Julian Nagelsmann: the good, the bad and the ugly
“As a coach, I am where I am today because I had success through a certain training philosophy — complex exercises, tactical behavior to adapt to the opponent. Bayern players weren’t used to this” — Julian Nagelsmann.
Julian Nagelsmann is one of the most exciting coaches in Europe, although his short and explosive career has already moved him out of the “promises” category and into the ranks of the best in his profession. He was just 28 years old when he saved Hoffenheim from relegation in his first season as coach, and he drew attention not just for the immediate result, but for his extensive tactical knowledge and the attacking football that his team played. He was handpicked by Ralf Rangnick, one of the greatest names in German football history, to manage RB Leipzig, and once again impressed in his debut season: carrying the offensive DNA and tactical complexity that had already become his trademark in Hoffenheim, Nagelsmann led RB Leipzig to the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in the young club’s history. His meteoric career took him to Bayern Munich, who paid a record €25 million to sign Nagelsmann, who was not yet 34 years old.
Julian Nagelsmann’s first season ahead of Bayern Munich displayed some well known traits of the young coach, such as high, agressive pressing and gegenpressing, something apparently indissociable from German football for the last decade or so, and the ultra-offensive approach Nagelsmann already showed in Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig, often using 6-attackers lineups. However, another trait of Bayern Munich in the 2021/2022 season was the use of football with strong positional traits.
In Pep Guardiola: the Metamorphosis, the author Martí Perarnau placed Nagelsmann, while he was still in charge of Hoffenheim, as one of the few coaches that used the Juego de Posición (even if, according to Perarnau, in an incomplete way). When Nagelsmann joined RB Leipzig, the midfielder Dani Olmo described the coach’s ideas to the newspaper El País and said that the team didn’t used the Juego de Posición.
“Here we play closer together. We rely on each other so we can give the game more speed. If we play more spaced-out, we can’t play as fast as the coach wants us to. That’s why we want to play as close together as possible, almost like Five-a-side Footbal. The smaller the space, the better, because the ball moves faster. We attract more rivals that way, but we need to know how to play under pressure. If we succeed, we open bigger spaces and we’re able to attack with more depth” — Dani Olmo.
According to Perarnau’s and Olmo’s words, we can safely assume that Nagelsmann has his own vision about football. His teams show lots of respect to predetermined spaces and play according to them, but they don’t have spaced-out players like most positional teams so the ball can move faster. Thus, Nagelsmann gave a German touch to the Juego de Posición: the coach sees the control of spaces as a priority and comes up with complex, rigid tactics, but show some differences to the classical positionist football when he puts his players closer together, even if this puts the control of some spaces in check. The best example of this is his use of “relative width”: the wider players of Nagelsmann teams don’t hold the touchline, but are in more central areas of the pitch.
Leaving RB Leipzig for Bayern Munich was a huge step in Nagelsmann’s short career: in a season of ups and downs, he ended up being way too irreducible about his beliefs, which caused lots of problems with some Bayern players, like Lewandowski. Changing the system a lot to adapt to oponents (something that Kramarić already had pointed out on Nagelsmann’s spell at Hoffenheim) and not adapting enough to Bayern’s squad were the main points of misundersanting. Everything led up to the defeat against Villarreal in the Champions League, when Bayern played an unusually rigid, positional approach from Nagelsmann with more spaced-out players and loads of plays through the wings instead of more central ones.
1. The good — role-driven football and relationism
“In my second season, I will somewhat deviate a bit from my path. […] I’ve learned over the past season how important each individual character is to form a team. That’s partly even more important than teaching tactics” — Julian Nagelsmann.
Nagelsmann’s first experience on charge of an European giant ended up changing him, and he came for his second season ahead of Bayern with completely new ideas. “More focus on ourselves and less on the opponent” is how Nagelsmann himself described these ideas: giving more importance to the relations between him and his players so he can listen more to them and bring their opinions to the game. The result was immediate, and Bayern’s first game on the 2022/2023 season (the German Supercup against RB Leipzig) showed a completely different team.
In the 2021/2022 season, Bayern usually played in Nagelsmann’s 3–1–6. Regardless of the players, the coach organized them in a way that they occupied predetermined spaces. This allowed the team to dominate the spaces of the pitch and occupy the opponent’s defensive line even when it had 5 players: Bayern sought to make the field wide and deep, occupying as much space as possible. However, this resulted in limited action zones for the players, who could not leave their positions so they didn’t compromise the team’s structure.
More focus on ourselves and less on the opponent: in the 2022/2023 season, Nagelsmann started to value more the individuals that made up the team and give more importance to them. The young German coach began to value individualities over a more rigid system. The positional structure and limited action areas ended to start a new era at Bayern: the players became the most important thing. Nagelsmann gave up having predetermined positions (and, consequently, the full control of spaces) so his players could be more comfortable on the pitch, thus starting to organize the team based on the roles of its players. In short, Nagelsmann stopped building his team “from the outside in”, that is, imposing a system and fitting the players into that system, and started building it “from the inside out”, that is, taking into account the players’ natural roles and abilities to build a system around that. Nagelsmann embraced relationism and built a rich, complex role-driven attack.
1.1. Early build-up phase in a 4+2
The first key to Nagelsmann’s new role-driven attack was a early build-up that involved more players. 2021/2022’s 3–1–6 had a very clear early build-up structure: so that the team could widen the field and fill-up the spaces, as few players as possible should be involved in the early phases of the build-up. Therefore, only the 3 centre-backs and 1 defensive midfielder actively participated in this phase, and the wing-backs joined the attackers to make a 6-players block in attack that should occupy predetermined spaces. The idea here was to fill the entire attacking third and to make vertical passes easily, since the attack had more players. Thus, Davies’ role in the team was much more that of a winger than a fullback, so much so that the Canadian was replaced by Coman, a full-out winger, when he got injured mid-season.
This changed radically in the 2022/2023 season, when in the first game of the season we saw Bayern with a new system for the early build-up. Since the team did not need to occupy predetermined spaces, the early build-up could have more players involved, going from 4 to 6. Now, Bayern had 2 centre-backs, 2 fullbacks and 2 defensive midfielders actively participating in the early build-up.
This change would impact the team in two different ways. The first way is that the fullbacks and defensive midfielders would be more important in the early build-up and would participate more in the play, causing a greater impact by touching the ball more often. The second way is that, with more players on the early build-up, the attack would inevitably end up more empty as the team would not have as many offensive pieces to spread across the final third. Thus, Bayern had with fewer options for a more vertical pass, which would result in a team that would play slower, rotating the ball in central lanes, without forcing so many quick attacks. The impact of this was immediate: Bayern stopped being the offensive volume team that finished 30 times or more in each match and became a team that would elaborate its plays way more and would finish less against the opposite goal, but would do so with way greater quality. Bayern put verticality aside and started betting on a slower game, exploring more the talent of its players. Quality over quantity.
1.2. 4–2–2–2 with no rigid width
For the later stages of buid-up, Nagelsmann ditched his old 3–1–6 and all of the concepts that came with it. Against RB Leipzig, Bayern didn’t show the rigid width, the wide, deep field nor the predetermined positions that occupied the opponent’s defensive line from side to side. Nagelsmann set Bayern up in a 4–2–2–2, with loads of players in more central lanes, more plays in the centre of the pitch and the most surprising of it all: no rigid width.
Bayern started the game with a surprisingly talented midfield: since Goretzka, injured, wasn’t available, Nagelsmann chose Sabitzer to be Kimmich’s company in the defensive midfielder line. Compared to Goretzka, Sabitzer is a more talented and refined midfielder, but with much less physical strength and intensity on and off the ball. Therefore, Sabitzer offered much more talent on the holding midfielder position, but could compromise the team’s balance by doing so. Ahead of Kimmich and Sabitzer, Musiala beat both Sané and Coman on the dispute for the left attacking midfielder position that would accompany Müller, the right attacking midfielder. Thus, Nagelsmann ditched two full-out wingers (even though Sané had a great 2021/2022 season under Nagelsmann playing in more central positions rather than in the wider ones) for a playmaker attacking midfielder, that would give Bayern’s game less intensity and verticality, but would compensate that with his more technical, talented profile.
The attacking duo didn’t surprise by who formed it, but by how it behaved on the pitch. Sadio Mané was Bayern’s greatest signing on the summer transfer window and even though he appeared to the footballing world as a winger, he was becoming more and more a central attacker under Jürgen Klopp. This transformation had its climax on the 2021/2022 season, where he ditched the left-wing and became Liverpool’s false 9. Nagelsmann embraced this transformation and didn’t use Mané as a winger that would have to hold the touchline for the entire game nor as a player that would leave the left wing to cut inside: against RB Leipzig, Mané started on the centre of the attack and even though he roamed in the left side of the pitch a little more, he was a full-out centre forward.
Gnabry arrived at the same “destination” as Mané, but took a drastically different path. Gnabry earned his undisputed starting role in Bayern Munich with Hansi Flick in the 2019/2020 season and maintained his highest level in 2020/2021. Under Flick, Gnabry developed into a second striker who comes from the wing and turned into a player for the final third. In short, Gnabry was the perfect piece for Flick’s game of pressure, intensity and verticality, as he started from the right wing, cut inside and acted as a second striker who came from behind Lewandowski to enter the box and finish. Basically, Bayern had a striker on the wing. Gnabry’s defining abilities were so outstanding that Flick started to place him in the left wing so he could cut inside more easily, since he’s right-footed. However, in the 2021/2022 season (Nagelsmann’s first ahead of Bayern) Gnabry went under a major change in his position. Nagelsmann’s positional scheme did not allow for a player to leave his position and arrive at the box as often as Gnabry; Nagelsmann wanted the spaces to be occupied, and not empty for a player to arrive. Thus, Gnabry had to adapt to a new role: the German stopped being a defining winger and became a “wing-back”. Now, Gnabry would have to play much deeper and closer to the midfield, in addition to being more wide and, consequently, further away from the finishing zone. Furthermore, as Gnabry’s primary task was to give width to the team, Nagelsmann took him off the left wing and returned him to the right wing, leaving him in a more comfortable position for crosses but less comfortable for finishing.
In the 2022/2023 season, Gnabry was one of most changed the players by Nagelsmann’s new philosophy of “listening to the players and bringing their opinions to the pitch”, and he went through another transformation. After spending an entire season stuck on the right wing, Nagelsmann brought him to the center of the attack, alongside Mané. Gnabry, as he was less of a playmaker and more of a finisher than Mané, played a little less in central areas and went down the wing to take advantage of the spaces between Leipzig’s centre backs and fullbacks, but spent most of his time on central areas.
With so many players on central areas, it would be expected that Nagelsmann would bet on two very offensive and wide full-backs, hugging the touchline at all times to give width to the team and play as wingers. In his old 3–1–6, Nagelsmann normally use the right-back (Pavard) as a third defender and widen the pitch there with Gnabry, while the left-back (Davies) behaved exactly like Gnabry, but on the left side: like a classic winger, playing forward and wide. Pavard and Davies are fundamentally different full-backs, and Nagelsmann sought to explore these differences by assigning them different roles in the game, but complementing the structure he had previously thought of. Having Gnabry wide on the right-wing meant that Pavard could not drive forward, as that position was already filled. Davies, on the other hand, should always stay wide, as the left half-space was Sané’s.
With the 4–2–2–2, Nagelsmann radically changed the behavior of his full-backs. Even though the team did not have wingers to give width all the time, the full-backs’ task was not to replace them. As seen before, Pavard and Davies participated much more in the early build-up and were always deeper, usually close to the defensive midfielders. In addition, they didn’t look for a wide position all the time, as they moved according to the ball and, therefore, positioned themselves in more central areas that allowed them to participate more in the play. Thus, Bayern had even more players close to the ball: in addition to the 2 defensive midfielders, the 2 midfielders and the 2 forwards, the full-backs also played through the middle.
Going completely against the principles of his 3–1–6, that sought to fill the attack and widen the field from predetermined positions, Nagelsmann set Bayern up in a very “South American” 4–2–2–2 . He clustered players in the middle, gave up on fixed width and placed the two wingers in the center of the attack, so that they could participate in the game more. Furthermore, with these changes, Nagelsmann traded the verticality and volume that marked Bayern in 2021/2022 for a team that played more through the middle and worked better on their plays.
1.3. Julian Nagelsmann’s role-driven attack
“I learned how to communicate with the leading players and let them take part in my ideas. […] I’ve been on the phone with several players during vacation. I told them about what I want to adapt: more focus on ourselves and less on the opponent. I also asked for feedback from them. […] Maybe I underestimated that face to face conversations are more important for some players than I would have imagined as a coach. The players have to feel that they’re being noticed by the coach” — Julian Nagelsmann.
Bayern’s new 4–2–2–2 was the foundation for what was coming next. A lineup with no wingers, no rigid width, with more central players and that implied in a slower, inner game was just the beginning: Nagelsmann would also change the way Bayern attacked. With no classical wingers nor wide players, Nagelsmann ditched the idea of making the pitch “wide and deep” when it was time to attack, something so important for the Juego de Posición. Nagelsmann didn’t want to control all the spaces of the pitch so his players could interact; he wanted to let his players interact so he could control the spaces of the pitch. Not all of them, no. The ones that mattered, the ones that would lead Bayern to Leipzig’s goal.
A lineup with so many central players was just the means to the end Nagelsmann wanted. When he listened to his players, the young coach realized that each individual was a being of their own, with their own characteristics, their own qualities, their own flaws and their own way of playing, and that fitting them into a pre-defined system would suppress the individualities of each one of them. As much as Nagelsmann tried to be flexible with his ideas, putting players in defined spaces and assigning them a certain range of movements and actions to complement the macrostructure would fatally limit much of their natural movements. Nagelsmann ditched his old idea of a tactically rigid team in favor of a role-driven attack.
In a nutshell, the positional attack Nagelsmann had used in all of his coaching career has its focus on controlling the spaces of the pitch so that the players can interact better between them, that is, controlling the time of their actions. The role-driven attack, a term created by József Bozsik and translated to English by Gorka Melchor, has an opposite logic: the players must first establish the relations and interactions between them as they see fit, exploting each one’s individualities in this process and thus allowing a more raw and natural expression of each player’s talent. Then, the players control the time of their actions, interactions and relations and, through that, are able to control the spaces too. Because of the encouragement of interactions and relations between players, role-driven attack is also called relationism, term created by Jamie Hamilton.
Therefore, Nagelsmann turned to the role-driven attack to explore each player’s individualities moreand build a system out of them, not impose a system on them. For that, he would have to give up the “wide and deep” field and bring his players closer together, even if this meant a team that was too compact and asymmetrical when it came to attacking. The important thing here is not the control of the spaces, but the interactions and relations of mobility between the players. Keeping players away from each other on the pitch may make it easier to control spaces, but it limits the interaction between them much more. Therefore, players would need to cluster and play very close to each other, as this would facilitate the interactions between them.
Thus, Bayern would normally cluster its players on the left side of the pitch, since that was the area where Davies, Kimmich, Musiala and Mané, Bayern’s more creative players, played (this was not a rule and the team would also cluster on the right side, but the left side favored these players more and produced better movements and interactions between them). Sabitzer and Müller, the central players who played more to the right, stayed very close to the ball and circulated in areas very close to the center of the pitch, but always around the left side. Pavard and Gnabry, the team’s rightmost players, were not left out, as Nagelsmann’s idea was that everyone could interact. Therefore, the two made a diagonal movement, where they crossed the pitch in order to leave the right flank so they could position themselves closer to the ball. With the different characteristics of each, Pavard acted much deeper while Gnabry attacked the box and was usually Bayern’s highest player.
By agglomerating so many players on the left side, Bayern built the “strong side”, that is, the sector of the pitch where the team had the most players and, therefore, numerical superiority. This implied in an empty right-hand side: this was the weak side, the sector of the pitch where Bayern would place a maximum of 2 players, and most of the time none. To block Bayern’s numerical superiority on the left side, Leipzig sought to drag their defensive block to that sector; as a direct consequence, the right side of Bayern’s attack would also have fewer Leipzig defenders, leaving it more exposed. Thus, the Bavarians could explore this area of the pitch by inverting the play, finding Pavard or Gnabry (or Müller, sporadically) overlapping there and taking advantage of the space left by the Leipzig defenders. This is the strong side/weak side mechanism (very common in basketball), where the team seeks to cluster players on one side, lure the opponent there and attack on the opposite side. However, Bayern did not use this strategy as much in this match and preferred to find advantages through the strong side.
1.4. Building relations of mobility: mastering time
As I said in the captions of the photos from the previous session, the role-driven attack goes way beyond clustering players in a sector of the pitch. Building a tight, asymmetrical attack and bringing players closer together isn’t what makes a role-driven attack, it’s just a means to an end: mastering time. Bayern didn’t seek to cluster its players, but through clustering it sought to build relations of mobility between them (hence the name relationism). Players were supposed to be masters of time: breaking the “lines” of the attack, retreating from their positions to support another player, infiltrating, passing and moving, creating countless grooves in attack. There was a huge freedom of movement that allowed players to express themselves in an extremely authorial way. More important than interacting was how to interact: there was no structure to be followed, no line to be maintained nor a position to be respected. There was only time, and Bayern’s duty was to control it.
What stood out most about Bayern’s match against Leipzig was not the change in the lineup, the lack of wingers or the narrow attack, but the quantity and complexity of the movements that the team showed on the pitch. That was what really placed Bayern as a legitimate practitioner of a role-driven attack of the highest level of. Players in different heights on the pitch, doing different things, with no responsibility to respond to a macrostructure. Musiala wasn’t stuck in the midfield: he could attack the left wing, drop back to the defensive midfielders, cut inside to stay close to Müller or attack the area alongside the attackers. Gnabry was not sticked to the right wing: he could attack the weak side, yes, but also cut inside and stay close to Mané, or retreat to receive the ball and trigger Pavard in an infiltration, for example. Davies, a former winger who developed into a spectacular left-back, was no longer tied to the touchline and could explore all of his inventiveness and his disruptive talent: he attacked the wing, dropped back to participate in the build-up, cut inside to make room for the infiltrations of Mané and Musiala, he dribbled, dropped back, infiltrated. Kimmich showed himself to be the great playmaker that he always was, but without the many defensive responsibilities of being the sole defensive midfielder in a 3–1–6, nor the movement limitations that this formation imposed on him: with the support of so many players circling around him, dropping back to receive and move along with the ball, Kimmich could roam around the pitch more comfortably, stepping more in attack or building up the play from a deeper position. Mané proved his worth as a well-rounded player at Liverpool and gained even more freedom at Bayern: he could be a sharp striker or a playmaker false 9. He started from the side to move inwards and started on the center to move outwards, occupying the entire left side of the attack. Each player on the field had their own range of moves, actions and relations to add to the team, and Nagelsmann wanted the rawest version of all of that. It was the German version of the toco y me voy (pass and move): nobody would be parked on a line, occupying a predetermined space. Passing, infiltrating, dropping back, supporting the other players, that’s what Bayern did. Inside chaos, Bayern found its order.
2. The bad — back to positionalism
The end of the World Cup meant the beginning of a big problem for Nagelsmann. Germany’s group phase elimination meant that most of the squad’s key players (Musiala, Sané, Kimmich, Müller) returned to Bayern in not their best psychological state. In addition, the huge number of games that players had to face because of the World Cup in the middle of the season left the squad in shambles physically, and many players reintroduced themselves at a lower level. And when it rains, it pours: Neuer broke his leg while skiing and would be out for the rest of the season. Thus, an unmotivated team with physical problems had just lost its captain. Things weren’t looking good.
All these blows that the squad suffered were soon felt on the pitch and, before the game against Mainz 05 in the DFB Pokal, Bayern had 3 draws in the 3 games they played since German football returned from the break for the World Cup. This ended up allowing Borussia Dortmund and Union Berlin to close in on Bayern in the Bundesliga table, as the Bavarians were in their lowest point-scoring in the first half of the German League of the entire decade. A crisis loomed in Bavaria, and Julian Nagelsmann needed to do something quickly: time was his enemy, as the clash against PSG in the Champions League was just around the corner.
To escape this upcoming crisis, Nagelsmann decided to give up what he had become, what his first season in charge of Bayern shaped him to be, and returned to what he was. In the biggest moment of doubt of the season, Nagelsmann turned his back on his latest learnings and clung with all his might to his original convictions. After all, according to himself, it was such convictions that led him there. Perhaps they would also be responsible for keeping him there.
2.1. Early build-up phase in a 3+1 with high wing-backs
The differences between the Bayern team of the first half of the season and the one starting the second half of the season already started at the beginning: the early build-up phase. If in the game against Leipzig, Bayern showed a supported early build-up, with the full-backs and midfielders participating and with a proposal for a slower game and that worked more on the plays from the back, against Mainz, Bayern showed an extremely positional early build-up.
When Sommer (the goalkeeper Bayern signed to replace the injured Manuel Neuer) received the ball, in a goal kick or a back pass, he had a structure in 3+1 ahead of him. Pavard, Upamecano and De Ligt formed a centre-back trio, with Kimmich acting as a lone defensive midfielder. The remaining players would not participate on the early build-up and would have to wait in their respective positions in the attack: the positional play was back in Bayern Munich.
The idea of emptying the early build-up and filling the attack has already been explained here: placing more players in advanced positions allows the team to occupy strategic positions in the opponent’s field and, thus, creates more vertical passing lanes, which helps a more direct and objective progression of the ball and avoids the team having to spend a lot of time switching passes in their own field. This, of course, comes at the cost of a more elaborate early build-up, as having more players participating in it indicates a greater possibility of combinations, interactions and outcomes, which ends up allowing a greater range in the buid-up play as a whole. However, Nagelsmann wasn’t interested in this. With an unstable team, he preferred to turn back to controlling the spaces, as this would allow him to have more control over game situations and movements of the ball and his players, that is, he would have more power to change the scenario when the things weren’t going well. Thats why Nagelsmann ditched the participation of the likes of Musiala or Cancelo in the early build-up, two highly talented and inventive players, so that the spaces were properly dominated. Cancelo, signed by Bayern in the winter transfer window, would be a great option to add to the early build-up, as the Portuguese had developed into an excellent playmaker from the full-back position under Pep Guardiola. However, aiming to control the spaces, Nagelsmann used him as a winger. Cancelo’s role in that game was very similar to that of Coman, but on the opposite side: he had to act as a winger, sticked to the touchline and away from the early build-up, giving width to the team and stretching out the opposing defensive line. By doing so, Nagelsmann would fatally give up the more playful and participatory facet of the full-back in favor of a greater tactical rigor.
2.2. The return of the 3–1–5–1 with strict width
Just as the supported early build-up in 4+2 was the basis for the role-driven 4–2–2–2 that Bayern used against Leipzig, the early build-up in 3+1 indicated the return of the 3–1–6 in the matches of the Bavarian team. Furthermore, the departure of Lewandowski and the arrival of Mané as Bayern’s main offensive reinforcement indicated a more mobile and fluid attack: exactly what happened in the first half of the season. However, playing without a classic “number 9" was something the squad was not used to, as Bayern had spent the entire last decade with a striker in the squad, such as Mario Gómez, Mandžukić or Lewandowski himself. Soon, playing without this figure in the attack began to show adaptation problems, as the team missed a more steady player who could pin the opposing defenders and serve as a reference for Bayern players, in addition to playing as a target manand serving as a guarantee of goals for the team. To solve this, Nagelsmann gave up his much-loved mobile attack to put the Cameroonian Choupo-Mouting in the team, reintroducing the figure of a classic “number 9” in the starting 11. Thus, Bayern’s 3–1–6 was more like a 3–1–5–1: a trio of centre-backs, a lone defensive midfielder, a line of 5 more mobile forwards and a single striker pinning the opponent’s defenders.
The line of 5 forwards gave Bayern many possibilities. As I explained before, Cancelo and Coman were classic wingers. Although they often practiced Nagelsmann’s “relative width”, staying on the edge of the opposing defensive line instead of being sticked to the touchline, the task of giving the team width and stretching out the opposing defensive line was irreducible, and both should hold their wide positions, limiting their participation on central areas. There, Nagelsmann used three attacking midfielders: Musiala, Müller and Sané (who started his career as a winger, but had become a more central player under Nagelsmann). These three would be responsible for Bayern’s central game, although without the “anarchic” traits that allowed many internal movements in the role-driven version of the team: they should hold their positions and attack the spaces assigned to each one. The predetermined movements for the wingers and midfielders allowed Bayern to vary from a 3–1–5–1 to a 3–4–3 with a diamond midfield: the wingers pushed higher to form a line with Choupo-Mouting and the 3 midfielders dropped back, forming a diamond with Kimmich. However, most of the game Bayern played in the 3–1–5–1.
2.3. The ball goes to the positions
What marked the difference between Bayern in the first half of the season, which followed the line of what was presented in the match against Leizpig, and Bayern in the second half of the season is exactly what divides a role-driven attack from a positional attack: the structure in which the relationships between players take place is fundamentally different, as the team’s priority is different. If the Bayern of the first half of the season wanted to control the time of the relations between players and that implied a compact team, with a lot of freedom and countless different movements, the Bayern of the second half of the season wanted to control the space. This change in priority was what made the difference in the structure of the team, which called the shots of the relations between the players.
In the role-driven attack, the interactions define the structure. In the positional attack, the structure defines the interactions. Nagelsmann sought to control the spaces in this match and, therefore, he could not leave his players free to interact: he had to set up a structure that occupied the spaces he considered most important, and the players’ interactions had to respect this structure. According to Pep Guardiola, for a player to play well in a positional attack, he must know how to act in short and delimited spaces: the performance zone of each player is predetermined, and he must be the “owner” of his zone to be able to interact with the other players. For this, he must maintain his position and wait for the ball to come close to his zone so that he can interact directly with the play. In order for him to be able to act with the ball, it must arrive exactly in his position. Holding it is imprescriptible: if a player leaves his position, he will compromise the structure designed by the coach and, consequently, the control of spaces. In addition, playing in a predetermined zone implies a certain range of actions, movements and interactions that that player must do to dominate the space. He must move with the rest of the team and act according to the needs of the position he occupies. This, of course, limits interaction between players, as they are further away from each other and do not have as much freedom of action and movement. That’s why Cancelo had a limited area of action in the match against Mainz and didn’t show his characteristics as a playmaker full-back: his position was right winger, so his movements and actions should follow those of a right winger. The consequence is pretty straightforward: a positional attack limits the most natural expression of a player’s talent.
This does not mean that a positional attack forbids any kind of movements, but they must happen within two principles. The first is that, once his zone is assigned, the player can move within it. The positions are not specific points on the pitch where a player must hold still, but rather predetermined zones that limit the player’s area of acting (because of this, Guardiola prefers to call positional attack zonal attack). Within the zone assigned to him, the player can move, as long as these movements follow the role assigned to him by the coach. In addition, a positional attack allows and encourages the exchange of positions, but they must happen within the structure that the coach designed for the match. According to Domènec Torrent, Guardiola’s former assistant, the positions that must be occupied are predetermined by the coach, but it’s up to the players to decide who will occupy each one within the game: as long as all of them are occupied, it doesn’t matter who occupies each one. This, however, has an implication: when a player occupies a position that is not his own, he is assigned the full range of moves and actions specific to that position. For example: Cancelo can leave the right wing and position himself in the middle if Sané leaves his central position to occupy the right wing. However, in this exchange, Sané must assume the obligations of Cancelo and Cancelo, those of Sané. Within all of this, the most important thing is that all positions must be occupied. A player cannot leave his position to get closer to the ball, as he must wait in his position until the ball reaches him. The ball goes to positions, not the other way around.
2.4. Narrow positional attack on the final third
In the final third, Nagelsmann promoted a small change in the way Bayern attacked. The coach gave up some positional concepts, such as dominating the spaces throughout the entire pitch, in order to increase the verticality and effectiveness of Bayern’s attacks. Key to this was a bit more freedom for Bayern’s three most central players: when the team was in the final third and ready to produce goalscoring opportunities, Musiala, Müller and Sané had more freedom of movement. In addition, the rest of the team narrowed and got very close to the ball. The immediate effect of this was more short pass lanes around the ball carrier and therefore the ball could travel more quickly, as it would have to travel fewer yards. In addition, the ball carrier would also have more options to continue the attack, limiting less his options to interact. But make no mistake: even with more freedom of movement and a more compact team, Bayern did not practice a role-driven attack in the final third.
As I said before, clustering players in a sector of the pitch is not what defines a role-driven attack, as it is only a means to an end. The essence of a role-driven attack is what the name suggests: an attack that is based on the roles of the players and that builds its structure from the interactions and relations of mobility between them. This implies a huge variety of movements, ruptures, drop backs and actions that do not follow the idea of a “line”, as each player must act according to his role, without the limit of a predefined structure. Bringing players together in a small space is an enabler to this end, not the end itself.
Even when renegotiating some concepts of the positional attack, Bayern’s goal was not the control of time, but of space. This had some implications: even with the central players closer to each other and a more compact team, there were still positions to be respected. For this reason, direct participation in the play remained extremely limited, usually to just 4 players: when the ball traveled to one side of the field, the whole team approached it, but only Kimmich (the only defensive midfielder on the team), the winger and midfielder in that sector and the center attackin midfielder could interact directly with each other and with the ball. The other players, despite being close, were virtually out of direct participation: they had to hold their positions or attack the box to overload Mainz’ defensive line, and almost never left their zones to position themselves closer to the ball in order to act directly on the play. In addition, the team, even though it was more compact, continued to follow the idea of “lines”. There weren’t any ruptures, drop backs or “one-twos”: the players had to stick to the lines of the attack. When a player passed the ball, he could not leave his position and break the line to receive the ball back further ahead, and when a teammate received the ball he could not drop back from his position to offer a shorter passing lane: the movements still followed the predefined positional structure. In short, what Bayern were doing at this stage of the game was, at best, a “narrow” 3–1–5–1 that still followed most positional precepts. It wasn’t something that resembled a role-driven attack, not even remotely.
3. The ugly —after all, who is Julian Nagelsmann?
“I’d rather be this walking metamorphosis than have that old formed opinion about everything” — Raul Seixas.
Inside Nagelsmann, there are three men in conflict: the one he once was, the one he is, and the one he will be in the future. His career as a coach is now over 7 years old and already carries a lot of history: he was the coach with the longest unbeaten streak in the main European leagues in the 2016/2017 season, he was the main responsible for the first Champions League semi-final in the history of RB Leipzig and broke the transfer fee record for coaches when he joined Bayern Munich. However, he is only 35 years old, and should he so choose, his career could still span a few decades. It seems like we’ve been talking about Nagelsmann forever, but it’s more likely that he’s at the dawn of his coaching career.
Despite all of this, 7 consecutive years coaching at the highest level of German football is enough material for an analysis of Nagelsmann as a coach. His age can be deceiving, but his career leaves no doubt: Nagelsmann is one of the best coaches in the world. Maybe he’s not ready, but the truth is, nobody is. Look how many changes Ancelotti, Klopp or Guardiola have undergone in the last decade, how many different teams they’ve assembled. All of them are in constant change, but there is something in common between the three: they do not give up their own philosophy. What’s Nagelsmann’s? After all, who is Julian Nagelsmann?
Well, irreducible or not, Nagelsmann has his own philosophy and convictions. He values them a lot and always reinforces that he only is where he is because of them. His German version of the Juego de Posición, his verticalized positional attack, his relative width and, most importantly, tactical versatility and rigor were huge traits of all his works at one point or another. The positional attack is something that allows Nagelsmann to have more control of the situations within a match, since he is responsible for tracing the positions, movements and interactions of all his players. As a direct consequence, he has more to say about what happens on the pitch and more power to do some tweaks on lineups, structures and movements to be able in order to adapt his team to different scenarios. His assumed admiration for Pep Guardiola was certainly something that brought Nagelsmann closer to the quest for control of the situations of a match, although Germany is a country known for liking a more chaotic football. When the situation was delicate, Nagelsmann clung even more to his convictions. After all, the worst feeling of all is being in the middle of a problem and having no control over the situation. His positional attack gave him that control.
However, the first half of the 2022/2023 season showed a different Nagelsmann. He showed himself to be more sensitive and someone more capable of not only understanding the importance and uniqueness of each individual, but of valuing that individuality, listening to it and taking it to a game. Nagelsmann learned that control doesn’t just come through a rigid structure that he could alter at will, but that it can also come from a team that, although it may seem chaotic to the layman’s eye, has an immense complexity of movements and interactions that run away from the idea of positions. By giving each player different “individual tasks” (as Ancelotti says) that respect what each player does naturally, Nagelsmann discovered a new world. Some game situations that he previously thought of as random and chaotic could be allies in his quest for control: chaos and order might walk together. In his role-driven attack, Nagelsmann showed a team that controlled the game’s scenarios by deeply exploring relations of mobility and interactions between players. In short, Nagelsmann learned that control may not come only from space; it may also can come from time.
Young, but already experienced, Nagelsmann was and is, but still will be. In his short and explosive career, he has already demonstrated different faces: slower or more vertical, more rigid or more flexible, more positional or more role-driven. His experiences and influences may shape him, of course, but the final word on who Nagelsmann is will always be his own. We can only admire the formation of what could become one of the greatest coaches in the history of football.
