Brendan Rodgers' playing philosophy could be a success if he transfers it from the Liberty Stadium to Liverpool Brendan Rodgers’ ideas about football were formed when he was a youth player with Northern Ireland, a small, creative midfielder watching helplessly as the ball hurtled back over his head the few times his team managed to wrestle it away from the Dutch, French and Spanish opposition.
In the simplest terms, Rodgers wants his team to get hold of the ball as quickly as possible and then keep it. I spent a couple of hours in his office at the Liberty Stadium last season when he talked me through the logic behind his tactics, derived from various sources but especially inflected with the Barcelona way.
One of the key points he made is that your initial formation — say 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 — matters less than what that translates to on the pitch. When going forward, the best way to move the ball up the field is to create angles of diagonal pass. If you have two banks of four across defence and midfield there are no diagonal passes on. The system needs to be more fluid.
So Rodgers seeks to create as many ‘lines’ across the field as possible. In his system you have a minimum of seven lines. He wants his goalkeeper to be part of the play, then the centre backs, then what he calls the ‘controller’ (a deep-lying playmaker), then the full-backs pushed on, the two attacking midfielders, the wingers and then the centre-forward. That allows you to draw seven horizontal lines across the pitch.
Through coaching, Rodgers ensures that every player knows his place in this system. When a player receives the ball he should always have at least two options for an ‘out’ pass. He gives the players confidence to make those passes by taking the blame on himself when it does not come off.
When the ball is lost, his players seek to win it back quickly by pressing high up the field. This means reacting as a unit and nobody shirking their duty. Winning the ball back quickly creates openings in a disorganised opponent, especially when it happens near their goal. The team as a whole need to know when to press like this, and hold a high line, and when to drop deep and absorb the opponents’ efforts to break them down.
How will this work at Liverpool? In Pepe Reina, Rodgers has the ideal goalkeeper for this system, coached to play as part of the team in the Barcelona academy. Daniel Agger is the kind of ball-playing centre-back Rodgers likes but he made need to recruit a specialist ‘controller’ to do the selfless job Leon Britton did for him at Swansea.
One of the main issues will be how Steven Gerrard can adapt. Is he capable of subjugating himself to a role in a disciplined tactical system at the expense of playing by instinct?
Andy Carroll must also show himself capable of playing in a system in which he will be required to build the play more than he has done in the past. Physical strength is secondary to tactical acuity and technical ability for Rodgers.
There are plenty of technically-adept players in the Liverpool team who will thrive on Rodgers’ emphasis on possession when attacking. The thornier issue is with Rodgers’ defensive system, in which you are only as strong as your weakest link.
If a player does not press off the ball, the whole approach unravels. That is why Barcelona are such an important example — even Lionel Messi closes down and harries.
Selling this to Swansea players was not easy. Selling it to Liverpool players, with big contracts and big egos, will be even harder.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/9301301/Brendan-Rodgers-playing-philosophy-could-be-a-success-if-he-transfers-it-from-the-Liberty-Stadium-to-Liverpool.html
