After releasing Renae Cuellar, FC Kansas City Head Coach Vlatko Andonovski seemingly decided to go a different direction with his style of play. Although I don't recall him calling it directly that, but it resembles, at least to me, Barcelona and Spain's famous style of play called Tiki-Taka. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiki-taka Tiki-taka (commonly spelled tiqui-taca in Spanish; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtiki ˈtaka] ) is a style of play in football characterised by short passing and movement, working the ball through various channels, and maintaining possession. A nice article on equalizersoccer.com: http://equalizersoccer.com/2013/08/25/fc-kansas-city-nwsl-playoff-collapse-portland-thorns-fc/ Please also read some of the comments under the article. very interesting. Also: http://www.soccer-universe.com/tiki-taka-soccer-strategy.html You can Google Tiki-Taka and get a slew of articles, videos and information. We have seen all too often on our National Team and especially in our colleges the direct approach to playing this game, with not too much creativity. I give Vlatko credit for trying something new with the women's game. Although with a young team like they had, some tweaking is needed. For instance don't get so consumed with the possession part of it that you forget to defend. I hope he continues with his style and approach to the game. Now, is the play that FCKC implemented this season Tiki-Taka or some variation of it, kind of what the Japanese use? Maybe. The Japanese seem to have perfected this style. I do think from watching some of FCKC games that some form of this style was evident, IMO. I personally love the Barcelona style of play. Is it teachable/doable in the women's pro game? Can FCKC improve on it for next year? Or am I way off base with this?
Tiki Taka is old news, Gegenpressing is the new "it" at the moment. Developed by Borussia Dortmund, and used by some Bundesliga teams to dominate Europe right now. The German Men's national team is utilizing this style of play as well. http://footballspeak.com/post/2013/05/16/The-German-Football.aspx Jurgen Klinsmann is trying to implement it for the USMNT, and the USWNT style under Sermani so far is somewhat similar to Gegenpressing.
"Can women play this style of soccer"? What is this, the 1800s? Women are fully capable of playing different styles, it just takes time to develop it. BTW, the Tiki-Taka style is already dying out in the men's game.
My intention was not to doubt whether women can play this style or any style, my intention was to wonder why does no on ever implement styles like this in the women's game instead of the what we see in our colleges and club teams where everyone is in a hurry to bring the ball up field, bang it in an open space and let someone chase after it. My point was to bring up Vlatko's initiative to play something different, even a different type of possession style then other coaches and I applaud him for it. Whether the Barcelona type is dying out or not is not the issue here. Heck in the 70's we had something that the Dutch came up with called "total football" it's not the same anymore as Cruyff played but it evolved. I guess my point was to discuss FCKC's style of play and can it work in the NWSL going forward. You can call it whatever you want, I call it Tiki-Taka because it had elements of it, IMO.