Is it time to ditch possession football and build up something from the ground up?

BBZ8800 said:

We want possession football with taller players and somewhat faster players, where you can both:
-- play on the ground
-- play some quicker counterattacks when possible
-- play some crosses and long balls for taller forwards like in Crujff's and Rijkaard's era.

Our current football from the last 3 years not only that it isn't effective anymore.
It is both ineffective and not too beautiful to watch.

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So basically the way Madrid, Chelsea or Bayern play.

Total Football is a way of offensive momement and organisation between the players that is independant of the players size or type. What we lack the most now is our positional play. This makes our possession play look incredibly boring because there's no real movement.

http://spielverlagerung.com/2014/11/26/juego-de-posicion-a-short-explanation/
http://spielverlagerung.com/2014/12/25/juego-de-posicion-under-pep-guardiola/

Guardiola in his first season showed that you can play "tiki taka" with taller players (Henry, Eto'o, Toure), counter attacks, set pieces etc. No need to really look back at something that was 10 or 15 years ago and wouldn't work nowadays anyway if we'd play exactly like that now.

Getting a tall striker would also mean that Messi needs to either be moved to right wing permanently or if he doesn't want to be, be sold. Makes an interesting discussion to say the least.

DrPepper said:

Total Football is a way of offensive momement and organisation between the players that is independant of the players size or type. What we lack the most now is our positional play. This makes our possession play look incredibly boring because there's no real movement.

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Total football is actually a super-fluid system with a lot of movement. What Chelsea play is a rigid system with specialized players in each position. The poacher - Costa, the destroyer - Matic, the DLP - Fabregas.

A rigid system is not a bad one. Real has made a transition from rigid to pretty fluent just recently, that's why Kroos is begnining to look better now, because his teammates help him more than they did in the start of the season (particularly Isco, who's been massive in defense so far this campaign). Also, Benzema's movement is very underrated. He has improved big time in that chapter. I wonder how will they keep this fluid sysem with Bale on, since he can play well only in a rigid system - basically excels at two things and sucks at everything else.

We also had a pretty rigid system back in the times of Rijkhaard. Rigid can work, but you need specialist players, so buying CMs to serve as CBs is suicidal with a rigid system. You can't make a rigid system with short players for example, because you can't make players like Busquets play in DM without lots of help from his teammates. The case of Busi is very interesting. He never was a DM monster, he just seemed that way because the fluid system never caught him without passing options. Now, he often complicates the play because the passing options don't reveal themselves (lack of fluidity).

DrPepper said:

So basically the way Madrid, Chelsea or Bayern play.

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?
RM and Chelsea play ball possession ?:eusa_think:

Possession%
1 Bayern Munich 70.5
2 Barcelona 70.3
3 Paris Saint Germain 65.6
4 Roma 62.0
5 Juventus 60.7
6 Manchester City 59.2
7 Inter 58.8
8 Arsenal 58.7
9 Manchester United 58.4
10 Marseille 58.2
11 Fiorentina 58.1
12 Celta Vigo 58.1
13 Everton 58.0
14 Rayo Vallecano 57.7
15 Lyon 57.3
16 Real Madrid 57.1
17 Borussia Dortmund 57.0
18 Chelsea 56.2
19 Napoli 56
20 Tottenham 56

serghei said:

Total football is actually a super-fluid system with a lot of movement. What Chelsea play is a rigid system with specialized players in each position. The poacher - Costa, the destroyer - Matic, the DLP - Fabregas.

A rigid system is not a bad one. Real has made a transition from rigid to pretty fluent just recently, that's why Kroos is begnining to look better now, because his teammates help him more than they did in the start of the season (particularly Isco, who's been massive in defense so far this campaign). Also, Benzema's movement is very underrated. He has improved big time in that chapter. I wonder how will they keep this fluid sysem with Bale on, since he can play well only in a rigid system - basically excels at two things and sucks at everything else.

We also had a pretty rigid system back in the times of Rijkhaard. Rigid can work, but you need specialist players, so buying CMs to serve as CBs is suicidal with a rigid system. You can't make a rigid system with short players for example, because you can't make players like Busquets play in DM without lots of help from his teammates. The case of Busi is very interesting. He never was a DM monster, he just seemed that way because the fluid system never caught him without passing options. Now, he often complicates the play because the passing options don't reveal themselves (lack of fluidity).

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You can still be rigid but fluid in movement. Rigid means every player has a defined role and job to do in every of the four phases of the game. Madrid and Chelsea are rigid but with a trained fluidity in offensive organisation. Their players are trained to move to certain zones depending on the position of the ball and with the player on the ball as a reference point. A fluid team would be a team that is given creativity by their manager because he has no clue which results in improvised and uncoordinated movement. Maybe Arsenal fits this best, or generally most English teams.

Guardiola's Barca also looked very fluid in movement but I'm fairly sure most of this was due to instructions and training which would also mean a defined role for everyone and thus a more rigid approach. Probably a mix of training and improvisation. It was evident in the way we started to decline in this aspect the moment Guardiola was gone.

It doesn't really matter whether you're rigid or fluid. The most important thing we lack atm are more microtactical aspects rather than macrotactical.

MagIX said:

?
RM and Chelsea play ball possession ?:eusa_think:

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When people say that Arsenal play ball possession (even compare to Barca), it's also right to say the same about Chelsea and Madrid. Mourinho always plays a possession game against teams he is expected to beat, often reaching the 70% of possession. Like yesterday against West Ham. Ancelotti is similar to that.

DrPepper said:

When people say that Arsenal play ball possession (even compare to Barca), it's also right to say the same about Chelsea and Madrid. Mourinho always plays a possession game against teams he is expected to beat, often reaching the 70% of possession. Like yesterday against West Ham. Ancelotti is similar to that.

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?
Arsenal play ball possession since twenty years, it is his trademark, since Wenger is the coach. When you think at Arsenal, you think at this soccer philosophy, we can easly say it is in his dna now.
Even Barcelona tried to have Wenger years ago...

Mou and Ancelotti do not play ball possesion, they are forced to play ball possession game because weak teams play automatically a defensive game: obviously this does not mean having a game based on ball possession.
It is not in the dna of Ancelotti and even less in Mou. All the teams they have trained never proposed a game based on ball possession.
But surely of the two Ancelotti went closer to this philosophy.

MagIX said:

?
Arsenal play ball possession since twenty years, it is his trademark, since Wenger is the coach. When you think at Arsenal, you think at this soccer philosophy, we can easly say it is in his dna now.
Even Barcelona tried to have Wenger years ago...

Mou and Ancelotti do not play ball possesion, they are forced to play ball possession game because weak teams play automatically a defensive game: obviously this does not mean having a game based on ball possession.
It is not in the dna of Ancelotti and even less in Mou. All the teams they have trained never proposed a game based on ball possession.
But surely of the two Ancelotti went closer to this philosophy.

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?
Pretty sure Arsenal were a counter attacking team at first. His teams that won some titles in the beginning of the 2000s relied on their quick forwards breaking at speed. Doesn't mean they're not a possession team, but if Madrid and Chelsea aren't, then certainly not. Also I thought Arsenal were known for their one touch football 10-15 years ago. During the time they won no trophies they started keeping the ball more.

But yeah, when Arsenal has 70% possession against a weak team it's possession play but when Chelsea or Madrid do it's not? And what do you call Arsenal's 35% against Liverpool? There is more to a possession game than actually keeping the ball (or sideway passes). I don't have the time to do that, but maybe the number of passes is a better indicator then. Because possession stats are calculated by counting the amount of passes both teams make. So when there's 1000 passes in a match and Team A has 700 of them, they have 70% of the ball. Which means how you press also plays a huge part of it.

ok.
Arsenal never played ball possession and it is know that this has nothing to do with Arsenal. Wenger is against this kind of soccer and it is know that his team Arsenal has always been set on defense/counterattack soccer. For this reason Barca was interessed in him.
Mou always played ball possession, this is his style, with Porto, Chelsea, Inter, RM and now again with Chelsea.
RM plays ball possession, especially vs big teams like Bayern or Barca.

MagIX said:

ok.
Arsenal never played ball possession and it is know that this has nothing to do with Arsenal. Wenger is against this kind of soccer and it is know that his team Arsenal has always been set on defense/counterattack soccer. For this reason Barca was interessed in him.
Mou always played ball possession, this is his style, with Porto, Chelsea, Inter, RM and now again with Chelsea.
RM plays ball possession, especially vs big teams like Bayern or Barca.

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Why say something meaningful when it's easier to troll, right?

It's unbelievable how biased people are. When Chelsea has 35% of the ball against a similar team they parked the bus but when Arsenal do the same they played nice possession football.

The discussion is going off topic anyways and there's no need to discuss with someone who thinks counter attacking and defensive football are equal.

DrPepper said:

So basically the way Madrid, Chelsea or Bayern play.

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Unless you're talking about Bayern pre-pep era (and even so, I'm not sure you can compare it even), I don't see how the current Bayern resembles RM or Chelsea.

The current Bayern is closer than what Pep did in barcelona than being closer to what Carlo is doing.

And I disagree about Messi. You can pair him with 2 tall players that will move around him. Those two can be good in the air and assist Messi that way.

The usual way of doing it is to use one tall player as centre-forward that can serve as pivot (Ibra is a good example) for 2 smaller forwards, but nothing stop you to do the opposite when you play with 3 forwards.

It is amazing (almost borderline disgraceful) that we are officially Europe's shortest team:

A study by Catalan daily Sport into the average height of teams from Europe’s first division leagues has come up with a pretty obvious conclusion: Barça are Europe’s shortest team! Certainly not something we didn’t know of, but being the shortest is indeed a special accolade. Barça have the shortest players in Europe with an average height of 177.3cm, followed by Cypriot club AEL Limassol, whose players are 0.4cm taller on average. Compare that to the tallest team in Europe, Hungary’s Diósgyőri VTK, whose players’ average height reaches an almighty 186.3cm!

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Possession or counter-based, we need taller players who can properly defend against set pieces and who can properly head.

How actual are these stats Luft? Are we still the shortest with Rakitic, Suarez, Mathieu, terStegen?

Pique, Bartra, Mathieu, Busi, Rakitic, Suarez, Neymar are of decent height. Our starting line up is not that short anymore.

But weren't we always the shortest team? Since like 2010 or so.

I do agree that taller players could be very useful but set pieces are a lot about organisation and not simply pure height. We barely conceded set piece goals under Guardiola, I felt.

linetty said:

How actual are these stats Luft? Are we still the shortest with Rakitic, Suarez, Mathieu, terStegen?

Pique, Bartra, Mathieu, Busi, Rakitic, Suarez, Neymar are of decent height. Our starting line up is not that short anymore.

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No idea about the "scientific-ness" of SPORT's study, but you can find the article here, it is dated December 27th, 2014 so I would think the stats include the 14/15 squad players.

Luftstalag14 said:

It is amazing (almost borderline disgraceful) that we are officially Europe's shortest team:
A study by Catalan daily Sport into the average height of teams from Europe’s first division leagues has come up with a pretty obvious conclusion: Barça are Europe’s shortest team! Certainly not something we didn’t know of, but being the shortest is indeed a special accolade. Barça have the shortest players in Europe with an average height of 177.3cm, followed by Cypriot club AEL Limassol, whose players are 0.4cm taller on average. Compare that to the tallest team in Europe, Hungary’s Diósgyőri VTK, whose players’ average height reaches an almighty 186.3cm!

Possession or counter-based, we need taller players who can properly defend against set pieces and who can properly head.

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Interesting post.
I would like to add an interesting story from 2005 and 2006 Seasons.
In 2004-2005 Season, it was Frank Rijkaard's 2nd Season.
We won La Liga after 6 years in that Season.
But in CL we faced Chelsea in 1/8 finals.
We won 2:1 at Nou Camp, but lost in extremely naive way against Mourinho's side 4:2 at Stamford bridge.

We needed to defend at Stamford bridge, but we were losing 3:0 after 20 Minutes.
We were unexperienced and naive back then, but also, in that Season (in those matches), our team was extremely one-dimensional, just like current team.
We had a bunch of short players and we lost all arial duels against Chelsea, plus, their players seemed much faster and stronger than our guys.

Anyway, this was our team in the 2nd match in 2005, when we lost 4:2 at Stamford bridge:
Gk: Valdes
Dl: Bronckhorst 178
Dc: Puyol 178
Dc: Oleguer 187
Dr: Belletti 179
Dmc: Gerard Lopez 182
Mc: Xavi 170
Mc: Deco 174
Mc: Iniesta 170
Fc: Ronaldinho 181
Fc: Etoo 179

I remember how I was angry and frustrated after that match and I thought: "We are so poor and naive against top sides, we will NEVER win CL with our stupid tactics"

Goals from that sad night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qaovod6JgM

Luckily, next Season we again played against Chelsea, and luckily, Rijkaard was somewhat smarter than the current directors and coaches and he figured out that Mourinho will again give us possession and he will try to kill us on counterattacks.
But now, Rijkaard picked much physically stronger and taller players, and we played more defensively and cautiously, and guess what=Chelsea was unable to create counterattacks, plus they were unable to bully our short midfielders and to bully us on set pieces.

Our line up in 2006 was much physically stronger:
Gk: Valdes
Dl: Bronckhorst 178
Dc: Puyol 178
Dc: Marquez 184
Dr: Oleguer 187
Dmc: Edmilson 186
Mc: Motta 187
Mc: Deco 174
Aml: Ronaldinho 181
Fc: Etoo 179
Amr: Messi 169

-- for example, in the first Season, we had a midfield with 4 short/weaker players:
-- Xavi, Iniesta, Deco, Gerard
-- Gerard was taller (182) but he was also extremely skinny and not too fast
-- he was "a typical" Barca's not too strong midfielder
-- also, we had 2 physically weaker fullbacks (178 cm tall Bronckhorst and 179 cm tall Belletti). Also, they were both very "offensive" players, like Alves and Alba, and in 2005, we conceded Goals when they both went into the attack, and our defense was left with only Puyol, Oleguer and slow Dmc Gerard Lopez.

In 2006, we had 3 Dcs and only one fullback in defense (Oleguer was a Dr, but he is actually only a Dc who plays at Dr), so our defense was much stronger and less prone to counterattacks with 3 natural defenders (Puyol, Marquez and Oleguer).
Also, our midfield was this time: 186 cm tall Edmilson, 187 cm tall Motta and 174 cm tall Deco
-- so, we had only one "shorter" midfielder in Deco
-- Edmilson and Motta were two extremely strong and tall players
-- so, in 2005, our midfielders looked like children against Chelsea's midfield (Lampard, Makelele, Gudjohnsen)
-- we were losing all aerial duels, and all set pieces

-- this times, Chelsea players couldn't bully Edmilson and Motta, plus, our fullbacks weren't attacking like crazy

In the end, in 2005 we played attacking and had a lot of possession and lost 4:2 on counterattacks, classic Barca, lol.
In 2006, we gave away some Possession, we played less attacking, and we were extremely well organized in defense and midfield and we won 2:1 this time.
Later that year we won our 2nd CL title in history (the first after 1992')

Anyway, the point of this story, shorter players somehow worked ONLY in Pep's era.
With shorter players, we are one dimensional both in attack and defense.
And that system worked only with Xavi+Iniesta+Messi in their prime.

If they are not on their prime, you get only a bunch of crappy short players who are not fast and not strong enough as our european opponents.
Plus, our play is one dimensional and all we can do is pass till death left and right.

A mixture of shorter and tall players gives opportunities for typical shortpassing/possession game, but also for some counterattacks, crosses.
Plus, we are not bullied in midfield and after corners.

Playing with short players is not our Dna.
It's a Pep's crap and something that worked only with him and with our key players in their prime.

Let's move away from possession without any purpose and away from too short players.

Dont ditch Possesion but pls dont slow down Counter attacks , it makes NO sense AT all.