Just a few thoughts that have been sparked by something Babel said and watching Barcelona. I guess with Babel’s words being involved it’s mildly topical.
It was something I seem to recall Babel saying in a very early interview about how Rafa only worked on defensive movements in training but left it up to the players themselves when attacking. Of course good players can play together more often than not and relationships build and become intuitive. After all, if Rafa’s not coaching the attacking play then he’s not coaching Gerrard and Torres’ partnership, just assuming that they – as stunningly gifted footballers – will make it work. They do.
It came to my mind though whilst watching Barca on Monday that it’s the worse players who suffer. It was something bubbling away under the surface when I watched Barcelona’s kid’s school Spurs in pre-season (although I kept it at the back of my mind because they were under no pressure on the ball). I was watching the way Barca players move with off the ball and it was just so obviously controlled, choreographed movements. Arsenal are the same, albeit at a far lesser level. We get all this talk about how Rafa’s teams are the one who are mechanical, and well-drilled, but just take the time to watch Barcelona and in possession it is clearly well drilled. Obviously you can’t prepare for someone like Messi taking on 5 players and curling one in from 20 yards. But, the general play is drilled into that team. It’s so obviously coached.
I was watching them on Monday and it wasn’t a case of waxing lyrical over the level of the football or anything like that, more the structure of the coaching throughout the club and the coaching of Guardiola. When we talk about movement focus tends to fall on the guy that ends up receiving the ball but I was watching the players who were probably the 3rd or 4th best option to receive the ball at the time. It was just a player move 5 yards further out wide, dragging the marker slightly closer to him and then creating the gap for the guy who is going to receive the ball not off that pass, but the one after that. And then, by the time the ball is with that player the guy who was initially the 3rd or 4th best option to receive the pass is now the best.
The focus tends to be on the technical level of the play, and the vision. It’s about how Xavi and Iniesta can receive the ball under enormous pressure and still turn away into space, or about those one touch passes that zip between players in the final 3rd. The movement tends to be of secondary importance but that is surely the one area that is applicable to all teams?
As I was saying above, I’ve started to come to the conclusion that the benefits of being as well drilled in possession as we are out of it would be shown with the players who aren’t as technically outstanding (quite why I’m hoping it’d happen now, a month into Rafa’s 6th season at the club when it hasn’t so far… well, it’s false hope). Puyol is one who sticks out to me. I think he’s a little better on the ball than Carragher, and there’s an issue of confidence where Puyol clearly feels he can offer something on the ball and will move into space. But, at the same time, there isn’t a gulf in class between what he can do with a football and what Carragher can. Where I think the main difference lies is in the fact that Puyol is sure of what he has to do with the ball. As with the rest of Barcelona’s play you can see immediately the moves the players make off the ball, to make the space, to make the angles for him to step forward or make the simple pass. The Barcelona players know exactly what to do when Puyol has the ball and Puyol knows exactly what to do when he has the ball. I think we’ve been looking at Carragher’s contributions with the ball at feet from a different angle. That he lacks the confidence and is tentative in attacking space and playing the ball. There is the idea that he’ll miss Alonso because Alonso took the responsibility upon himself to offer, as he would put it, the solution to a team mate. I’ll put a different spin on it and suggest that perhaps the coaching staff hasn’t been offering the solution?
If we believe what Babel said about the attack not being coached then it would imply that Rafa has gone out there with a message of “just go out there and play” – at least with the ball at feet (the type of message that seems far less restrictive than some suggest he is as a coach). If this is the case then the players will be playing the type of game they developed elsewhere. Alonso was someone who naturally looked to offer an option. Agger was someone who naturally stepped out of defence, that wasn’t something coached into him etc.
I’m just using Carragher as the example here but the same cases could be made for everyone, particularly the likes of Mascherano and Lucas. Carragher defensively has obviously taken everything that’s been coached into him by Rafa and learnt it by heart. Over the 5 years so far of Rafa’s reigned he’s looked supremely confident and assured from a defensive point of view. Because of Carragher’s character surely you could make a case for suggesting that he would take the ‘offensive’ coaching the same way? If it was drilled into Carragher that every time he had the ball at the back he was to move into space and then pass it to a player then I’m sure he would do that, as long as it was coached into him with the same intensity as the defensive aspects of the game. If the right movements and plays were coached into all the players then Carragher would have the options to lay the ball off to. At the moment he’s tentative on the ball anyway and no one makes themselves available to him, so he goes back what he feels safest doing which is hoofing the ball rather aimlessly down the line or diagonally. That’s the type of player he is, just like Xabi was the type of player who would offer themselves to him as an easy pass.
Again, much like the set pieces I would have thought this was a part of the game Rafa would relish. ‘Control’ is a word he often mentions and this would seem like the easiest way to control the way the game is going. What often gets discussed on these threads is Sacchi and Saachi was obsessed with collective movement, being compact without the ball but also being equally in-tune with each other when in possession. What’s the phrase he often uses about the orchestra? To use analogies along similar lines then I think Rafa expects the synchronicity of a world class orchestra without the ball but expects the spontaneity and improvisational genius of a world class free form jazz performer. Obviously players like Gerrard and Torres can look like football’s answer to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but when you stick an average musician in there and tell them to go, you just get a cacophony.
I think it’s possible to get caught up in the style of play when discussing stuff like this and forget the philosophy. Pass and move doesn’t necessarily have to be the Barcelona thing of popping the ball off 5 yards to one and other. Just because off the ball movement is coached so intensively at somewhere like Barcelona doesn’t mean that you have to play the exact same ticky-takka stuck of football. Just look at Chelsea at the moment who are rotating in their midfield incredibly well, and they have technically limited players like Cole and Terry stepping forward comfortably with the ball and being involved in the play. Ancelotti’s Milan were similar. They were hardly as expressive or as beautiful to watch as Barcelona, but they were fluid and everyone knew what to do with the ball as well as without. I’d argue it was part of the reason that they stayed at the top in Europe for so long, despite their age and the fact that there were some players in there that just didn’t stand out as spectacular. Players like Kaká and Pirlo were going to stand out regardless of how Milan played, but the likes of Ambrosini, Seedorf, Jankulovski/Serginho and Oddo were simply solid professionals who could be trusted to do their jobs to a tee both in and out of possession, and were good enough technically not to be embarrassed
I know there is a belief in some quarters that we just don’t have the technical excellence to play such a way but I disagree. The players who often get pointed out for being limited technically are the likes of Kuyt, Mascherano and Lucas who all play internationally for three of the most technique obsessed countries on the planet. Mascherano and Kuyt are cornerstones of those teams. They would not be in those teams, even if they displayed all the passion and endeavour in the world, were they not good players. Barcelona would not be after Mascherano if he could not control the ball and pass it a bit as well as tackle superbly.
Ahh, bollocks to it. I can’t be arsed typing any more, you all know who what I’m getting at. In the same way that you use systems and patterns of play to make up for deficiencies in a defenders pace or a striker’s ability to hold up the ball, this is just the same with possession. If you’re well drilled and you do it as a team (through the whole club in Barcelona’s case) you get the players who aren’t as gifted looking far more competent in possession. In Barcelona’s case it clearly installs more confidence in players because they know exactly what they’re meant to do in possession and they’re well drilled. Same way as they are when it comes to defending a particular pattern of play or a set piece. If you play this way throughout the entire club then you get players who know their jobs exactly through youth, reserve and up to the first team. I mean even last night the reserves, whilst marking zonally in the first half still played with Pacheco on the half way line which is something that would never happen in the first team. Why is that different? It’s such a small, simple thing to make sure is coached the same way through all levels of the club. … I fear I’m veering off course with that bit, but I thought I’d add it in.
Yeah.
RIP Jade.