Same observation about Ferraris and Bertolini. Then, it is interesting how it was underlined that Allemandi was more of the stopper type whilst Monzeglio was maybe a bit more of the covering type... but I'd keep it simple personally with Allemandi as RFB and Monzeglio as LFB since it is more about their individual caracteristics rather than about a tactical set-up imo. I may be wrong but I guess that it could be the opposite at times (about who's the last cover).
I think, the tactical draw in the article, was close if not equal to Swiss Verrou, with the RFB as a full "Libero". Meanwhile I'd the impression that in Mettodo, the fullbacks placement, was close to the drawing showed for Uruguay 1930, this is, the RFB slighty deeper than the LFB, maybe, at some phases of the game and not the full game as a Libero. Maybe, an italian speaker could translate the main ideas in the article. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JYpLsHF7Sf76eZQ_P8F0plwRIiRC_o8R/view
First of all it is inaccurate we Dutch never challenged the best before Ajax and the Orange team. Feyenoord were semi finalists against Benfica in 1963 and won the European cup in 1970. Second because of the international media just paying attention after the WC 1974, the myth was created by foreigners Cruijff and Michels were the inventors of total football. They werenot. The man who introduced total football and 4-3-3 in the Netherlands and Europe was Ernst Happel with Feyenoord. It was Cruijff who recognized the genius of the Happel strategy, which was based on the Austrian Wunderteam, after Feyenoord dominated Ajax with the 3 man midfield of Wim Jansen, Willem van Hanegem and Franz Hasil over their two man midfield in 1969-1970. Jock Stein, the Celtic coach said after the lost final that he didnot lose from Feyenoord, but from Happel. The man was a tactical genius.
"Monzeglio è terzino de posizione e Allemandi terzino volante di spietata durezza, una sorte di Gentile ante litteram". Once again, they should be inverted on the drawing. edit: + "coi terzini pronti ad avanzare" according to the author still.
@msioux75 @PDG1978 I saw this a little while ago but this is a surprisingly modern match, in particular by AS Roma (coaches were Liedholm and Michels). Much more sophisticated as the national team scene at the time, in the way players collectively defend and position themselves. Prohaska was terrific there (Falcao to a lesser extent too). ... and a game with a high tempo is this:
I guess Liedholm liked to pick a midfield unit of capable playmakers who he'd instruct to play in a two-way manner and as you say defend collectively (I'm assuming Di Bartolomei was in midfield too in this game, but have just checked the line-up and not gone on to watch the match unfold). He saw Falcao very much as a two-way player it seems and valued him enough to include him in a 'best XI from coaching days' (considering players he didn't coach himself too) as shown by Vegan of course: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/se...-player-ratings.2085771/page-39#post-37094365 It's an All-Star XI (but based on a triple player central midfield also), so hard to know if he'd actually team up a Platini and a Rivera with him, but he in effect chooses him as the deepest lying midfielder (with Beckenbauer as libero - in his 'playing days' team obviously it's the other way round as far as number 4 and number 6 goes - Parola in defence and Bozsik in midfield).
@feyenoordsoccerfan Here a decent Voetbal International article on pressing and gegenpressing, starting with a look back: "Trainers who are reputed to blow away opponents with high pressure have never been so popular. The style of coaches such as Mauricio Pochettino, Jürgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola leads to copying behavior all over the world. Yet one is not entirely the other. Time for a historical search for the different ways of putting pressure. PROVOCATING PRESSING, BIELSA AND LOBANOVSKI Pressing styles can be categorized into three variables: the match phase of the game, the height of the defending block and the kind of pressure that is given. Within these frameworks, all kinds of perceived details may differ on the basis of the individual qualities and natural reflexes of a group of players, so that in practice different teams never press in exactly the same way. Nevertheless, it may be useful to add some more order in the chaos, to avoid word confusion. In the press, the terms gegenpressing, counterpressing and five-second rule are gaining popularity in recent years. In some cases, the entire vision of a coach is reduced to these terms, while in reality it only describes a fraction of the game. A football match consists of four main moments: attack, defend and the two switching moments in between. Gegenpressing, counterpressing and the five-second rule only describe the behavior of a team in the switch from attack to defense. Teams whose goal is to regain the ball within a few seconds have different options to achieve this goal. These changeover moments are separate from the style that a team uses when it is in the defending organization. Atlético Madrid is probably the best example of this. When the team of trainer Diego Simeone loses the ball on half of the opponent, it immediately aggressively presses. If it is not possible to recapture the possession of the ball, Atlético will be grouped back by eleven men on their own half. Where the pressure is put on the field is the second distinguishing factor. The most extreme variant is to chase down to the goalkeeper of the opponent. This is called 'full-court press' in other sports such as basketball and hockey. In the seventies, the Netherlands is leading the way in applying this spectacular style, thanks to coaches such as Ernst Happel and Rinus Michels. Only player groups with exceptional qualities are able to be successful in this way, so in the course of the years more conservative variants emerge. In it, it is still the starting point for the opponent to be locked up, but that only happens around the middle line. Medium block, half-court press and provocative pressing are terms that are used to describe this. The idea behind this is aptly described early by Louis van Gaal against De Voetbaltrainer: "In this way we first create the space and attack it with the speed of our attackers." Sometimes the defense is the best attack. The third option is a low block, in which the opponent is only locked in the neighborhood of the own goal. The champion team of Leicester City is a recent example of this variant. The third distinctive variable is the difference between man marking and zone coverage. Man marking is the most primitive form of pressing: if every player covers his direct opponent, it becomes difficult to build up properly. The legendary WM formation of Herbert Chapman is the first enormously successful application of this in the twenties of the last century. Although this is considered a defensive innovation at the time, this does not necessarily lead to stability in defending. In the fifties and sixties nobody looked up from results like 7-3 and 4-4 in big games. With man marking all over the field, every lost fight for the ball is immediately dangerous. That is where catenaccio comes in. One of the attackers is exchanged for an extra defender - 'the latch' - who intervenes when a fellow player loses his man. Later Louis van Gaal and Marcelo Bielsa come up with an attacking translation on this idea. They start with an organization with an extra defender against the attackers of the opponent and start giving pressure when a player chases away from his opponent to the free man to the ball. This concept works especially well in the period shortly after the abolition of the pick-up ball in 1992. Many goalkeepers are not yet able to resume the game well with the feet, so this simple pressing variation is often sufficient to get a long ball to enforce. In the meantime, the traditional man marking in the international top has become virtually extinct and has been replaced by zone coverage. Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick summarizes the principle behind this. 'Do not follow your opponent, but defend the space. Close the playback possibilities, try to force the opponent to play the ball in the direction you want. You do that by not just following the player, but by defending the space and intercepting the play pass. "The first teams to succeed in Europe with zone coverage perhaps come from behind the Iron Curtain, where the vision is that the collective is stronger than the individual is translated to the soccer field. Viktor Maslov and Valeri Lobanovski are the forerunners in this. Ernst Happel is an innovator in Western Europe in this field: 'If you do the man marking job, you send eleven donkeys out,' is one of his most famous quotes. Via Arrigo Sacchi, Helmut Gross and Ralf Rangnick a new generation of German trainers has been infected by this idea. Against VI, Rangnick concludes that the Netherlands has regressed and missed this final shot: 'Teams like Liverpool or Bayer Leverkusen attack you with two or three players if you are the player in possession. Again and again, ninety minutes long. Dutch clubs, in my experience, have trouble making that translation into modern football. The Dutch still watch the game with the eyes of What can we do when we have the ball? We reason according to the principle: What should we do if we do not have the ball? So press, move.' In recent years, more and more teams are grasping the shades of gray between zone coverage and man marking. These teams initially defend space, but at the same time try to lure opponents into stuffed traps. This can best be illustrated with the most common trap: a pass to the side. 'The sideline is the best defender in the world', says Pep Guardiola. Because opponents are limited in their options by the sideline, it is possible to close all play options around the ball with situational marking. A number of players then temporarily leave their fixed zone to cover a specific opponent. If it is not possible to win the ball in this way, the team will return to the zone structure. Especially Argentine trainers from the school of Bielsa often apply this concept. By the above categorization of pressing in the game's game phase, the height of the defending block and the kind of pressure that is given, it is easier to make clearer what exactly the differences in pressing styles consist of. We further elaborate this on the basis of Tottenham Hotspur (Mauricio Pochettino), Liverpool (Jürgen Klopp) and Manchester City (Pep Guardiola), as these teams carry out three different pressing styles in the same competition. [....] " https://www.vi.nl/pro/analyse/pochettino-guardiola-klopp-en-waarom-de-ene-pressing-de-andere-niet-is (there are about 25 links to other pieces in this text, but I only copied the first two and last two) To conclude, here another brief excerpt by Kuper... http://www.espn.com/soccer/uefa-cha...eaving-jose-mourinho-and-arsene-wenger-behind "Gegenpressing? I have to laugh about that. Then I think to myself: That is a new cry for something that has existed for a long time, namely to try and get the ball back as soon as possible when you lose it. Nothing new, so they call it gegenpressing now. It is fine by me." https://www.vi.nl/pro/overig/adrie-koster-gegenpressing-daar-moet-ik-een-beetje-om-lachen
Article by Rene Maric: https://www.martiperarnau.com/diffe...opps-and-guardiolas-counterpressing-concepts/
From the article Puck quoted: "In the history of football “Counterpressing” is not a really new concept. The big Dutch teams – Ernst Happel’s Feyenoord, Rinus Michels’ Ajax Amsterdam and the Dutch National team with Johan Cruijff as captain – already used it; other teams before them also intuitively pressed immediately when losing the ball." I wonder if it was the first time it was being identified and used as a standard and integral part of the team's way of play. I somewhere in one of Bigsoocer's threads I had quoted Ernst Happel telling about the way the Orange team played and he was the first who used that term in those days as far as i can remember. Iirc it was in a post to @PuckVanHeel about a tactical move Happel used.
Can you show that? I remember the discussion we had yeah, and also how his predecessor at Feyenoord fits in this story (his predecessor won the title with the same defensive tactics, but they played more fluid with the ball under Happel). Happel called this 'forechecking', 'jagen' or 'tegendruk' (literally: counter-pressure). But if you can show otherwise, no problem. He was more radical with it, and the aggressive offside trap that goes along (this can be counted quantitatively), later at Brugge than at Feyenoord.
This is football tactical discussion in a nutshell. Every couple of years some poindexter will "revolutionize" football tactics with balance football, libero-keeper or a withdrawn centre-forward. Gotta fill those columns with something, I guess.
Okay, but be wary though that all those quotes are from 10+ years later. For example the part with the bold red letters was said before the 1983 European Cup final. Thus not the mid/late 1960s or so. That is something quite important to keep in mind. I'd also say there are important differences between Happel and Cruijff. For example the use of a sweeper keeper, or playing with what we call today 'inverted full-backs'. By the early 1980s he was already recognized as someone who helped to add something to football.
Because I have received a lot of questions in the last weeks regarding this tweet here is some clarification: In general we talk about defined situations & functions. We create a formation through positioning in a certain way or, rather, following certain principles (distances + https://t.co/F753JuS3Kn— René Marić (@ReneMaric) April 14, 2019 Some techno babble about the existence of zonal marking and man marking and if/how it exists. Interesting is that this Croatian-German refers to two dutch people as reference (who are like so many sadly not at work in Holland itself...). He also retweeted this one, lol (who mentioned Lucassen in some of his interviews). He has been linked to Happel as an inspiration: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/sep/19/chatroom-bootroom-rene-maric-modern-coach-salzburg
After letting it sink in I have grown to dislike the book. He goes in full overdrive in the Spain and Germany chapters. Barcelona played 3-7-0 (no, just no), Thomas Muller is a "tactical revolutionary", Kevin de Bruyne his 'free 8' is "revolutionary", Guardiola invented the inverted full-backs (not true), Guardiola was a "radically different coach" when at Bayern and Manchester City, and so on. His best chapters are the ones in the middle, on Italy, France and Portugal. The one on the Netherlands is done in overly philosophical terms so that he can suggest tactical evolution and sophistication later in the book. Overall, he deliberately downplays "arrogant" 'Holland' [sic] and overplays others. Furthermore, it is full of factual errors, really way above the norm. Take this example from page 20: "For two legendary coaches both obsessed with promoting the classic Ajax style, Cruyff and Van Gaal were remarkably different. Consider, for example, their approach to match preparation. Cruyff backed his players to outplay anyone, and didn't even think about the tactical approach of the opposition. In stark contrast, Van Gaal would study videotapes of upcoming opponents and explain, in extensive detail, their build-up play and how to disrupt it, while his assistant Bruins Slot constantly surprised the players with his level of knowledge about specific opponents." In reality, Bruins Slot never was Van Gaal his assistant, but was for a while one of the close associates of Cruijff (and brought back to Ajax in 2011). Like later in the book with Zidane in one long chapter ('only two good seasons and was never really fantastic in tournaments'), he does a hatchet job on Cruijff. He makes the case "his fascination with individualistic players spiraled out of control" but the obvious point should be: 1) all of Romario, Stoichkov and Laudrup also clashed with a number of other coaches, and 2) all of them played their best football, became better, and became more productive under him, while the latter two players became the 'greatest ever' players of their country in the process (and arrived relatively cheap). Ironically, while others sometimes portray him as a dictator (this stereotype is here reserved for Van Gaal), Cox chooses to stereotype him as an overly democratic laisser-faire coach. Admittedly, he himself did not make it easier by saying in a 1999 lecture: "Sport is democracy with a dictator at the head. But that dictator must continue to look like a person. The primus inter parus" One particular section that grated me was this (page 77): "The Ajax victory was arguably Juventus's greatest under Lippi, and highlighted the three areas in which Italian football had an advantage over Dutch football: tactical flexibility, physical power and a standout individual performance from a world class talent." While I won't argue with the later two things, it needs to be said Ajax finished 4th in the league, won just half of their domestic matches, and was 16 points removed from the champion (PSV, with a not too impressive 77 points). So how is this supposed to be Lippi's greatest Juventus victory? If one looks a bit ahead, then one sees between 1997 and 2002 the head-to-head was 9 wins for Italian clubs and 7 wins for Dutch clubs. Given all the other circumstances, this should put legitimate doubts on the supposed tactical superiority and tactical flexibility of the Italians. The overall balance, over all these years (1955 to 2019) is 48 wins for Italians clubs, 37 for the Dutch clubs. In national team games there is one competitive win for Italy, three wins for Netherlands and two draws. Admitting this though would negate the overall thrust and storyline of the book (downplaying the 'Holland' novelties, discussing them in philosophical and liberal terms), not to mention the question how nice the superior tactics of others will appear if you just take away 75% of their money (which the Bosman rulings effectively did). In sum: I like the middle chapters the most, he goes full retard at the end (no surprise with Honigstein as consultant), and the start is poor.
To drive the point home, at various points contrasting coaching styles are typified like "whereas Dutch coaches lectured about their philosophy and Italian coaches were studious tacticians [...]" (page 131) and "he was all about instinct, and embodied a philosophy in the truest sense of the word (page 20). With then culminating in examples at page 372 of Guardiola (famously) "dividing the pitch into a grid and avoiding too many players being positioned in a line with one another, whether vertically or laterally" This very same thing was however already done by the 'arrogant instinctive philosophers'. As highlighted by a research/book that features in his own bibliography [....] https://books.google.com/books?id=4bnGDgAAQBAJ&lpg=PT126&dq=tobias escher cruyff&hl=nl&pg=PT126#v=onepage&q= cruyff&f=false https://spielverlagerung.de/2016/03/24/traineranalyse-johan-cruijff/ The text is literally the same, including that no two players have to be in the same zone or strip. The story therefore shouldn't be one of 'students beat philosophers', with then Guardiola et al. surfacing with more rigor and methodology later. The real story is 'total football' continued to have decent results against 'cattenacio' (until ~2005 at least), despite various disadvantages, before others started to the 'the same' (well, not quite ofc) with more money and resources in general.
A good article. To this day, this tactic still exist, where most players have the mentality of attacking and not tracking back. Most players are unclear with their positional role and passing becomes a rarity. Most prefer long and adventurous passes.
The 'Holland' chapter is also the only one where he predominantly leans on foreign sources (Winner, Kuper, Ramesh etc.). Not the case for the others.
English source: https://books.google.com/books?id=9...ame&hl=nl&pg=PT68#v=onepage&q=lineker&f=false (This is a very good book, I think)
Pyramid System (2-3-5) in the eyes of an Uruguayan journalist in 1970 http://bibliotecadigital.bibna.gub.uy:8080/jspui/handle/123456789/50853 He explained two offensive approaches: - Abanico, the concave figure, in the scottish way. The Passing Game. - La M inglesa, similar to offensive line in WM, the english way. Kick and Rush. The 2-3-5 with dotted lines as defensive moves, and solid lines as offensive moves. Nº2, Right Fullback, taking care of the penalty area. For italians, Terzino di posizione. Nº3, Left Fullback, taking risk, moving upfront to put Off-side opposing forwards. (Back Rompedor o Adelantado). For italians, Terzino volante. Wing-halves marking opposing Alas (Winger + Inside Forward), JL.Andrade more adventurous due to his exceptional fitness. Forward line playing more directly, "in the english way"
@Ariaga II , after your review of 1930s reports, how expanded do you see the use of the WM in the 1930s? When the Arsenal innovation became the norm in english clubs or the NT? Apart from WC 1934, Germany continue to using WM tactics? Any other countries seem to using WM?
It's very widespread by the end of the 30s. I think most teams are using a third back already. Only the Central Europeans are resisting it, and are very anti- third back, but even the Hungarians are starting to give up. The Swiss and Italians have their own systems, of course. There is some variation, like when Germany was using a third back but only one withdrawn forward. I'm currently reading a book now called Soccer in the 30s, by Jack Rollin. It describes England's centre-half play a bit. Jack Barker, Peter O'Dowd, Ernie Hart and Tom Graham are all described as the adventurous type. Alf Young is the quintessential defensive centre-half, and Cullis somewhere in between. Has it been mentioned here Herbert Chapman as the innovator of the third back has been put into question? Buchan said he suggested it, and Rollin's book says they adopted it in 1925 after a game against Newcastle when Charlie Spencer was playing it.