Re: Dansk artikler om FC Barcelona
: tirs jun 23, 2009 12:25 pm
Godt nok en engelsk artikel, men meget fin alligevel;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... ter-united
The Question: Are defensive forwards the future?Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool are among the teams to have realised that attacking players must be prepared to function in less glamorous ways
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Leo Messi and Thierry Henry celebrate Barcelona's second goal against Manchester United. Photograph: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images
Amid all the praise for the way Barcelona maintained possession against Manchester United in the Champions League final, one comment from their manager, Pep Guardiola, tended to be overlooked. "Without the ball," he said, "we are a horrible team. We need the ball, so we pressed high up the pitch to win the ball back early."
From a Barcelona manager, perhaps that isn't so surprising. After all, since Rinus Michels took charge there in 1971, they have favoured the classical Dutch model, which demanded pressing and an aggressive offside trap. "When I went to Barcelona," remembers Marinho Peres, the Brazilian defender who joined the club in 1974, "Michels wanted the centre-backs to push out to make the offside line. In Brazil this was known as the donkey line: people thought it was stupid. The theory was that if you passed one defender, you passed all the others.
"But what Cruyff said to me was that Holland could not play Brazilians or Argentinians, who were very skilful, on a huge pitch. The Dutch players wanted to reduce the space and put everybody in a thin band. The whole logic of the offside trap comes from squeezing the game. This was a brand new thing for me. In Brazil, people thought you could chip the ball over and somebody could run through and beat the offside trap, but it's not like that because you don't have time."
Arrigo Sacchi, whose philosophy was developed from Total Football, believed that a side pressing would ideally allow only 25 metres between centre-forward and centre-back, but such a thin band seems impossible under the liberal modern interpretation of the offside law, which is one of the reasons that it has become increasingly common for sides to play in four bands instead of three. (In fact, it could be argued that one of the reasons that United were so outplayed was that Barcelona's system was discernibly a 4-1-2-3, while United, perhaps because of the absence of Darren Fletcher, perhaps because of Anderson's indiscipline, were stuck in a far more rigid 4-3-3. Given rough equality of talent in that midfield area, a triangle will always beat a line.)
What Barcelona achieved, in other words, was to find a way of pursuing the classic tenets of Total Football – short passing, intermovement of players, winning the ball high up the field – under the modern interpretation of the laws. Their solution, in truth, is not especially complex. Certainly it does not require the intellectual leap of faith Marinho found he needed to accept the efficacy of aggressive offside.
If defenders cannot move forward to defend high up the field because the weakened offside law makes them reluctant to leave space behind them, then logically forwards, when they do not have the ball, act as defenders. This is nothing particularly new – Andriy Shevchenko's ability to defend, for instance, was one of the things that made Valeriy Lobanovskyi hail him as the first "universal player" – but what is surprising is the extent to which Barcelona's forwards are deployed as ball-winners.
To traditionalists who prefer to think of forwards as fragile artists who should not be troubled by such negative thoughts that may be unpalatable – Jimmy Greaves always thought a forward should run as little as possible to ensure he was fresh to pounce when chances arose - but the statistics are telling.
For Barcelona Dani Alves stands alone, having committed twice as many fouls as anybody else in the back four last season, but Opta stats show that Thierry Henry committed more fouls than any other member of the back four, with Gerard Piqué only one ahead of Samuel Eto'o, and Leo Messi and the other regular defenders within one foul of each other. Given none are the sort of players usually thought of as dirty, and they are not the Kevin Davies or Niall Quinn sort of target-man forward who concedes a lot of free-kicks simply because they challenge for a lot of headers, that surely is significant.
Barcelona, because of their reputation for beautiful football, are perhaps the most striking example, but they are certainly not alone. It is not stretching things by much to draw a parallel with table football where, beyond a certain level, most of the play is made by the back two, because they have secure space behind them and so can tee up shots, while the front bands of five and three are left to block or to pounce on loose balls.
Full-back has become the most tactically interesting position on the pitch because full-backs, as Jack Charlton noted in 1994, tended to be the only players on the field who regularly had space in from of them. Logically, the next step was to close that down, which means forwards, and particularly wide forwards, taking defensive responsibility.
Der er mere end det, men det omhandler ikke Barca
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... ter-united
The Question: Are defensive forwards the future?Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool are among the teams to have realised that attacking players must be prepared to function in less glamorous ways
Comments (122)
Buzz up!
Digg it
Leo Messi and Thierry Henry celebrate Barcelona's second goal against Manchester United. Photograph: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images
Amid all the praise for the way Barcelona maintained possession against Manchester United in the Champions League final, one comment from their manager, Pep Guardiola, tended to be overlooked. "Without the ball," he said, "we are a horrible team. We need the ball, so we pressed high up the pitch to win the ball back early."
From a Barcelona manager, perhaps that isn't so surprising. After all, since Rinus Michels took charge there in 1971, they have favoured the classical Dutch model, which demanded pressing and an aggressive offside trap. "When I went to Barcelona," remembers Marinho Peres, the Brazilian defender who joined the club in 1974, "Michels wanted the centre-backs to push out to make the offside line. In Brazil this was known as the donkey line: people thought it was stupid. The theory was that if you passed one defender, you passed all the others.
"But what Cruyff said to me was that Holland could not play Brazilians or Argentinians, who were very skilful, on a huge pitch. The Dutch players wanted to reduce the space and put everybody in a thin band. The whole logic of the offside trap comes from squeezing the game. This was a brand new thing for me. In Brazil, people thought you could chip the ball over and somebody could run through and beat the offside trap, but it's not like that because you don't have time."
Arrigo Sacchi, whose philosophy was developed from Total Football, believed that a side pressing would ideally allow only 25 metres between centre-forward and centre-back, but such a thin band seems impossible under the liberal modern interpretation of the offside law, which is one of the reasons that it has become increasingly common for sides to play in four bands instead of three. (In fact, it could be argued that one of the reasons that United were so outplayed was that Barcelona's system was discernibly a 4-1-2-3, while United, perhaps because of the absence of Darren Fletcher, perhaps because of Anderson's indiscipline, were stuck in a far more rigid 4-3-3. Given rough equality of talent in that midfield area, a triangle will always beat a line.)
What Barcelona achieved, in other words, was to find a way of pursuing the classic tenets of Total Football – short passing, intermovement of players, winning the ball high up the field – under the modern interpretation of the laws. Their solution, in truth, is not especially complex. Certainly it does not require the intellectual leap of faith Marinho found he needed to accept the efficacy of aggressive offside.
If defenders cannot move forward to defend high up the field because the weakened offside law makes them reluctant to leave space behind them, then logically forwards, when they do not have the ball, act as defenders. This is nothing particularly new – Andriy Shevchenko's ability to defend, for instance, was one of the things that made Valeriy Lobanovskyi hail him as the first "universal player" – but what is surprising is the extent to which Barcelona's forwards are deployed as ball-winners.
To traditionalists who prefer to think of forwards as fragile artists who should not be troubled by such negative thoughts that may be unpalatable – Jimmy Greaves always thought a forward should run as little as possible to ensure he was fresh to pounce when chances arose - but the statistics are telling.
For Barcelona Dani Alves stands alone, having committed twice as many fouls as anybody else in the back four last season, but Opta stats show that Thierry Henry committed more fouls than any other member of the back four, with Gerard Piqué only one ahead of Samuel Eto'o, and Leo Messi and the other regular defenders within one foul of each other. Given none are the sort of players usually thought of as dirty, and they are not the Kevin Davies or Niall Quinn sort of target-man forward who concedes a lot of free-kicks simply because they challenge for a lot of headers, that surely is significant.
Barcelona, because of their reputation for beautiful football, are perhaps the most striking example, but they are certainly not alone. It is not stretching things by much to draw a parallel with table football where, beyond a certain level, most of the play is made by the back two, because they have secure space behind them and so can tee up shots, while the front bands of five and three are left to block or to pounce on loose balls.
Full-back has become the most tactically interesting position on the pitch because full-backs, as Jack Charlton noted in 1994, tended to be the only players on the field who regularly had space in from of them. Logically, the next step was to close that down, which means forwards, and particularly wide forwards, taking defensive responsibility.
Der er mere end det, men det omhandler ikke Barca