, and the stands erupted in cheers of support for the players. The regular time ended with 3–1 on the scoreboard in favor of Real Madrid, with 2 goals from Hugo Sánchez and 1 from Gordillo, against a solitary penalty goal by the Irishman William Brady for Inter. Extra time showed a even more avid and unstoppable Real Madrid, and a double by Santillana sealed the 5–1 victory and stamped Real Madrid’s passport to the final. After the end of that apotheotic match, Juanito went to celebrate with the fans: in that moment, he was more than an idol, more than a player. He was a fan on the pitch, someone who wore the white shirt and stained it with everything but shame. His punches in the air and effusive screams embodied the feeling of the supporters, who saw themselves on the pitch in the figure of Juanito.
That campaign would end with the UEFA Cup title after a final against FC Koln, from Germany, but not even the 5–1 trash over the Germans was able to overshadow the glow of the spectacular comeback over Internazionale: if the South Americans built Real Madrid’s way of playing, it was a Spaniard who built the way of “feeling” Real Madrid. Juanito’s importance in shaping the club’s DNA should not be underestimated: he lacked the noble, plastic talent of figures like Puskás and Di Stéfano or his teammates Butragueño and Hugo Sánchez. He wasn’t a Galactico, not even remotely. But no one wore the Real Madrid shirt like he did, nor personified the feeling of a fan as much as he did. His famous quote “90 minutes in the Bernabéu is a very long time” ended up becoming the motto of Real Madrid’s winning spirit, as it would establish many things. First and foremost is that no player who does not give everything he has for the team during the 90 minutes of a match can’t step foot in the club; nor would he be able to, in fact, as he would quickly succumb to the pressure to win at all costs that hangs over the club. However, something else emerged from there: Real Madrid can never be considered dead. This philosophy would be the main guide to winning the Champions League in 2021/2022, which featured spectacular comebacks at the Santiago Bernabéu and which lived up to the mystique of that stadium. Juanito’s importance to Real Madrid is such that the club’s fans dedicate a song to the former player and, at the 7th minute of every game (referencing the number 7 he used), they all sing in one voice:
2. The Real Madrid way
Real Madrid’s winning spirit is something as unique to the club as it’s inseparable from it: there is no Real Madrid without the winning aura, the “great white shark” spirit the the club exhales mainly in european nights. That good old feeling that it doesn’t matter what happens on the pitch, Real Madrid will always win at the end.
However, without denying the importance of this winning philosophy of the club, I’ll leave it aside for now. The focus of this piece is to show that as important as the winning philosophy is the way the team plays on the pitch. The overvaluation of the winning mentality of the last decades, even though showed itself very succesful on making Real Madrid the greatest winner of the 21st century, ended up praising the ludic aspect of the club to a point where it denies the importance of how the team plays, of the tactical philosophy of the club.
It’s very comfortable for Real Madrid’s directors to distance the club from a more rigid and well-defined tactical philosohpy, summing it up as “playing offensively”, because this opens a wider horizon on signing new players and coaches without having to give to the fans a more well-thought explanation beyond a offensive and galactic profile. Even though it’s very difficult to point issues with this policy, since Real Madrid won 5 Champions League in a space of 8 years, it does have its implications, since at each tough time the club faces it always seems to get closer to an identity crisis. Names like Rafa Benítez or Julen Lopetegui roamed through the club in the last couple of years, and others like Antonio Conte or Thomas Tuchel always seem to be in Real Madrid’s radar to the coach position. Thats why, without denying and always praising Real Madrid’s winning mentality, I’ll leave it aside for a moment to point out the club’s tactical philosophy, the line that connects all the great teams of the history of Real Madrid.
2.1. The Kings of Europe
After 2 and a half years with José Villalonga, the successor of Enrique Fernández, in charge (which earned Real Madrid two LaLiga titles in 1954/1955 and 1956/1957 and two Champions League titles, then the European Champions Clubs’ Cup, in 1955/1956 and 1956/1957) and two more years with the Argentine Luis Carniglia (which earned the club another LaLiga title in 1957/1958 and two more European Cup titles in 1957/1958 and 1958/1959), Real Madrid’s status went far beyond the club’s reformulated structure and was already showing itself on the pitch. Santiago Bernabéu reaped in the late 50s what it sowed in the late 40s and early 50s, and now had a team that went beyond the brand and the value of its players: Real Madrid squandered its role-driven and offensive football on the pitch and won successively, both in Spain and Europe. At the end of the 1958/1959 season, when Luis Carniglia left the club a few days after winning the European Champions Clubs’ Cup (and having beaten Pelé’s Santos 5–3 in a friendly match), Real Madrid was arguably the best team in the world, and any coach who arrived to succeed Carniglia would be under a pressure that lived up the size Real Madrid had grown into.
To take on the valued, but tough job of coaching Real Madrid, Santiago Bernabéu signed a South American for the third consecutive time (José Villalonga wasn’t exactly signed, as he took over as interim in the middle of a season and ended up keeping the position for a couple of years), but this time it was Brazilian football that caught the president’s attention. After Brazil’s world title in 1958, there was no doubt that Brazilian football was not only flourishing, but becoming arguably one of the best in the world. Football in Brazil was going through its first big wave, influenced by names like Flávio Costa and Dori Kürschner during the 30’s and 40’s and perpetuated by names like Vicente Feola and Béla Guttman during the 50’s. Slowly, Brazil created a new tactical sensation that would give the country 3 World Cup titles in 12 years: the danubian, role-driven 4–2–4. To bring this wave to Europe, Bernabéu curiously didn’t bet on a Brazilian: in July 1959, Real Madrid took Manuel Fleitas Solich from Flamengo in order to have the Paraguayan as its new coach. Despite not being Brazilian, Fleitas Solich was extremely important for the implementation of the 4–2–4 system in Brazil and won three consecutive times the Rio de Janeiro’s State Championship with Flamengo in the early 50s. Not only that, but he also was a faithful practitioner of the role-driven style that made Argentina the greatest team of the 40’s, Hungary the greatest team of the early 50’s and Brazil the greatest team of the late 50's.
Fleitas Solich wasn’t the only one leaving Rio de Janeiro to arrive at Madrid: on his trip to Brazil, Santiago Bernabéu closed two very important signings. The first was the right winger Canário, from América FC, who came to fill the gap in the squad left by Raymond Kopa, who left Real Madrid to return to Stade de Reims (although Canário didn’t arrive, not even remotely, with the same status as Kopa had). The second didn’t exactly come out of necessity; indeed, he was the perfect symbol of the galactic profile of many of Santiago Bernabéu’s signings. After signing the likes of Alfredo di Stéfano, Paco Gento, Héctor Rial, Raymond Kopa and more recently Ferenc Puskás, Santiago Bernabéu signed the midfielder Didi, then at Botafogo, who was recently crowned world champion for Brazil and best player in the FIFA World Cup.
Arriving at Real Madrid, the first thing that Fleitas Solich realized was that the task of implanting the 4–2–4 at los blancos was more difficult than it seemed. The European culture of using the WM formation was still deeply rooted in the team, which had become used to playing with 3 defenders and having 2 defensive midfielders. In addition, the 4–2–4 had problems sheltering Alfredo di Stéfano, who didn’t see an immediate fit with either one of the midfield positions, neither as a false winger nor as one of the strikers. So Fleitas Solich quickly dismissed the idea of using his beloved 4–2–4 to respect the squad’s needs and comforts. The Paraguayan decided to follow the tactical line that the coaches who preceded him built: a variation of WM that had Di Stéfano as a false forward. However, Fleitas Solich made a series of changes to both get Didi into the squad and implement his unique ideas of football, and this created a series of breaks from the previous tactical line. The first and most obvious was to give up on a more fixed striker: whether with Roque Olsen, Héctor Rial or Enrique Mateos, Real Madrid in the 1950s always had a more incisive and less participative striker, not exactly a number 9, but a player who positioned himself closer to the box and who usually behaved as the most advanced and aggressive piece of the team, compensating for the lack of presence in the area of his attacking companions who acted more as playmakers. In addition, he changed the idea of having a pair of attackers with Di Stéfano behind them to have a single striker in front of a pair of attacking midfielders. This implied in two changes: the first was that Di Stéfano would not start the game as the center player of the attack as before, but as the left attacking midfielder, while Didi would be the right attacking midfielder. The two would form a square in the midfield alongside the two defensive midfielders, who were kept on the team. The second was the transformation of Puskás into the central figure of the attack, as a false 9. Although the galloping major was a spectacular goalscorer throughout his career and also an elite playmaker, he had never been the false 9 of any team he was in. Both in Honvéd and in the Hungarian National Team, his role was always that of the left forward, and the role of false 9 that marked Hungary in that period was Hidegkuti’s. Fleitas Solich’s changes might be less radical than going straight to a 4–2–4, but it definitely wasn’t smooth, and while his setup looked like a more “traditional” version of WM, its tactical behavior wasn’t traditional at all.
More important than any tactical tweak, Fleitas Solich remained faithful to the style that made him a coach and that consecrated Real Madrid as the great club of the 50s, and that would guarantee the success of this season: Fleitas Solich implemented an authentic version of the South American role-driven attack. When the team was on the field, it didn’t matter if Puskás was the attacker on the left or the false 9 or if Di Stéfano would start in a central position or more to the left, because in game each player performed his own, particular role. When Real Madrid had the ball, the team sought to cluster around it and, as three of the team’s most talented players roamed naturally through the left side (Gento, Puskás and Di Stéfano), that was where the team clustered.
The offensive impact of the three defenders was very small (not to non-existent) and, except for some sporadical ball-carries by Santamaría, the central defender, their participation was limited to starting the early build-up when goalkeeper Domínguez didn’t choose a more direct pass to the attack. In front of the defense trio were the two defensive midfielders, and that was where the offensive mechanisms began. In a logic very similar to that of Enrique Fernández’s Real Madrid, the left defensive midfielder (usually Zárraga or Ruiz) occupied a deeper position was the first man in midfield, a role between that of a playmaker fullback and that of a passing defensive midfielder. He was the first player ahead of the defenders and relied heavily on his runs to carry the ball to the attack. In addition, his deeper position implied in a greater defensive dedication to block counterattacks. The right defensive midfielder (Vidal, usually) was slightly more advanced and was the second man in midfield. He also played in a position between that of a full-back or that of a playmaker, but his role was different from that of the left defensive midfielder. Since he started from the right side, he made a diagonal movement to position himself closer to the ball, and was always a deeper passing option, in addition to also participating a lot in the early buildup. However, he had one more role: Vidal (or any other player who occupied that position) was a typical “box-to-box” midfielder. Thus, he was often tasked with attacking the right side and stepping into the opposite box as an extra attacker.
At Real Madrid, Didi played in a more advanced position than in the Brazilian national team. While with Brazil Didi was normally the second man in midfield and a deeper playmaker who played closer to the first defensive midfielder, the more defensive profile of Real Madrid midfielders meant that much of his talent would be lost if he played in that position. So Fleitas Solich positioned him higher and Didi started playing as the third man in midfield. Although he started from a position on Di Stéfano’s right, Fleitas Solich’s role-driven attack gave him complete freedom to roam around the pitch. Thus, he was usually the most central player on the team. As he was used to playing in a deeper position, Didi often dropped back from his more advanced position to participate in the build-up with the defensive midfielders, thus acting as a true maestro: he dropped back to start the build-up, received the ball from the defensive midfielders, infiltrated to attack the opposing area and even acted as a final third playmaker, like a traditional number 10. Didi quickly dominated the Real Madrid midfield and his talent ended up giving the team a new dynamic: a more elaborated possession and a slower build-up. Didi’s technical refinement and vision meant that Di Stéfano was no longer alone in the task of taking the ball from defense to attack, as he now had an extremely talented player at his side who was even more comfortable acting as a deep playmaker. Didi’s arrival gave Real Madrid a much bigger repertoire when attacking; now, the team did not just depend on quick and intense movements and passes, as it gained a piece that gave more pause and technical refinement to the build-up.
However, Didi’s arrival did not overshadow Di Stéfano’s role. Quite the opposite: Didi only complemented the game of the Hispanic-Argentinean, who was the undisputed owner of the team. Di Stéfano normally roamed through the left wing, his preferred side of pitch, and was often seen attacking the wing when Gento drifted inwards, but his prime position was right in the center of Real Madrid’s attack. His status as the owner of the team was easily seen on the pitch: the other players’ movements and interactions revolved around him. He was the main playmaker and, although Didi was a great addition, the “final word” on where, how and when the ball should go, where the team should attack and what the pace the game should follow would always be Di Stéfano’s. The arrival of Puskás at the club in the previous season only strengthened this: Di Stéfano saw in the Hungarian such a great guarantee of goals that he did not feel obliged to always stay close to the opponent’s box and was free to move around the pitch without the “obligation” to be the main scorer of the team at all times. Di Stéfano embodied Real Madrid’s role-driven football: it was impossible to assign him a position. He wasn’t a defensive midfielder, a midfielder, an attacking midfielder, a forward, a winger or a striker, but everything at the same time. The Hispanic-Argentinean could speed up the game through the wing or attack the box as a goalscoring striker, but he could also receive the ball in a deeper position and set up the team’s midfield. At the end of the 1959/1960 season, Di Stéfano played 34 games, scored 23 goals and gave 25 assists: it was his season with the fewest goals scored since he arrived at Real Madrid, but also the one with the most assists distributed throughout his spell at los blancos. These numbers, although cold, summed up Di Stéfano’s role at Real Madrid very well: a playmaker who felt comfortable playing far from the opponent’s box and who circulated throughout the whole pitch, but who did not fail to deliver an outstanding offensive volume.
Ferenc Puskás played in the 1959/1960 season with 32 years of age and struggling with physical problems; therefore, Real Madrid didn’t have in the Hungarian that striker who impressed the world in the early 50s with his relentless physique, unstoppable runs and powerful shots. In contrast, Real Madrid had an extremely complete forward. He might not have the physique of before, but he was in full control of all the actions of the attack: he was a true trequartista. As he grew older, Puskás developed his game through intelligence and technical refinement. He was no longer that cannon of the left side of the attack, but he was very intelligent when moving, leaving the area, receiving the ball from as a target man, giving excellent passes and, of course, without ceasing to be a force of nature when the subject was offensive volume. At the end of the 1959/1960 season, Puskás had played 36 games, scored 49 goals (the second best season of his career in that regard) and gave 26 assists (also his second best season of his career in that regard). The 1959/1960 Puskás was the perfect player for the team that Fleitas Solich had put together: in the Paraguayan’s role-driven attack, Puskás was not the static central piece of the attack that would serve to fix the opposing centre-backs and be the target of long balls, but a extremely technical and talented playmaker who had control of all the actions of the attack. Words aren’t enough to describe the enormity of the 1959/1960 season for Puskás: it goes far beyond the impressive mark of 2.08 direct participations in goals per game. The Hungarian was, without a doubt, Real Madrid’s best player of the season. Although Di Stéfano and Didi were essential in controlling and setting up the game, the entire attack revolved around Ferenc Puskás. Part of the “agreement” between him and Di Stéfano that allowed the Hispanic-Argentinean to walk more freely through the pitch implied a greater role for the Hungarian in attack, and that was exactly what happened. Thus, Puskás acted as a “trequartista”, much more than the goal-scoring machine that statistics pointed out: his transformation into a complete striker and an outstanding playmaker made him Real Madrid’s best player that season.
At last, Fleitas Solich assigned each winger their own roles. Gento, the left-winger, acted as a “strong side” winger, that is, the winger of the side that concentrated a larger amount of players. Fleitas Solich’s role-driven attack incited the players to cluster so they could establish their relations of mobility more easily and due to Di Stéfano’s and Puskás’ natural tendency to roam through the left side of the attack, the team would normally cluster around there. Thus, Gento had more players around him and consequently, more possibilities to establish interactions and relations of mobility. His outstanding pace and demolishing dribbling allowed him to act as a more incisive forward and, because of that, he was often the team’s more advanced player when Puskás and Di Stéfano dropped back to act as playmakers. But his game wasn’t restrained to that, and Fleitas Solich transformed him into a complete forward: he usually drifted inwards in a diagonal movement to interact more with other players, and his “one-twos” with Puskás and Di Stéfano were a powerful weapon Real Madrid used often.
Herrera’s role was drastically different: he was the “weak side” winger, that is, the winger that played in the more empty side of the attack. He wasn’t the right winger that used to leave his position to drift inwards and interact with the other players of the team as Joseíto was in the 1953/1954 Real Madrid, mainly because Herrera had a different range of abilities. He was less associative than Joseíto, but more incisive and lethal; therefore, Fleitas Solich used him as a traditional weak side winger. Since Real Madrid clustered on the left side of the attack, the opponent was forced to move his defensive block there and consequently emptying the opposite side. Herrera’s role was to position himself wider on the right side, restraining his possibilities of relations and interactions, so he could be a target of inversions of play to attack an emptied right flank. Therefore, Herrera had a more incisive and less relationist role compared to that of Gento’s, as his main role was to attack the opponent box through a inversion of play that found an empty right side.
1959/1960 Real Madrid was way more than “just” a ruthless winner and a talented squad, a “great white shark” that devoured every opponent that appeared in its way: it was also a strong representative of the role-driven attack at the best South American style. Real Madrid sought to impose its superiority by establishing a huge range of relations of mobility on the pitch, where each player performed their own unique role. The players made large movements across the pitch: endless runs, one-twos, overlaps, underlaps and drop-backs, always with numerical superiority around the ball. There wasn’t the idea of positions because the team organized itself by the roles performed by each player. Gento started on the left side, drifted inwards, combined with Di Stéfano or Puskás and arrived at the box. Di Stéfano dropped back to received the ball from the defenders, ran across the whole pitch, attacked the left wing. Puskás left the centre of the attack, roamed through the sides, dropped back and acted as a playmaker. Didi dropped back to play as a defensive midfielder, combinated with Di Stéfano and Puskás and invaded the opposite box as an extra forward. Each player had its own wide range of movements and relations of mobility to establish: large movements to control the time. Almost total freedom, but that didn’t come at the expense of tactical complexity and rigor. Each player was the master of their own time and could perform at the peak of their talents, because they had the freedom to play as they were more comfortable.
Real Madrid played 17 games at the first half of the 1959/1960 season, won 12, drew 3 and lost 2. Throughout these games, the team scored 60 goals (an average of 3,53 goals per game) and conceded 15 (0,88 goals conceded per game), keeping a 70,5% victory record. Real Madrid ended the 1959 calendar year as the leader of LaLiga, two points ahead of second place Athletic Bilbao and four points ahead third place FC Barcelona. Furthermore, the team guaranteed their place on the quarter finals of the European Champions Club Cup after trashing Louxerbourg team Jeunesse Esch 12–2 across two matches. Even though Real Madrid was Europe’s undisputed best team, the second half of the season didn’t go as planned. Didi left the club in January because of relationship problems with Di Stéfano and returned to Brazil. Furthermore, the team allowed Barcelona to catch up on LaLiga and lost the title on goal difference. That caused Fleitas Solich to resign after already colecting relationship issues with Santiago Bernabéu. Miguel Muñoz, the coach of Real Madrid B, took over the main team and went on to win the European Cup for the 5th time in a row (knocking out Barcelona at the semifinals) and therefore ending the season with a good feeling. However, the level of football of the second semester of 1959 would never be seen again, and its mark was already placed: the 1959/1960 team dictated once and for all how Real Madrid should play.
2.2. La Quinta del Buitre
More than two decades after Real Madrid demolished Europe with the likes of Di Stéfano and Puskás, los blancos would once again figure as one of the best teams of the continent by building another dinasty, but now at a national level: Real Madrid won all 5 editions of LaLiga from 1986 to 1990. Not only that, but los blancos also established a new goal-scoring record in a single edition of the Spanish League by scoring 107 goals in 1989/1990, a record that would only be surpassed by Mourinho’s Real Madrid, that scored 121 goals in 2012.
However, despite all of the brand new offensive power Real Madrid had, the way that team was built is drastically different from the way the 1950s team was built. Instead of a long project of galácticos that consisted on a thorough process of analysis in order to hire talents from all around the world, the 1980s Real Madrid found out that didn’t have to leave Spain to find a gold mine. As a matter of fact, they didn’t have to leave their own sporting complex, because there was a gold mine waiting to be discovered on Real Madrid Castilla.
In November 1983, journalist Julio César Iglesias wrote a piece for newspaper El País about the outstanding season of Real Madrid Castilla, Real Madrid’s B team: at the end of the 1983/1984 season, the reserve team of los blancos would become champions of Spain’s second division, the first and so far only B team to ever acomplish this. To name his piece about the newest and impressive generation of Real Madrid’s youth system, Julio picked the title Amancio y la Quinta del Buitre (Amancio and the Buitre’s Five, in a direct translation). This title referenced Amanio Amaro, a Real Madrid legend that played for the club in the 1960s and now was in charge of Real Madrid Castilla, and the 5 main players of that team: Miguel Pardeza, Manolo Sanchís, Míchel González, Rafael Martín Vázquez and Emilio Butragueño. “Buitre” was Butragueño’s nickname, and since he was the most promising player of that team, he was the one to name that generation.
It seemed it was a matter of time until all of La Quinta del Buitre became regular starters for the main team of Real Madrid, and this feeling almost became an absolut truth if not for Miguel Pardeza, that couldn’t complete 30 games for los blancos and spent the majority of his career playing for Real Zaragoza. Besides him, all of the other 4 players of “the Buitre’s Five” made outstanding careers on Real Madrid’s first team, and the youth system — professional football transition couldn’t be more symbolic: the manager that brought the 4 of them from Castilla to los blancos main team and for making them regular starters was Alfredo di Stéfano. Sanchís and Martín Vázquez were the firsts to play for Real Madrid’s main team (technically, Míchel was the first as he played one match for Real Madrid’s main team in 1982, but wouldn’t do that again until 1984) when in 1983 they came from the bench in a game where Real Madrid’s winning goal was scored by Sanchís. A few days later, Pardeza had his debut. Butragueño’s debut wouldn’t come until February 1984, when el Buitre came from the bench in a game where Real Madrid were 2–0 down against Cádiz. His debut made justice to his name, and the Spaniard scored twice and gave one assist to guarantee Real Madrid’s 3–2 win. At last, Míchel would come back to Real Madrid’s first team (for good, this time) on the start of the 1984/1985 season. On the following years, the club would make some fine additions to the squad and would keep some of that galácticos air with the signings of the forward Jorge Valdano, the goalkeeper Francisco Buyo, the midfielder Bernd Schuster and the striker Hugo Sánchez.
Picking only one team out of the entire La Quinta del Buitre period is not an easy task. The back-to-back UEFA Cup titles in 1984/1985 and 1985/1986 (which I covered partly in the session about Juanito) that had club legend Luis Molowny in charge was a very special time for Real Madrid, specially the 1985/1986 season that had not only the UEFA Cup title, but also the first of the 5 consecutive titles of the Spanish League. There’s also the 1989/1990 team, that established the 107 goals record in a single LaLiga campaign under John Toschack. However, I picked the 1988/1989 season, the third and last of the Dutchman Leo Beenhakker ahead of Real Madrid and that ended with a LaLiga title, a Copa del Rey title, a Spanish Supercup title and a great Champions League campaign that was ended by Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan on the semifinals.
There are not many tasks that are harder than fiding out the formation of La Quinta del Buitre’s Real Madrid. As anarchic as most of the teams of this piece were when attacking, all of them started from a slightly clear formation and with well established roles to eacho one of the players. Well, Leo Beenhakker’s Real Madrid wasn’t a team to stuck itself in one of those mannerisms and it had one structure to each phase of the game, one more unique and different than the other. That’s why I decided in favor of dividing the way Beenhakker’s Real Madrid played in three different phases: how the team behaved on the early build-up, how the team changed the structure as it moved higher on the pitch and how the team positioned itself on the final third.
Starting from the beginning, the early build-up was one of the main pillars of Beenhakker’s Real Madrid and was what sustained every offensive mechanism that came later on. A build-up based on short passes since the goalkeeper was something inegotiable for the Dutchman, since he believed that initiating every play calmly was something essential to advance on the pitch with quality and with long periods of posession and by so exploring the best of the talent of each player. In order to do that, Real Madrid started the build-up with the 3 centre-backs (in the game against AC Milan, Chendo, Sanchís and Tendillo) very close to the goalkeeper, creating short passing lanes since the goal kick. In this phase, the defensive trio gained the company of Gallego: the Spanish midfielder played as a traditional sweeper under Beenhakker and dropped back from his midfielder position to play alongside Sanchís, like an extra centre-back. Then, Chendo and Tendillo moved higher and wider to position themselves like fullbacks and thus create a back 4 on the early build-up. This mechanism allowed for the wing-backs Míchel and Gordillo to move higher up the pitch and act more like wide midfielders than like proper wing-backs. Right ahead of the 4 defenders was Schuster, acting as a deep-lying playmaker. He was the first man ahead of the centre-backs and therefore the main responsible for facing the first wave of pressing from the opponent, shaping the team’s rythm on the match and taking the ball all the way to the forwards. The German usually got some help from Martín Vázquez, dropping from his attacking midfielder position in order to form a defensive midfielder duo and thus being another passing lane in a deeper position. Therefore, Real Madrid’s shape for the early build-up looked like an asymmetrical 4–4–2.
The importance of Gallego’s role on the early build-up can’t be overstated since he was the main player on this phase despite Schuster’s essential role. The Spaniard adapted himself to the sweeper role wonderfully, acting as a playmaker on a centre-back position. He dropped back from the midfield all the way to behind the centre-back trio to receive the first pass from Buyo and then run with the ball to take it to Chendo, Sanchís and Tendillo or to Schuster and Martín Vázquez. Furthermore, when Martín Vázquez didn’t drop back or when the opponent’s pressure was specially strong, Gallego would also move higher to act as a midfielder alongside Schuster.
As soon as the team managed to overcome the first line of the oponnent’s pressing and to move higher on the pitch, the structure and the player’s movements and actions changed a lot. In order to ensure a numerical superiority on the midfield, Gallego moved higher from his defensive position to join Schuster and thus undoing the back 4 strucuture of the early build-up for good. Therefore, Real Madrid started to use a back 3 structure in this phase, but both Chendo and Tendillo kept holding onto their high and wide positions and could move into the midfield if the situation asked for a bigger numerical superiority.
It was on this phase where the wing-backs gained more importance, and each one of them had their own role. Gordillo, on the left, was something more of a traditional wing-back: very high and wide on the pitch, attacking the left flank with loads of energy, speed and physical strenght. Míchel, on the right, had a more unique role. In a diagonal movement, he left the right flank to join Schuster and Gallego, acting as an extra midfielder rather than as a traditional winger. This movement emptied the right flank and thus Martín Vázquez would normally leave his central position to attack the wing. Furthermore, it was also on this phase where Butragueño began to be more important to the operation of the team’s structure, roaming on the central lanes of the pitch as a classical number 10 and helping the midfielders on the playmaking.
Despite the huge complexity of movements from the two previous phases, it was on the third one where La Quinta del Buitre’s role-driven attack truly showed itself. Beenhakker’s Real Madrid made justice to the term “organized chaos” and even though I don’t like this expression (I adress this subject on The Art of Planning Freedom) I must admit that not man expressions describe the attack of La Quinta del Buitre’s Real Madrid so well. Don’t let yourself be fooled and believe that the team was total chaos, where the players just did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and the coach just observed because the team was very well trained and every movement was thoroughly planned, but the complexity and the variety of these movements, plus the offensive mind of the team, gave the impression of chaos on each match.
The “organized chaos” was already stablised since the defenders, since the defensive trio was very active on the attack. Sanchís, the centre-back, was the one that attacked the least out of the three, but he still contributed a lot to the attack with his runs with the ball and his sporadic “visits” to the midfield zone. Tendillo, the left centre-back, had an excellent understanding with Gordillo, the left wing-back and, as Gordillo attacked the flank like a winger, Tendillo used to attack through the middle, closer to the midfielders. Chendo, the right centre-back, made a movement called “defensive diagonal”: basically, it’s a diagonal movement normally performed by a fullback in a role-driven attack where the player leaves a wider position to move inwards and therefore closing the inside space and positioning himself closer to the middle, but in a deeper zone. This movement triggered a very interesting attacking mechanism: since Míchel and Martín Vázquez operated more in central spaces, the right-wing ended up empty and the central and left portions of the pitch ended up more crowded. Therefore, the opponent was forced to move their defensive block there and leave the right flank empty. This allowed Chendo to attack the right-wing as a surprise element through a overlap movement, leaving his deeper position and attacking the empty space left there.
Now onto the midfeild, Gallego and Schuster became an inseparable duo of defensive midfielders as they understood each other like nobody else, frequently alternating between the roles of a deep-lying playmaker and of a more offnsive minded midfielder. At this point of the attack, it was difficult to call Míchel a wing-back because even though he often attacked the right wing when he saw the opportunity to do so, his main area was the central lane of the pitch, as an extra defensive midfielder. Martín Vázquez alternated between playing as a more incisive winger and as an attacking midfielder, moving from the right flank to a more central position, right ahead of Schuster, Gallego and Míchel. From the left to the middle roamed Butragueño: even though he was a second striker, el Buitre dropped back a lot and was not limited to the role of an infiltrator. He was a true number 10 and was the team’s main playmaker in the attack, receiving the ball from the defensive midfielders and picking great passes for Hugo Sánchez, Martín Vázquez, Gordillo or any other player who appeared in the attack. Butragueño also changed positions with Gordillo a lot and used his speed and dribbling to create chances from the wing. Finally, Hugo Sánchez was a more traditional number 9, but he always moved according to the movement of the ball and stayed close to the other players, often leaving the reference to open spaces and act as a playmaker like a false 9.
Leo Beenhakker’s Real Madrid had was a posession-based team and had a thorough, complex role-driven attack that got the best of each player’s talent, but that also knew when to speed things up with Gordillo, Chendo, Míchel, Martín Vázquez, Butragueño or Hugo Sánchez. The team won LaLiga with an 65% victory record, scoring 91 goals (an average of 2.39 goals scored per match) and conceding just 37, the second best defense in the league. In addition, throughout the season, the team scored 127 goals in 55 matches (2.30 goals per match), won LaLiga for the fourth time in a row, won the Spanish SuperCup, the Copa del Rey and was knocked out in the semifinals of the Champions League where, after a good first game against Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan, the team was trashed on the second game due to a change by Beenhakker who took Tendillo out of the team to the put the winger Llorente in order to give the team more speed, but which ended up dismantling the early build-up. La Quinta del Buitre’s Real Madrid would end up going on to a record-breaking season under John Toschack in 1989/1990, but the foundation of the team would end up dismantled in the years to come to make room for the next great generation of Real Madrid.
2.3. The Galácticos
I’ve used the term “galactico” a lot to describe the profile of the signings of Santiago Bernabéu and his idea of having a team full of stars, but the term would only be coined and attributed to Real Madrid in the early 2000s, when Spanish businessman Florentino Pérez was running for the club presidency promising that he would bring the glory days of the 1950s back to Madrid, if elected. Throughout his campaign, he said he was enchanted with the team of Puskás and Di Stéfano as a kid and that the management of Lorenzo Sanz, current president, didn’t live up to the glory days of Real Madrid, despite the two recent Champions League wins in 1998 and 2000. Florentino Pérez promised to build a team of stars and that he would sign one great player at the beginning of each season, starting with Luís Figo, the best player of archrivals FC Barcelona.
Florentino Pérez was elected, and with him came Luís Figo, signed after Florentino paid a €60 million release fee in what was then the most expensive transfer in history. A year later, Florentino broke his own record by spending €77 million to take Zinedine Zidane out of Juventus and, the following year, he spent €45 million to sign the newly World Cup champion Ronaldo Nazário, who was at Inter Milan. Correcting the figures for inflation, Florentino would’ve spent what is now equivalent to €500 million in the signing of the three players. They joined the likes of Casillas, Hierro, Roberto Carlos and Raúl, who were already at the club before Florentino’s arrival, and the union of so many stars in the same team, mainly in the attack, ended up earning the name of Galacticos.
As it was with La Quinta del Buitre, it’s hard to pick a single team in the Galacticos generation. The 2004 version, which already had Beckham, is probably the most attractive for bringing together more stars, but the team already felt the effect of signing only attacking players and not paying attention to the defense. The most famous team is probably that of 2002, where in the year of its centenary, Real Madrid won its ninth Champions League with Zidane’s historic volley in the final against Bayer Leverkusen, but I won’t choose that either. I believe that, despite the glories of 2002 and the stars of 2004, it’s common sense that the best football presented by the Galacticos Real Madrid was in the 2002/2003 season (Ronaldo’s first at the club), where the team commanded by Vicente del Bosque won LaLiga with the best attack in the league, won the Intercontinental Cup, the UEFA Super Cup and reached the semifinals of the Champions League, where he was again knocked out by an Italian team, but this time by Juventus.
Del Bosque’s team started from a pretty clear 4–4–2 (or a 4–2–2–2, if you prefer; or even a 4–2–3–1, if you want to distinguish more Raúl’s and Ronaldo’s roles. As we’ll see later, the number doesn’t matter): 4 defenders with 2 fullbacks (Salgado and Roberto Carlos) and 2 centre-backs (Hierro and Helguera or Pavon), 2 defensive midfielders (usually Guti and Makelelé, but the Argentinian Cambiasso, the Brazilian Flávio Conceição and the Englishman McManaman also featured a lot in the sector), 2 attacking midfielders (Figo and Zidane) and 2 forwards (Raúl and Ronaldo). Something important to note is that Real Madrid had no wingers in the team. More on that later.
Once again, we see the sustained and minucious early build-up as one of the pillars of Real Madrid’s possession-based game, and the structure here was very similar to that of La Quinta del Buitre: 4 defenders who participate a lot in the early build-up with 2 defensive midfielders right ahead of them. For this phase, Roberto Carlos and Salgado dropped back and stayed close to the centre-backs’, forming a very narrow defensive line to shorten the passing lanes as much as possible. Guti and Makelelé were playmaking defensive midfielders and, therefore, also participated a lot in the early build-up. There was no clear distinction between the role of first and second defensive midfielder, as the two were closely aligned like a classic Spanish double pivot, and when it was necessary for one of them to drop back closer to the defenders, both would take turns to do this.
The most important thing here is the active participation of 6 players, creating a numerical superiority in the early build-up (the principle of a sustained early build-up) and the clustering of these 6 players. Having more players on the early build-up meant a greater number of passing lanes in a deeper position on the field and, therefore, a greater number of possibilities for combinations, interactions, articulations and solutions to start plays from the back, in addition to creating a numerical superiority in the early build-up and, therefore, facilitating the task of overcoming the opponent’s first line of pressing. Also, having players closer together creates shorter passing lanes. This has two main implications: with shorter passing lanes, the ball doesn’t have to travel a great distance between two players when one passes to another, and therefore the team can pass the ball more quickly. In addition, bringing players closer together facilitates interactions and mobility relations between them since, as they are closer to each other, combinations come out more naturally. Real Madrid didn’t explore the idea of having width in the early build-up, and preferred to build their plays from the inside.
The most interesting part of that Real Madrid, as usual, would come after the early build-up: the way the team moved higher on the pitch and dominated the attacking field. Once again, we’ll see Real Madrid performing a fluid role-driven attack, which focuses on playing through the middle, ball possession, freedom for the players and the creation of numerous mobility relations. However, Vicente del Bosque’s team is probably the most radical and orthodox in relation to the pillars of this style of role-driven attack of all Real Madrid teams I’ve adressed here: as I said before, the team had no wingers and gave a much greater focus on playing through the middle, exploring the width of the pitch in a way I’ll soon describe.
Like the previous teams, Del Bosque’s Real Madrid tried to cluster its players at all times, usually on the left side, assigning a specific role to each player. The game started with Helguera and Hierro, and the offensive participation of the defenders would be limited only to short passes in the early build-up if not for the long passes and sporadic runs of Hierro. Salgado, the right-back, was much more defensive than Roberto Carlos, the left-back, and also didn’t have much of a decisive role in the attack. The Spaniard would make a defensive diagonal, position himself close to the ball, and usually didn’t offer much more than a short and safe passing lane in a deeper position, but every now and then throughout the games he’d made dangerous overlaps to attack the emptied right side. Makelelé and Guti were the deep-lying playmakers: they received the ball from the defenders and took it to the attack, regulating the team’s rhythm and setting up the plays from a deeper position. However, the offensive participation of the two went far beyond the more conservative and safe role of a classic defensive midfielder and, especially with Guti, Real Madrid had a very unique weapon in the defensive midfielder line. The Spaniard was known for his outstanding passing ability and, as a result, he’d often step forward to become an extra midfielder, helping to articulate the attack more directly.
Going to the more offensive players, it is impossible to overstate Zidane’s importance for the team’s offensive mechanism, and Del Bosque knew this better than anyone. As a result, the Frenchman probably benefited the most from the total freedom that a role-driven attack may give some players. He started from the position of a left attacking midfielder and, from there, roamed through the entire pitch. Zidane’s outstanding ball control passing even when under intense pressing would make him an excellent deep-lying playmaker and, despite preferring to play in a hiher zone, it was common to see Zidane alongside (or even right behind) Guti and Makelelé at the early build-up. In addition, Zidane had an impeccable relationship with Roberto Carlos on the pitch, and the understanding between the two facilitated the creation of a huge range of combinations. For that reason, it was very common to see the two very close to each other, changing positions, making “one-twos” and making the most out of the combination between Zidane’s impeccable pass and Roberto Carlos’s strenght and speed. Finally, Zidane was in his best version when roming around the attacking midfielders zone. He had complete control of the rythm of the match and seemed to play in his own pace, respecting only his own will and forcing the entire game to follow. He was the centerpiece of Real Madrid’s gear: he dropped backto receive the ball from the defensive midfielders, carried it up to the attack and, there, set up the whole attack. He always had the final word on where, how and when the ball should go; he organized and coordinated the movement and actions of all the attacking players, roamed through all the zones of the pitch to create combinations with all the players of the team and, in short, was the representative of Del Bosque on the field: the brain of the team. Perhaps, with a slower style of play, Zidane was the closest Real Madrid had to Di Stéfano.
Right ahead of Zidane were Raúl and Figo, with roles as similar to each other as they were different. Raúl played in what seemed to be the “Butragueño role”: a player who started as a second striker, but participated in the game much more as a midfielder than as an actual forward. Raúl wasn’t as fast nor had a dribble as powerful as Butragueño’s, but he made up for that with an unique intelligence on the pitch. The number 7 always seemed to be fully aware of everything that was happening in the match and, therefore, always knew where to be and where his teammates were. He hardly received a ball marked by a defender, as he knew where he had to move to receive a pass in the best possible condition and, from there, continue the attack. Therefore, Raúl also had immense freedom on the field so that he could explore all the moves that his talent allowed him to make. The Spaniard dropped back a lot, often playing in the same zone as Zidane and even dropping back all the way to the defensive midfielders so that he could receive the ball directly from them. In addition, he was an excellent forward and used his spectacular sense of positioning to always be at the right time and in the right place, in addition to having an amazing shooting. Figo had a similar role to that of Raúl, but with his own particularities. Del Bosque liked to position him in a central position, as a right attacking midfielder, so that he could interact more with Guti, Zidane and Raúl. Figo was free to both drop back and play alongside the defensive midfielders and Zidane or to move higher and act as a second striker alongside Raúl, but the Portuguese had another important role. Since he started further to the right of Zidane and Raúl and was used to playing as a winger after his years at Barcelona, Figo was often used as a weak side winger: it was common to see him in a wider position to attack the emptied right flank through an inversion of play. Further ahead was Ronaldo, who, like Hugo Sánchez, served as a reference for the attack, but was far from being a static number 9: Ronaldo roamed through the attack and took turns with Raúl in acting as the team’s most advanced player and dropping back to create spaces and set up the attack. He was the team’s top scorer in his first season with Real Madrid and didn’t lose his presence in the box, but he was a very complete forward.
Finally, there is the role of Roberto Carlos, and I’ll use it to explain the way that Real Madrid explored the width of the pitch. It’s common knowledge that Roberto Carlos is a historical reference for offensive fullbacks because of his immense physical strenght, speed and ability to cross, shoot and to take free-kicks. Therefore, the it’s very common to have a misconception of understanding his role in Del Bosque’s Real Madrid as that of a winger, who was high and wide at all times in the attackers’ line, but the way Roberto Carlos played was quite different. As seen before, he was very active on the early build-up; therefore, he started the game in a deeper position instead of being fixed in attack as a winger. When the team moved higher up the pitch, Roberto Carlos remained deeper, closer to the defensive midfielders and Zidane than to Ronaldo, for example, and often cut inside to create combinations with the midfielders. Thus, the left wing was empty, without a fixed player giving width there. But this wasn’t a mistake; as a matter of fact, that was exactly how Real Madrid explored the width: by emptying key places on the flanks and concentrating players on the central zones, the team attracted the opponent to the centre of the pitch and thus created spaces on the flanks. Then, a player would leave his position to arrive at that space and attack it quickly, and then he’d return to a more central zone. Real Madrid’s idea was not to occupy the sides of the pitch, but to empty them to attack them quickly and objectively. That was the role of Roberto Carlos and partially of Salgado and Figo on the opposite side as well: leaving the flanks empty to attack it at the right time. Arriving in the empty space instead of occupying the space.
As I mentioned before, the Galacticos (or, at least, Vicente del Bosque’s version of the Galacticos) was extremely orthodox team when it came to the pillars of this role-driven attack: a lot of clustering and playing through the middle, aiming to leave the sides empty and attack them quickly, very long and specific movements assigned to each player allowing them to perform what they did best on the pitch, position changes and intense and complex movements. From that, Real Madrid were crowned champions of LaLiga, scoring 86 goals (an average of 2.26 goals scored per game) and conceding 42 (average of 1.1 goals conceded per game), beating Feyenoord in the UEFA Super Cup and Olímpia in the Intercontinental Cup. However, relationship issues between Del Bosque and Florentino Pérez ended up in the departure of the coach after the president didn’t renew his contract and, because of that, Real Madrid would take a long time to find a coach who played an offensive, fluid, organized and consistent game (although Vanderlei Luxemburgo was a quick breathe of fresh air who did a lot of good for the club, but who ended up being fired due to issues between him and part of the squad). The difficulty of finding a commander for the team ended up joining the imbalance caused by the signing of too many offensive stars and too few defensively solid players and thus creating a sporting crisis: the second half of the 2000s was somewhat melancholy for Real Madrid, resulting in the resignation of Florentino Pérez in 2006.
2.4. La Décima (and the mystical second semester of 2014)
Florentino Pérez wouldn’t stay away from Real Madrid for long and, in 2009, he ran for president once again and was automatically elected as he was the only candidate who had the necessary guarantees to occupy the position of president. The melancholy of the 2000s dragged on and seemed endless: since 2006, Real Madrid was being successively knocked out on the round of 16 of the Champions League and sporadic wins of the Spanish League was what sustained the club. That was until 2008, when FC Barcelona announced Pep Guardiola as coach and, in the 2008/2009 season, won all possible trophies with a modern, renewed kind of football that thrashed Real Madrid 6–2 in the final stretch of LaLiga right at the Santiago Bernabéu.
If the melancholy of the late 2000s wasn’t necessary to wake up Real Madrid, the emergence of Pep Guardiola’s FC Barcelona definitely was. The blaugranas returned to the spotlight with a renewed, systematized, automated and complex football, with a very strong collective and which was based on the rationalization of spaces. More important than each player’s action was the way that player could compose a larger structure; the players didn’t shape the system, the system shaped the players. Guardiola’s Barcelona seemed to be the epitome of modern football.
Florentino arrived doing what he always knew how to do: filling the team with stars. In his first 2 years of his second spell as president of Real Madrid, Florentino signed the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Benzema, Kaká, Xabi Alonso, Di María and Özil to replace the generation of Raúl, Van Nistelrooy, Sneijder and Guti. However, the biggest initial shock that Florentino Pérez’s return brought to Real Madrid was not the “second generation of the Galacticos” signed by him, but his choice for the command of the team. After the 2009/2010 season ended on a promising but disappointing feeling with Manuel Pellegrini as the coach, Florentino Pérez sacked him and signed the coach who knocked-out Pep Guardiola from the Champions League in 2010, thinking that a Galactico team needed a Galactico coach. The 2010/2011 season, Florentino’s second after his return to the presidency, would show the first year of José Mourinho’s Real Madrid.
I’ll talk more about José Mourinho and all his implications later; the important thing here is to understand the immediate impact of hiring him. First, we need to highlight the importance of Mourinho off the pitch. The Portuguese gave the Real Madrid team a shock of reality and gave back to the players the fighting and winning spirit that was such an important pillar for the club: his controversial press conferences, explosive behavior, very high demands and energetic aura completely transformed the atmosfere of the club. Every player wanted to do their best at all times, whether it was a European knockout night in the Champions League or a simple La Liga matchday. Mourinho made Real Madrid stop putting their heads down and start facing Barcelona (and the other European powers) as equals. However, Mourinho represented a break with the club’s footballing ideology. Like Guardiola, Mourinho is a deeply systematic coach, with a highly automated and collective football that forced players to fit into a pre-defined system that privileged the systematization of spaces and movements of the players over the expression of each one’s talent. When Mourinho left Real Madrid, the club seemed lost. It won a lot, of course, but it didn’t have the same magic as the great teams that have marked los blancos history: the club’s soul seemed to have suffered a heavy blow and Real Madrid seemed to have lost hope, seeking more to replicate Guardiola’s dominant style than to build an identity of its own.
However, arrived in Madrid an Italian called Carlo Ancelotti. He had left his name in the history of AC Milan (where he won two Champions Leagues and one Serie A) and Chelsea (where he won the Premier League with a record of goals scored) and was in charge of the ambitious project of Paris Saint-Germain when he received the invitation of Florentino Pérez to coach Real Madrid. Ancelotti accepted right away, and the hardest part was getting his release from the French club to coach Real Madrid in the 2013/2014 season. The Italian was a huge breath of fresh air for los blancos: his career as a coach (especially his spells at Parma and Juventus) shaped him to always think of the players first, to get the best out of each one and not lose a talented player simply because he didn’t adapt to a pre-conceived system. His spells at Milan and Chelsea showed an Ancelotti that always willing to listen to his players and make them a priority, building a system around them and not subjugating them to a rigid idea.
Ancelotti maintained his philosophy and, through it, built a team that won the Copa del Rey and the Champions League in his first season at the helm of Real Madrid. Ancelotti got the best out of Xabi Alonso, Modric and Di María and from those three he put together an amazing midfield with complementary characteristics that offered many possibilities for the team. In the attack, the Italian assembled the BBC trio by joining the newcomer Bale to the already consolidated Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo and got the best of each one in one of the best attacking trios in history. Winning La Décima, Real Madrid’s tenth Champions League trophy, was something the club had been aiming for for over 10 years but failed successively until Ancelotti arrived. With him, Real Madrid not only won, but also rescued its identity that seemed lost.
However, we won’t talk about La Décima’s team, but about the next stage of Ancelotti’s work: the 2014/2015 season. With a better knowledge of the squad and the strengths and weaks of each player, Ancelotti managed to build an even better team. The second half of the year 2014, the first half of the 2014/2015 season, was arguably the best football Real Madrid played in the whole century: a football that was even more fluid, offensive, versatile and powerful than that of the 2013/2014 season. In 2014/2015, Real Madrid reached a 22-game winning streak, the longest winning streak in the history of a European club that would only be surpassed by Hansi Flick’s Bayern Munich, almost 10 years later.
Despite this, the 2014/2015 season didn’t exactly have the best start ever. Di María and Xabi Alonso left the club and Ancelotti lost 2 of his 3 starting midfielders and, counting with the arrival of Kroos and James Rodríguez, he would have to completely redo his midfield, one of the most important pillars of his team. In addition, Real Madrid had already known the difficulty that the season was going to represent from the beginning, when they lost the Spanish Supercup to Atlético de Madrid. Ancelotti didn’t have much time at his disposal, and would need to fix his team’s problems and rebuild the entire midfield with the season already underway.
Ancelotti dealt with those problems very well and even managed a nice solution to Bale’s injury in the first few months of the season (something that would become a chronic problem in the Welshman’s career) without changing the team’s functioning so much and with just a few adjustments. If the 2013/2014 team leaned more towards a 4–3–3 and used the 4–4–2 just to defend, the 2014/2015 team would embrace the 4–4–2 much more, mainly due to the characteristic of their midfielders. Ancelotti kept the line of 4 defenders with Carvajal and Marcelo as fullbacks and Sérgio Ramos and Pepe as centre-backs, and still had a still young Varane who seemed to establish himself as a great defender. Ahead of the defenders, Ancelotti set up a defensive midfield duo with Kroos and Modric, two players who definitely didn’t have the defensive aspect as one of their main qualities and who were used to playing in more advanced lanes. To complete the midfield and link up the attack, Ancelotti set up an attacking midfield partnership with James Rodríguez and Isco. Finally, further ahead, an attacking duo formed by Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo.
One of the first problems Ancelotti faced in establishing his 4–4–2 was the midfield. By lining up James, Kroos and Modric (Isco would only join the team a bit later, after Gareth Bale’s injury), Ancelotti realized that the team’s possession was very sterile and not very objective: the midfielders tended to pass the ball only between themselves and the defenders and couldn’t take it to the attack, as this structure ended up leaving an isolated line of midfielders and an isolated line of attackers, creating a very large distance between them. This ended up forcing longer passes to connect these lines that would end up finding a marked attacker, as defenders were able to predict the pass and anticipate it. To get around this, Ancelotti used a mechanism that is very common in South American role-driven attacks. He calls them puentes ofensivas (offensive bridges), but around here we call them escadinhas (staircases or stepladders, in a direct translation).
The name could not be more self-explanatory, as the mechanism consists of creating bridges (or staircases) between different areas of the pitch instead of setting up lines and, thus, facilitating the task of making the ball move higher up the pitch. The idea is to organize the team’s players asymmetrically so that each player plays in their own height. There isn’t the idea of a line of defenders, a line of midfielders or a line of attackers, as each player positions himself at his own height on the pitch. From this, “bridges” are formed between one sector of the pitch and another: now, when a defender wants to pass the ball to the midfield, for example, he doesn’t need to make a long pass that crosses several meters and reaches the midfield line; he simply passes to the player just in front of him (it could be a higher defender or a deeper midfielder) who in turn will pass to the player just in front of him, and so on. From his offensive bridges (or staircases), Ancelotti made his team’s possession way more objective and productive, in addition to bringing the players closer together which, as seen before, facilitated the interaction between them. The offensive bridges also brought another positive impact: the way Ancelotti organized them was based on the way each player prefers to play. Sérgio Ramos, for example, is a very talented defender with a huge ball-playing ability and more comfortable with participating more in the build-up; therefore, Ancelotti positioned him ahead of Pepe. Kroos is a more defensive midfielder than Modric and, therefore, was deeper than the Croatian, who in turn was deeper than Isco or James, and so on. It’s important to highlight that this structure was not rigid and that it varied according to the moment of the game and with the interpretations of the players: Modric could drop back to the deeper position of the midfield for Kroos to advance, Sérgio Ramos could advance to the midfield zone, Isco or James were free to switch sides or drop back, Cristiano Ronaldo and Benzema switched roles in attack and so on. The idea of offensive bridges was to make players comfortable on the field, without binding them to the idea of symmetrical lines and, from that, increase the quality of their team’s possession. The way players would build this asymmetry was extremely fluid and had a lot of variables.
Ancelotti’s Real Madrid spread out more vertically than horizontally mainly because of the way Ancelotti organized his offensive bridges, with the idea of advancing the ball much more in mind than crossing the field horizontally with it (something that would privilege more the control of spaces rather than the control of relations). Therefore, the tendency of that Real Madrid was to cluster on one side of the field, usually the left, to bring the bridges closer together and create a more natural progression of the ball. The team did not seek to spread out horizontally and even vertically it remained very close: the distance between Kroos (who was normally the first midfielder) to Benzema or Cristiano Ronaldo was very short, and the fluidity of the team and of the movements and the freedom that Ancelotti gave the players to do what they did best on the pitch encouraged even more this cluster of the players, since Real Madrid was organized based on the relations established between the players on the pitch. Ancelotti took Mourinho’s Real Madrid counterattacks and coupled them with a complex, plastic ball handling mechanism to build a complete team that performed well in all game situations.
The game started with Pepe and Sérgio Ramos and, as mentioned before, the Spaniard played in a higher zone, very close to the midfielders, flirting with the defensive midfielder position when he had the ball (later that season, when Modric was injured, Sérgio Ramos played as a defensive midfielder for a considerable period). Just ahead of him was Kroos, in the position that would become the hallmark of the German’s entire career at Real Madrid: the left defensive midfielder. Kroos is a more positional player, who prefers to move in smaller spaces and to build the team upfrom a deeper position. Ancelotti embraced this characteristic and made up for Kroos’ lesser mobility with Modric’s restless game: the Croatian moved around the entire pitch and built the team up in all phases of the game. Sitting slightly to the right of Kroos, he was largely responsible for connecting Real Madrid’s rightmost players (typically James and Carvajal) with the rest of the squad; in addition, Modric could drop back to line up with Kroos (or switch positions with him) to receive the ball deeper and make runs with it to be closer to Isco or Cristiano Ronaldo. As Real Madrid’s clustering usually took place on the left, Carvajal stayed in a defensive diagonal to always be close to the ball and prepared to attack the empty right wing. Marcelo, as the the strong side fullback, was much more participative than Carvajal: the Brazilian was living his technical peak and practically served as an extra playmaker for the team on the flanks, using his excellent relationship with Isco, Cristiano Ronaldo and Benzema to create countless combinations in the attack. James was the right attacking midfielder and, therefore, could both leave his position to interact with the other players clustered on the left and stay wider to fill the lack that the team felt of having a full-out winger like Bale, who was always a safe option to speed up the plays when the game asked for a more vertical scenario. Isco, in turn, had a role similar to that of James, taking turns between attacking the wing and roaming inside, but as he was the left midfielder, his zone of action on the strong side offered him more interaction options even when he was wider, as Marcelo, Kroos, Cristiano Ronaldo and Benzema were naturally closer to him. Finally, neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Benzema were classic, static strikers who fixed opposing defenders at all times. Both were complete forwards who started their careers as wingers and reached their respective peaks in more central attacking positions. Therefore, both of them roamed a lot through the left side of the attack (the most natural zone for both of them) and understood each other very well on the pitch. Those who think that Benzema was limited to opening spaces in the attack for Cristiano Ronaldo are wrong; yes, it was a very important role for the Frenchman that allowed Ronaldo to score more than 60 goals that season. However, Cristiano Ronaldo was at his technical peak and was much more than the lethal finisher he’d become in his final years at Real Madrid; the Portuguese was much closer to a second striker and usually played further back than Benzema, setting up the attack and stepping into the area more through infiltrations than by being a fixed presence there.
Ancelotti’s arrival couldn’t have been more appropriate. The Italian arrived at a lost, staggered and soulless team and recalled everything that made Real Madrid Real Madrid. Ancelotti’s team was extremely collective, but this collectivity was based on an individual notion, of a hierarchy of talent. Ancelotti didn’t suppress the unique expression of his players in favor of a system, but instead he built a system from the unique expression of all his players, valuing talent at a level that only the greatest teams in the history of Real Madrid have achieved. From that, Ancelotti’s team reached 92 points in LaLiga and scored an incredible 118 league goals, in addition to reaching the semifinals of the Champions League, and the failure of the 2014/2015 season (which ended without relevant titles) has much more to do with the fragility of the squad (hence the need to play Sérgio Ramos as a defensive midfielder when Modric was injured) than Ancelotti’s ability as a coach, who transformed Real Madrid into the best team in the world in 2014 and made they play the most beautiful football of the century , losing the Champions League and LaLiga titles for details and creating a tactical backbone that would be the basis for the three consecutive Champions League titles that would come in the following years.
2.5. Así gana el Madrid
I think it’s hard to make the tactical similarities between all the teams I’ve analyzed here more clear. The 1950s team, La Quinta del Buitre in the 80s, the Galácticos in the 2000s and the more recent glories of the 2010s: all the greatest teams in the history of Real Madrid followed a line, a very clear tactical identity.
My guess is that the creation of this tactical identity was a fluke of fate, a consequence of the core of Real Madrid as a club, which has always set out to be an unprecedented collection of talent. A galactic, star-studded team that paraded on the field and displayed all the talent of its players. The spectator who went to see Real Madrid playing would look for more than just a football game, but the maximum expression of individual talent. They”d like to see Di Stéfano, Puskás, Butragueño, Zidane in a theatrical apotheosis. The grit, the titles, the glory, despite the enormous importance of everything, comes later, it’s secondary, it’s a consequence. What defines Real Madrid goes way beyond the 14 Champions League and has much more to do with how those Champions League were won. The gathering of talents, the parade on the pitch, the great white shark on European nights, all this is what defines Real Madrid.
Transporting this feeling to the material world, what we saw was the construction of a tactical identity very focused on role-driven attack, because its principles end up creating a more fertile ground for a more raw expression of talent if applied in a specific way. Starting from the basic concepts, the role-driven attack is a type of offensive organization that is organized based on time, that is, based on the mobility relations established between the players. The core of a role-driven attack is that the team must organize itself around the relations between the players and move higher up the pitch from this. Building the domain of the game from the relations between the players implies that each player must perform his own role on the field; he must receive the ball, move, position himself, pass, receive, dribble in the most natural way possible for him, as this would create more natural relations between the players since every one would be in full control of their own time. A role-driven attack can be more spaced out, like that of Real Madrid in the 1950s or that of Real Madrid from La Quinta del Buitre, or more clustered, like that of the Galacticos or that of Ancelotti, as long as the core of the attacking organization of the team is the establishment of mobility relations between players. Because of this, there was a kind of “evolutionary convergence”: naturally, the most fertile way for the maximum expression of the players’ talents is from a role-driven attack, since a more positional attack limits the players’ performance more to smaller spaces and, therefore, they constrain the team’s relationships and movements.
It’s important to emphasize that it’s not enough for a coach to practice role-driven attack to train Real Madrid; alongside the role-driven attack must come the notion of building a slow, paused team, which favors possession of the ball and which, from that, makes the most of the talent of each one of the players. The idea is that Real Madrid doesn’t need to have the ball all the time or treat possession as an end in itself, but neither should they quickly get rid of it. The more vertical, external and intense the game is, the less the talents inserted in it manage to emerge. By building plays up through possession and more thought out mechanisms rather than incessant verticality, disruptive talents (such as Zidane, Di Stéfano, Puskás, Modric or Kroos) can participate more in the game, condition it better and create better opportunities for the team. The counterattack should be seen as a very useful weapon for several moments of the game, but never as the guide for Real Madrid’s attack: Ancelotti was probably the one who understood this best and built a team that was lethal when counterattacking, but that knew how to build from possession like few others.
Therefore, we can list the main drivers of Real Madrid’s tactical identity:
a) Hierarchy of talent. A star-studded, galactic team that enhances its talents to their highest and creates from them a spectacle on the pitch. Plasticity over objectivity.
b) Role-driven attack. The best mechanism for enhancing talent, which allows the team to organize itself around the roles of each player. A team that plays based on time, that moves higher up the pitch based on the relations and movements established by the players.
c) Asymmetries. Diagonals, drop backs, infiltrations, etc. A range of movements that do not follow a spatial logic.
d) Long movements. To get the best out of each talent, each player must have the freedom to move in larger spaces and therefore create more relations. Passing and then sprinting to receive further ahead, dropping back to participate in the game in more zones, moving inward and outward, position changes. Positional freedom.
e) Players in different positions. Break the idea of fixing players in spaces and assigning specific zones to each one. Each player must play where he feels most comfortable. It facilitates the idea of moving higher up the pitch through offensive bridges and through relations between players.
f) Counterattack as a weapon, not a guide. The counterattack should be seen as a very useful weapon for several game scenarios, as Real Madrid’s relationship with possession is not something irreducible. However, the guiding principle of Real Madrid’s attack must always be the use of possession to build more paused and thought-out plays to make the most of the team’s talent.
3. What does the future hold?
At the time of publication of this piece, Real Madrid is going through a reasonably delicate moment, full of ups and downs. The team is in the semi-finals of the Champions League and the final of the Copa del Rey, but is 11 points behind Barcelona in LaLiga and a period of very bad football between January and March left Ancelotti’s position in jeopardy. Apparently, the team’s recent improvement and qualification for the Copa del Rey final (in a historic trashing over Barcelona) and for the semi-finals of the Champions League have given the Italian more credit and, therefore, he should remain in charge of the team. However, Spanish sources (mainly journalist Mario Cortegana, from newspaper The Athletic) claim that Ancelotti’s permanence is not guaranteed and that, depending on Real Madrid’s results until the end of the season, he could be sacked. Numerous speculations pop up in the press about a possible successor to Ancelotti (Nagelsmann, Zidane, Mourinho, Raúl, Xabi Alonso and several other names) and the declared interest of the Brazilian National Team in the Italian only serves to intensify them. Therefore, I will dedicate the following sessions to talking about the still hazy future that awaits Real Madrid.
3.1. The struggles of Florentino Pérez
Florentino Pérez seems to count on luck a little too much in some matters. His economic policy at the head of the club is indisputable, as he managed to keep Real Madrid financially healthy even during the pandemic and during the reconstruction of the Santiago Bernabéu, and it is difficult to point out mistakes in the transition process from the multi-champion squad to a new generation (with the signings of Camavinga, Rodrygo, Vinícius, Tchouaméni and Valverde showing to be great successes), but Florentino does not show much coherence, especially when it comes to coaches.
The non-renewal with Vicente del Bosque, the sacking of Vanderlei Luxemburgo, the sacking of Ancelotti and the choice of Rafa Benítez to replace him seem to be very inconsistent decisions and, for the most part, huge errors. Del Bosque, Luxemburgo and Ancelotti are coaches who are very compatible with the tactical identity of Real Madrid: they privilege talent, build extremely plastic and charming role-driven attacks and have proven to be great coaches at different times in their respective careers, including in charge of Real Madrid. For different reasons (personal problems with Del Bosque, a fight between Luxemburgo and part of the squad and an overly resultist view when evaluating Ancelotti’s second season at Real Madrid), Florentino thought that the best solution was to end the relationship between the club and these coaches, and each time those decisions wereproved to be wrong. Del Bosque’s departure was a blow for the Galácticos, as the Spaniard was one of the few coaches in the world at the time who were tactically capable of managing so much talent and putting together an organized team with all of them playing extremely comfortably. His two successors, Carlos Queiroz and Camacho, were resounding failures. Then came Vanderlei Luxemburgo, and Real Madrid rediscovered its football in the 2004/2005 season and started the 2005/2006 season playing very well, until Florentino took the side of Raúl, Figo and Guti instead of Beckham, Ronaldo and Zidane and chose to sack the Brazilian. Once again, successors failed to replicate the football that Luxemburgo made Real Madrid play. The most scandalous of these sackings, however, was that of Ancelotti: Real Madrid not only had an extremely winning period under him, they were arguably the best team in the world for a long time and played the most beautiful football of the century before falling out of production due to profound errors in the director’s squad planning. Florentino Pérez turned a blind eye to the errors of the football department (and his too, most likely), to the spectacular football that Real Madrid played and, instead of building a tactical identity with a coach of Ancelotti’s caliber, he decided to fire him. it. To make matters worse, he hired Rafa Benítez, a coach who was clearly not up to par with the club and who didn’t represent los blancos tactical identity at all. Florentino ended up being lucky in that one, and after the inevitable dismissal of Rafa Benítez (who barely lasted 6 months at the club), Zidane took over as coach, rescued much of the tactical base that Ancelotti built and led the club to three Champions League titles in a row.
It turns out that, at least for me, Florentino doesn’t seem to understand the importance of a coach when it comes to building a team. When he hails the glory days of Real Madrid in the 1950s and speaks about them with nostalgia and admiration, Florentino seems to focus too much on the galactic signings of the Santiago Bernabéu when building the squad and not enough on the care he took in appointing the right coach to lead that squad. Santiago Bernabéu could’ve bet on a more famous and European tactical vision or even go down the path of a role-driven attack in a more Danubian style (which was way more famous in Europe), but instead understood that the best path to be followed was the one that South America had built. Therefore, throughout the 1950s, Real Madrid only hired one European coach (the Spaniard José Antonio Ipiña, in 1952, since José Villalonga and Miguel Muñoz were not signed as they took over as interim coaches). All the others were South Americans: two Uruguayans (Héctor Scarone and Enrique Fernández), one Argentine (Luis Carniglia) and one Paraguayan (Fleitas Solich). Santiago Bernabéu highly valued the role of a coach in the way the team played and understood that he needed to choose someone who would maximize the talent he had signed for the team. Florentino Pérez clearly doesn’t give the same importance and seems to be part of the discourse that proudly states that Real Madrid has no tactical identity and, therefore, the club always seems to flirt with an identity crisis every time it faces a period of bad results.
3.2. How important is Carlo Ancelotti?
Carlo Ancelotti saved Real Madrid from a deep identity crisis twice: the first, as I said, was when Ancelotti succeeded Mourinho at a time when the club seemed more willing to bet on a more “modern” vision that would follow the tactical trend of the Guardiolist Juego de Posición instead of building their own identity. The second was in a very similar scenario: it was in 2021, when Zidane left Real Madrid after his second spell as coach and, once again, the club seemed lost: names like Antonio Conte and Massimiliano Allegri (who reached a verbal agreement with the club but disbanded after receiving an invitation to return to Juventus) were names much speculated at Real Madrid in this period mainly due to the reputation of being tactically rigid and with a vision of football that flirts much more with a “modern”, positional and vertical game.
Both times, Ancelotti gave Real Madrid back an identity that not even the club knew it had. In his second spell, the Italian destroyed the idea that Kroos and Modric were already in decay and made both (mainly Modric) play at a very high level up (or even superior) to the best years of the two under Zidane or even under him, 7 years earlier. In addition, Ancelotti rescued Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo who seemed lost at the club and transformed them into two of the best and most inventive strikers in world football and made Camavinga and Valverde become pillars of the Real Madrid team even at such a young age. As if that weren’t enough, he made Benzema have the best season of his life and win the Ballon d’Or in 2022.
It’s important to note that the arrival of Ancelotti is directly responsible for the immense growth in the level of all players in the Real Madrid squad. Despite what is widely publicized and corroborated by the media, Ancelotti is not a simple people manager, good in the locker room and who simply “adapts” to different scenarios and leaves the players free on the field. Ancelotti is one of the greatest strategists in football history and has a tactical identity as clear and structured as Guardiola or Klopp. Giving players so much freedom on the pitch without turning it into total chaos and making the team move higher up the pitch and dominate the opponent based on the movements, roles and relations that each player establishes on the field requires a huge tactical coordination, just as huge as the one Guardiola needs to dominate every space on the pitch in the best possible way. It’s not because the team looks disorganized, with many players in a single lane of the field and each one making their own move, that there is no tactics, training, repetition and coordination in it; quite the oppostie, it’s precisely in such a style of play that tactics are most necessary. The recent explosion of the guardiolist Juego de Posición created the impression that only teams that have a rigid mechanism of rationalization and occupation of spaces are tactically organized, but a team that, in today’s football, manages to make its players extremely comfortable and that builds your game from their roles is equally complex and well trained.
3.2.1. A problem called José Mourinho
The clash between Guardiola and Mourinho marked the football world in the early 2010s and became one of the most anticipated duels in football history. Guardiola’s elaborate possession against Mourinho’s tenacious defence, the slow posession against the powerful counter-attacks, the organization against chaos: these were subjects frequently referenced by media and fans when the two went up against each other. The idea that was being built was of two polar opposites, water and oil, two radically different proposals that represented their own and antagonistic philosophies, and the signing of Mourinho by Real Madrid for him to be the “anti-Guardiola” only intensified this speech.
It turns out that Mourinho and Guardiola are not the opposites that the media and fans always say they are. The tactical background of the two is uncomfortably similar: in different ways (Guardiola as a club player and Mourinho as an assistant), both got their tactical graduation in the 90s and 2000s FC Barcelona. That meant that it was the FC Barcelona that rescued Rinus Michels’ total football and updated it to football at the time with Johann Cruyff and Louis van Gaal. It was Barcelona that started to invent the Juego de Posición.
We link the idea of the Juego de Posición a lot to the principle of having possession at all times and, even though it’s one of its main characteristics, it can never be seen as the only one. Perhaps even more important than having the ball is how to have the ball, how to use it to create superiority in games, and the Juego de Posición has a very strict way of doing that. It starts from the idea of controlling spaces rather than controlling time that characterizes the role-driven attack: each player must control the space he occupies before interacting with the others. This implies a rigid rationalization of spaces: the coach divides the field into zones and assigns a specific zone for each player to control. Thus, the player must be linked to that zone and make short movements, usually predetermined by the coach, to control that zone in a specific way and, thus, contribute to the space control system. A player cannot leave his zone to interact with others, as in a role-driven attack, because he needs to occupy that specific space for the team to have full spatial control of the pitch.
It’s exactly in this part where Guardiola and Mourinho are close to each other. The difference is that Guardiola explores the spaces with the ball and Mourinho without it, but both prioritize the control of spaces over the control of time. Both create predetermined systems for controlling the spaces they deem most important and impose those systems on the player, even though he may suppress some of the best features of a player. Like Guardiola, Mourinho has a predetermined and fairly irreducible vision of how the team should play and adapts his players to it rather than adapting it to the players. The relations, the expression of talent, the roles of the players, everything comes later for Mourinho: the priority is the control of spaces.
Mourinho’s period ahead of Real Madrid is very well regarded by fans a lot because of the titles, especially the 2011/2012 LaLiga, where the team set a new record for the most goals scored in the league (121 goals), but mainly because he returned the self-esteem to a club that had spent the last few years weakened and fragile, far from its glory days. Mourinho (through ethically debatable methods that do not even remotely represent the greatness of Real Madrid) returned the club’s winning spirit to the players and arguably created a psychological foundation for the winning years to come. However, with the football game happening and with the ball in play, Mourinho couldn’t be more anti-Real Madrid. He suppresses talents in favor of his rationalization of spaces, of his low and fierce defense and of his excessive verticality when attacking. Mourinho imposes his voice and his will on those of the players, embraces those who respond and ostracizes those who don’t. Mourinho is part of the guardiolist current; a different part, an “ugly duckling” perhaps, but undoubtedly a part of the stream of rationalization of spaces and tactical rigidity, and if it weren’t for Ancelotti, signing Mourinho would leave Real Madrid in an identity crisis almost impossible to escape.
3.2.2. Et tu, Zizou?
Zidane’s first spell at Real Madrid was not without its problems, but it was arguably one of the greatest periods in the club’s history. After a disastrous half-season with Rafa Benítez at the helm, Zidane took over and rescued much of the tactical foundation that Ancelotti built in 2013/2014 and 2014/2015. Zidane’s Real Madrid peak came in 2016/2017, the Frenchman’s first full season at the helm of Real Madrid, when he assembled a team in a spectacular 4–3–1–2 that had Carvajal and Marcelo in their respective primes, a pair of centre-backs as qualified as Sérgio Ramos and Varane, the historic trio of Kroos, Modric and Casemiro who gained the company of Isco after Bale’s injury and a lethal attacking duo formed by Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo. It was a fluid, role-driven team that favored possession, freedom of position and movement and that made the most of the talents of Modric, Kroos, Marcelo, Isco, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo. The oscillations in 15/16 and 17/18, marked by the drop in the team’s level and by Zidane’s flirtations with a more pragmatic football, can be explained mainly by Zidane not being as good a coach as Ancelotti and, during the 2 years and a half that the Frenchman managed the team, Real Madrid never seemed to go through an identity crisis.
After the disaster of the 18/19 season, Real Madrid’s first without Zidane and without Cristiano Ronaldo, the Frenchman returned to the club a little less than a year after he decided to leave. Already without Cristiano Ronaldo and with an inconsistent Hazard, in addition to a new generation formed by Vinícius Júnior, Rodrygo and Valverde emerging, Zidane managed to make Real Madrid play good football for a reasonable period (marked mainly by the 2–2 against Paris Saint-Germain in the 2019/2020 Champions League, probably the team’s best collective performance since Zidane’s return), but the more time passed, the more authorial Zidane’s work became, and the more desperate the scenario became.
It turns out that when Zidane returned to Real Madrid, the tactical base that Ancelotti built and which he continued was in tatters, and he had to build one from scratch. So Zidane had to put his vision of football into practice, and it turned out to be another version of the positional football of Guardiola and co.
Zidane proved to be a big fan of rationalizing spaces, controlling predetermined zones, players making short moves and using total width. More than that, Zidane proved to be extremely adamant about which spaces he wanted his team to control and how he wanted his team to control those spaces, assigning specific positions that were linked to an even more specific range of relations and movements to be established. Some players did well, like Kroos (probably the most positional player in the Real Madrid squad) and Benzema, but others not so much; Modric and his restless game ended up being dropped from the starting line-up for a considerable part of the 19/20 season for Federico Valverde, for example. However, two specific positions were the most affected by Zidane: the first is the fullback, on both sides. The Frenchman has a very strict view on the role of the fullback in his style of play: the fullback must be active on the early build-up, with a more playmaking style and plays more comfortably in more central lanes. That’s why Carvajal and Mendy, more conservative full-backs who offer a safer passing lane on the early build-up and are used to play in central zones, gained a huge role in Zidane’s Real Madrid, but the likes of Theo Hernández, Achraf Hakimi and Álvaro Odriozola were completely discarded from the start to such a degree that Zidane preferred to improvise Lucas Vázquez at right-back rather than using a more offensive and incisive full-back like Odriozola or Hakimi. The second was the winger: Zidane’s new fixation on total width in the team ended up meaning very specific and rigid roles for the wingers, who had to stay sticked to the touchline at all times and participate very little (or almost nothing) on the game when it happened centrally. This did a lot of damage to Hazard’s football at first and to Vinícius and Rodrygo’s football later, as their movement, relations and internal game were severely restricted to a level that Zidane even used Vinícius Júnior as a right wing-back in a Champions League. Furthermore, Zidane’s vision of the midfield did a lot of good for Kroos, Casemiro, Modric (at a certain level) and Valverde, but it did a lot of harm for Ceballos, Llorente and Odegaard, and they all left the club because they knew they couldn’t would have game time under Zidane.
Much to the dismay of many who adore Zidane as a player and celebrate Real Madrid’s tactical identity, the version of Zidane that makes Real Madrid play a fluid, role-driven football in a 4–3–1–2 seems more like a flash than a than the real Zidane, because when analyzing his Real Madrid Castilla and the Real Madrid of the 19/20 season and especially of the 20/21 season, one of the greatest players in the club’s history seems much more to be a guardiolist who suppresses individual talent in favor of the collective than a worthy representative of Real Madrid’s tactical identity.
