Football, a game we all know and love, has undergone a lot of changes throughout its history. As Johan Cruyff once said; “Playing football simply is easy but playing simple football is the hardest thing to do in this world”. And he was right.
Over time, the very flow of the game has changed completely. Let’s call this flow “Game State”. For long, Game State was rather conventional; tacticians would try to get their players to progress the ball up the pitch until they got it in the back of the net. Following this, They’d take a more defensive approach unless they felt like they could score more goals.
However, the world watched as the mesmerizing total football took center stage between 1970 and 1978 as the Netherlands reached 2 world cup finals. Despite not winning either of those finals under the leadership of Johan Cruyff and fellow star teammates, they showed the world that there was scope for unique ways of playing football that were more efficient than the notions of conventional game state.
Johan Cruyff, a player who was involved in the shift of football away from the traditional flow of play
Football gradually flowed away from the conventional game state and moved to something new. In this new era with managers like Johan Cruyff, Carlo Ancelotti, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arigo Sacchi, Rafa Benitez and a younger generation of managers in Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, a new way of playing football was born. Teams were becoming more and more tactical and managers built their teams not just by recruiting a band of star studded players, but by scouting out adept candidates who would solidify the overall system better.
Sir Alex Ferguson, widely regarded as one of, if not the greatest manager of all time, inspired a new generation of managerial class, breaking away from the norms of football
Moreover, it was under Johan Cryuff at Barcelona that Tiki Taka was born.
Tiki Taka was a revolutionary way of playing football and its grass roots are in the Catalan club Barcelona. Johan Cruyff introduced this system and this system was jolted to new heights under the leadership of Pep Guardiola and players like Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto'o, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez, Sergio Busquets, Carles Puyol and a young Lionel Messi.
Tiki Taka primarily focused on build up play through short passes. A very tedious and hard method to replicate in nature. It largely depends on the individual quality of the players and the fact that Barcelona had a lot of it is what helped them start their era of dominance. Between 2005 and 2011, Barcelona were champions of Europe 3 times. It could’ve been 4. Why wasn’t it 4 ? To answer this question, we have to take a trip to Italy.
In the year 2010, Barcelona were looking to complement their success in the previous campaign by going all the way in the Champions League. However, this goal was put down by a footballing powerhouse at Inter Milan under Jose Mourinho. His tactics, considered rather obsolete in today’s game, were some of the most effective tactics in the 2000s and 2010s (a testimony to this is the fact that he was able to guide Porto to a Champions league title in 2004).
Manager, Jose Mourinho, or the 'The Special One', brought forth a new style of tactics, built up on the quality of players in a 11-player system
He built a super team that exploited the individual quality of players. A defensive unit consisting of Lucio, Zanetti, Maicon and Materazzi combined with a midfield of Cambiasso, Thiago Motta and Wesley Snijder, topped off with the attack consisting of Pandev, Milito and Eto’o guided Inter Milan to greatness and took them to the very summit of football. This system was also similar to Carlo Ancelotti’s AC Milan during the 2000s; a system premised upon playing to the strengths of individual players and structuring a tactical set up on this basis.
Coming to modern football, we’ve seen an increased role in full backs and center backs in attacks and build up play. While the common conviction in pre modern football was that defensive players would not leave their defensive lines, this system has proved to be less efficient than what we see in modern football.
In a modern football team, we often see full backs pushing up the wings to provide better attacking width and this allows the wingers to tuck into narrow half spaces. We’ve also seen full backs invert into a deep lying midfield position to overload the center and provide a numerical advantage to their team in the central zone, creating a box like structure which not only eases central progression from the goal kick, it also serves as a counter to opposition central progression.
English Right Back Trent Alexander Arnold has becoming symbolic of the modern day wingback, inverting whenever possible, and driving forward to create space and threats
This gradual shift to positional play has had its advantages and disadvantages. While it has helped smaller clubs come up with unique tactics and has led to the rise of absolute gems across all positions, it has reduced the scope of players individually. Nowadays we don’t see players dribbling like Ronaldinho or Messi, we don’t see strikers carrying the ball forward as much or midfielders moving out of the zone they are enclosed in willingly.
There are still some teams that are free off positional play and are equally successful. While Manchester City’s success can be largely attributed to their system of positional play and dominance, teams like Liverpool and Real Madrid play a more loose form of football, allowing players to move to any position which changes depending on the game state. This system of CHAOS BALL has served as a counter balance to the existing tactical order of positional play.
Post Modern football may have tactical setups that are a culmination of multiple styles, incorporating positional play as well as chaos ball in unique ways that nobody would’ve thought about before. In 1987, if you had walked up to a manager like Sir Alex Ferguson or Arigo Sacchi and described the convoluted nature of modern football tactics, they would be surprised.
-- Nikhil Harish Lakshman, 16/03/2024