Soccer As A Living Organism
José Mourinho changed the way we played football. The Portuguese was the main exponent of tactical periodization, a new way of training teams. Today it seems obvious that the training should simulate the game, but in the early 2000s, the technical and physical part was still being trained separately. The tactical periodization arises with the objective of making the work during the week, in fact, a training for the game, trying to replicate to the maximum the potential match scenarios and the challenges that will be proposed.
This new method made the sport evolve in some aspects, mainly its physical side, and this directly influenced the decrease of the effective space of game. Defenses became more closed, the lines more compact, and midfields turned into jungles of lions. Maybe that’s why the classic ten shirt has disappeared — or reinvented itself, but that’s another matter. Mourinho marked an era where the game was controlled by space, especially in defensive moments. Until Pep Guardiola appeared …
Guardiola knew the importance of control over space. While attacking, the more space you take, the easier the task will be. While defending, if you take up less space, then your opponent’s task will be more difficult. However, Pep viewed the game without the ball as something extremely physically and mentally exhausting and understood the game with the ball as something much more pleasurable.
After all, the ball is the main element of football and puts the player in an artist position. All we have to do is go back to our memories to see how, when children, when playing football, the ball was the only thing that really mattered. Therefore, Pep proposed control of the ball as a means to control of space. This way, slowly and with short passes, the team gets into the attacking area and at the same time, confuses the opposition. But then came a German named Jürgen Klopp …
If Guardiola’s football is opera, Klopp’s is heavy metal. Intensity is the key. The opponents are suffocated. It’s a style that does not worry about having control over anything.
Regardless of space control, or numerical advantage, the goal is to press and retrieve the ball. After recovering it, there is no need to exchange passes and structure a blockade attack. It is best to start a furious vertical movement and let the attack develop while facing a whole messy defense. An arrow hitting the target.
This little emphasis on the small and recent clipping of changes in football is already interesting in itself, but I will use them as an argument to discuss something more abstract, but equally interesting: the living organism that is football.
When Mourinho won the Champions League in 2004 with Porto, and was English champion twice with Chelsea, the feeling was that that was the correct way to play football and that nothing would change.
When Guardiola won all that he could with that magnificent Barcelona, Xavi, Iniesta and Messi, the feeling was the same. Who wants to win has to play with the ball.
Klopp has yet to raise big trophies, but he has already arrived twice at the Champions League final and did an excellent work in Dortmund and now at Liverpool.
That says a lot about football. How concepts of right and wrong — with regard to the way of playing — do not apply in the game. Who is on top today, can — and will— not be tomorrow. Nothing, and absolutely nothing, that coaches do can guarantee the outcome. There are those who prefer a style of play, and carry it as a religion, as if the rest played wrong football. I see this opening for the most different proposals as the most precious possession of this sport.
To close, an excerpt from Axel Torres’ 11 Cities book on Euro 2004 champions Greece: “… I read a newspaper column explaining how Greece’s victory was negative for football. I could not understand. I do not understand and I still do not understand why they do not value the social aspect of that victory. That, for the sport, meant the confirmation that it is possible to reach a championship without any chance and ending up winning. Or how that conquest would serve, from then on, to make all small and resource-less teams believe in themselves, to have a basis for their faith; how they would continue to feed the dreams of fans who know they will never win anything, but who remain loyal to their small teams, the teams they feel like their own, because deep down they are convinced that if the miracle happens, they will be the happiest people in the world and will celebrate victory with much more passion than those who always do.”
