Countering the Parked Bus?

My suggestions:

- Double pivot to limit space for oppositions to launch counterattack.

- Play Messi even deeper, and let him play in the role he has with Argentina - become the new Xavi+Iniesta. Another advantage is the extra space for his mazy runs. His godlike dribbling may destabilize even a Boeing.

Yes this seem to be radical, since we are not going to depend on Xavi or Iniesta in midfield anymore. But this is for ultra defensive teams, and encountering such opponent with such radical defensive mindset require an entirely radical tactic.


I know the team will not play this way though. But its nice to see us springing one or two big surprises again, like we saw during Pep's early seasons.

1) When the opposition starts dropping deep don't just drift forward. Pass the ball back into the midfield line and maintain possession there to draw the opposition further out. Once they do then look to take advantage of the greater space with sharper, more direct and quicker passing. You could even bench Xavi since his skillset becomes a bit redundant in this situation or get him to be more direct.
2) When teams park the bus they usually crowd the centre to block shots and stop Messi. There is lots of space however for someone to go down the wing, not even down the touchline, you see the opposition fullbacks around the edge of the box. There's opportunity for someone to burst down the edge of the box and get a quick low cross in. In this case you'd need to get more bodies into the box. The fact that the team is short is not relevant since you are getting low crosses in, and also there is the possibility of an own goal.

zealot said:

My suggestions:

- Double pivot to limit space for oppositions to launch counterattack.

- Play Messi even deeper, and let him play in the role he has with Argentina - become the new Xavi+Iniesta. Another advantage is the extra space for his mazy runs. His godlike dribbling may destabilize even a Boeing.

Yes this seem to be radical, since we are not going to depend on Xavi or Iniesta in midfield anymore. But this is for ultra defensive teams, and encountering such opponent with such radical defensive mindset require an entirely radical tactic.

Alves - Pique - Puyol - Alba

Masch - Busquets
Messi

Pedro - Villa - Iniesta​

I know the team will not play this way though. But its nice to see us springing one or two big surprises again, like we saw during Pep's early seasons.

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This would be interesting. It could just work. I'd like to see some sort of surprise too! I would have Iniesta in midfield instead of Mascherano (and Fabregas instead of Iniesta on LW), but fair enough.

oz187 said:

1) When the opposition starts dropping deep don't just drift forward. Pass the ball back into the midfield line and maintain possession there to draw the opposition further out. Once they do then look to take advantage of the greater space with sharper, more direct and quicker passing. You could even bench Xavi since his skillset becomes a bit redundant in this situation or get him to be more direct.
2) When teams park the bus they usually crowd the centre to block shots and stop Messi. There is lots of space however for someone to go down the wing, not even down the touchline, you see the opposition fullbacks around the edge of the box. There's opportunity for someone to burst down the edge of the box and get a quick low cross in. In this case you'd need to get more bodies into the box. The fact that the team is short is not relevant since you are getting low crosses in, and also there is the possibility of an own goal.

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I like this actually. I could see it working, given we have very active wingers and fullbacks. Then Messi, Iniesta, and Cesc could control the central play. No need for Xavi, agreed.

I'm thinking the following formations would work really well against teams that park the bus:

Valdés
Montoya/Alves - Piqué - Puyol - Alba
Cesc/Thiago - Busquets - Iniesta
Pedro - Messi - Tello/Villa

Please Vilanova, let's get creative and try a few things out against Milan!

I think we may just have found that anti-bus frontline:

- :villa: -

or maybe villa-messi-tello.

oz187 said:

2) When teams park the bus they usually crowd the centre to block shots and stop Messi. There is lots of space however for someone to go down the wing, not even down the touchline, you see the opposition fullbacks around the edge of the box. There's opportunity for someone to burst down the edge of the box and get a quick low cross in. In this case you'd need to get more bodies into the box. The fact that the team is short is not relevant since you are getting low crosses in, and also there is the possibility of an own goal.

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Teams defend very narrow against Barca because they know that we are most dangerous when passing through the middle and also because we have almost no aerial threat on high crosses.

However, your idea of us putting low crosses into the box is missing one important point. Low crosses are most effective when defensive teams play with a relatively high defensive line as there is a sizeable space between the defence and the goalkeeper for the cross to be played into. This tactic is less effective when playing against deep defensive lines (which by definition is always the case against parked buses) because the defenders are positioned around the six yard box and can easily clear any low crosses that are aimed into that area. See the second leg v Chelsea for numerous examples of low crosses that are easily cleared by the Chelsea defence.

Barca have more success with low crosses that are cut back to the penalty spot or edge of the box (see Messi's goal v Sevilla) but again this is less likely to be effective against parked buses as the defending team will have more players inside the box so therefore there will most likely be a midfielder positioned to clear any cut-back crosses.

Teams hold a line at the edge of the box. If the winger beats the fullback he can ping the ball so that it gets past the far post everytime. I don't mean beat the fullback, get to the byline and then hit it across. If the winger beats the fullback he will automatically be the most advanced player, he'll still probably be 12-17 yards out. He then has a big target to ping it across. A lot of the time you'd miss any strikers but you only need to get it right once.

oz187 said:

Teams hold a line at the edge of the box. If the winger beats the fullback he can ping the ball so that it gets past the far post everytime. I don't mean beat the fullback, get to the byline and then hit it across. If the winger beats the fullback he will automatically be the most advanced player, he'll still probably be 12-17 yards out. He then has a big target to ping it across. A lot of the time you'd miss any strikers but you only need to get it right once.

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Right. Furthermore, getting past the defense has several advantages. First, defenders have to turn towards the player with the ball, thus turning their line of sight away from most of the players. This allows strikers to evade markers and midfielders to make unmarked runs. Second, because at least one defender will have to close down the player with the ball and because the offsides rule isn't applicable (due to the player being behind the defense), the defensive line will become haphazard, opening up spaces.

Of the current players, Tello and Iniesta are the best candidates for this. Throughout his career, and especially this season, we've seen Iniesta use his amazing endline dribbling to beat a fullback and have much of the box open. Tello's game for last year was based on beating defenders to the outside and crossing, although we've seen him add to that this year. One possibility is to have Villa and Iniesta on the left with Alba (their combinations have been amazing at times), Tello and Xavi/Cesc/Thiago on the right with Alves (Tello can play both sides), with Messi in the middle. It's also possible to have Messi and Tello on the wings with Villa in the middle, or Tello, Villa, and Pedro up front with Messi behind. There's a lot of room for creativity in formations here.

Play into: up front and lump the ball in the box.

On the odd occasion when a parked bus has some sort of success against Barcelona, people deem it some monumental masterplan which stops Barcelona, when they probably beat one 5-0 the week before. I mean, taking the Chelsea game as an example as most people do: Fickle fans just look at the final result & forget the amount of chances Barcelona had in both legs, & how good they played.

They weren't even half chances, which is usually the case against these kind of defences. Most were clear cut chances.

Barcelona know exactly what they need to do against a very deep, compact & narrow defence. They just know that at some point, over a coarse of 90 minutes, they’ll start to chip away & pressure usually gets told. All right, it might not be a goal what's walked into the net.. but it’s not really a case of scoring beautifully & walking it into the net; especially against a bus. It’s a case that patience, constant pressure & possession tells in the end.

All these ideas about a bloody "double pivot"... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZ0byEyeOA

JimmyGuitarist said:

On the odd occasion when a parked bus has some sort of success against Barcelona, people deem it some monumental masterplan which stops Barcelona, when they probably beat one 5-0 the week before. I mean, taking the Chelsea game as an example as most people do: Fickle fans just look at the final result & forget the amount of chances Barcelona had in both legs, & how good they played.

They weren't even half chances, which is usually the case against these kind of defences. Most were clear cut chances.

Barcelona know exactly what they need to do against a very deep, compact & narrow defence. They just know that at some point, over a coarse of 90 minutes, they’ll start to chip away & pressure usually gets told. All right, it might not be a goal what's walked into the net.. but it’s not really a case of scoring beautifully & walking it into the net; especially against a bus. It’s a case that patience, constant pressure & possession tells in the end.

All these ideas about a bloody "double pivot"... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZ0byEyeOA

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This. Celtic and especially Chelsea were completely dominated and we lost to them because our players forgot how to finish, not because of their amazing tactics. We probably hit the woodwork more times than Chelsea had shots on target and missed more tap ins than Chelsea had chances, clear-cut or otherwise...

Anyways, remember the first leg against Milan? THAT was a tactical victory by Milan, not what Chelsea and Celtic did. It only worked against our Iniesta on LW lineup though, they got destroyed in the second leg after we switched things around a little. I don't really think there's a single perfect strategy to stop Barca. Like I said, us losing to Chelsea and Celtic's buses was due to our players forgetting to finish, which I don't think will happen again with Villa back in the lineup (which gives us someone who can score besides Messi), and Milan's strategy only worked against our Iniesta on LW lineup.

Don't get me wrong, I know that counter-attacking teams can hurt us, probably more than any other kind of team, but people need to stop acting like Chelsea and Celtic outplayed us or owned us tactically.