In defence of Guardiola’s tactics
Despite Manchester City recording their second successive 5–0 win last Saturday, Pep Guardiola’s reputation within the football world has taken a significant dent ever since he came up short against opposite number Thomas Tuchel in the 2021 Champions league final.
His achilles heel in that game was the decision to leave both Rodri and Fernandinho out of the starting XI, something he hadn’t done in the previous 60 games of the 2020–21 season. Playing without a natural defensive midfielder opened acres of space between City’s defence and midfield lines. Something Mason Mount exploited to perfection as demonstrated by the GIF below.
Guardiola’s habit of overthinking his team selection has been cited as the primary reason for his failure to win the Champions League since 2011. But in order to understand why, we need to revisit where he is coming from. Guardiola is a disciple of the late Johan Cruyff, who rose to prominence as a player in the Dutch national team of the 1970s and alongside his coach Rinus Michels is credited with inventing the style of play known as total football.
1) Positional Play
This approach to the game of football starts with rethinking your idea of positions within a formation. Common football knowledge dictates that defenders are responsible for preventing goals, attackers for scoring them and midfielders for everything in between.
For instance in a 4–4–2 formation, the leftback is traditionally responsible for defending the wide space of the left flank in his team’s half of the pitch. The red line in the image below shows this area of influence.
Within a total football system the leftback would be expected to roam outside of his traditional area of influence in order to occupy spaces vacated by his teammates.
In this illustration, the left back has ventured high up the wing in order to influence the attack. The remaining defenders move laterally to the left to form a back 3, with the left centre back now occupying the left back spot. In midfield, the left winger makes a narrow run towards the half-space in order to offer an additional attacking option as well as opening up space for the left back to overlap.
These subtle off the ball movements not obvious to the untrained eye, influence the game much more than the short passing so easily observed.
2) Overloads
The is the key offensive aspect of total football, it simply means to congest one side of the pitch in order to open up space on the other side. It is a footballing Trojan horse, meant to draw opponents out of their defensive shape. To illustrate let us take a team set up in a 4–3–3, facing opponents set up in a 4–4–2.
The arrows in the diagram illustrate the importance of passing triangles in the wide and half spaces of the left wing. The idea is to congest this area of pitch, baiting opponents to try and press the ball in order to shift their defensive blocks laterally.
This opens up space for the free runner on the right wing, which is the right back in this case but it could be another player given the constant interchange of positions, i.e. positional play. This goal by Dani Alves against Shakhtar Donetsk perfectly illustrates what is in the diagram.
Many criticise Pep’s style of play for being boring or sterile, they feel he is obsessed with short passing simply for the sake of it but that is simply not true. Every pass you see is made with a calculated purpose in mind, to shift opponents out of their position in order to open up space close to the opposition goal.
I think his downfall is that the Barca team he assembled in 2011 was so good, and played football at such a high level that it will never again be replicated. In the back of Pep’s mind he knows this and perhaps that’s why he keeps trying to experiment with things because no team will ever execute his vision so perfectly ever again.
