+1 about prandelli
im really looking forward to Roma this season- we are going to take the best bits from Barca but we wont have the cowardice that the spaniards bring to the game- we will also have that extra bit of flair & guile that only us Italians have
In total agreement TASE.
For all the great players Spain have now, they will never bring through a player like Totti. He can do more with a ball in one touch than Barcelona’s midfield can do with one hundred.
Totti is a spitting scumbag.
I think the bit about Barca bypassing the midfield is interesting. I watched some of the Man United game at the weekend and when Phil Jones came on he chipped his first few balls forward down the line. To be fair, none of them were aimless - they were at specific targets but they arrived at Nani chest high. He could do little or nothing with that sort of pass. Now I don’t think it’s all the defenders fault because Messi, Iniesta et al are happy to take the ball under a bit of pressure and drop deep enough for it. But it does show the problem teams have in just lining up against the Barca midfield (the Xavi-Busquets bit) because the ball often comes to them from more attacking players, not built from the back forwards always.
One thing I would be doing if I was playing Barcelona (or coaching a team to play against them which is more likely at this juncture in my career) would be to eliminate return passes as much as possible. It’s astonishing how many times Xavi will give the ball to someone and get it back. You see opponents chasing it and trying to put pressure on Xavi which is important but you’d be better off not following the ball when he plays it and just marking the pass back to him. It’s like a default pass for Barca - if nobody else is on then keep knocking it back between the same two players. You can disrupt them a bit by cutting that out. Also I’d play Bandage in goals who is awesome on 1v1s.
i find the whole area of tactics in football very interesting and this thread is a great read. If xavi is the man that makes barca tick, why would’nt opposing teams have someone designated to man mark him i.e. if you stop xavi you stop a large part of the barca fluid passing?
Interesting. Barcelona do seem to have that trait alright. They want to get rid of the ball as soon as they receive it and if that means passing it in a seemingly illogical fashion i.e. back and forth to one another, then so be it. The idea for this is minimise the risk of the ball being lost in possession as players rarely take possession of it for any length of time. It also tires out, and frustrates the opossition as they are constantly running from one man to the next. If you force them to hold the ball by minmising the options for the pass and not follow the ball, then they are shook out of their natural playing style.
Mind you, the ball just needs to go to Messi and he will probably score so there isn’t much you can do.
Another thing I like about the Barcelona system is that it is very easy to do as it is ingrained in the players. When I say that I mean that even if the team is going through a bad spell, they rarely get frustrated as they go into keep the ball mode which builds confidence in themselves again, instead of trying a few Hollywood passes that don’t come off and further add to lost morale.
They try but I think they focus on the wrong thing. You can’t just shadow him watching the ball because his movement around the centre of the pitch is superb and he’s so quick at passing that it doesn’t matter if you’re standing next to him. I think you need to go a stage further and stop him getting it instead of stopping him passing it. That’s easier said than done but it’s easier to do if your mindset is setup that way.
The big problem of course is that they have so many other dangers in their team that you might stop them playing the exact way they want if you stop Xavi but you’re left with the remainder of the best team in the world including the best player in the world in Messi and Iniesta who is a sensational player obviously.
I think Xavi defines how they play though and that’s why they were so keen in getting Fabregas in to play alongside him instead of just eventually replacing him. Busquets is ridiculously good now and Thiago will probably end up the same way. Whether any of them will dictate things to the extent Xavi does is debatable but Busquets looks the most capable of playing that type of role. That’s not really about who the most talented is - it’s about who can be involved so frequently that they are touching the ball almost as often as the entire opposition team and controlling the whole tempo of the game. I love that about Xavi - I think he’s a unique phenomenon.
On an entirely separate note I put this video up on the Bundesliga thread but it deserves inclusion here. It obviously helps if you understand German but it’s a nice little clip of analysis of Moenchengladbach’s defensive system from German tv. Nothing on Sky or RTÉ or BBC or ITV to come close really in terms of analysis - they always concentrate on individuals instead of systems. Anyway it should be reasonably understandable from the graphics even without the language.
Some more of those excellent 3D Analysis pieces from German tv.
I’m liking the return of the 3-5-2 formation to football, especially in the Italian game, it’s the most direct and expansive attacking formation out there and it can also cater for the classic number 10 role.
I also like Luis Enrique’s creation of a new midfield sweeper role which the imperious Daniele De Rossi has perfected in just a few games.
I adore the midfield sweeper role. Someone like Donati would have played that role really well at Celtic I think - but we were more likely to play Caldwell there instead.
Agreed, Donati was a talented player who had his confidence shred to pieces by Strachan. He was actually very good under Mowbray which gave you the impression that he would thrive under a manager who displayed faith in him, he also had the right attributes to play there. Many thought he was quite cowardly but he filled in admirably for us in defensive positions at the start of Mowbray’s tenure and wasn’t afraid to throw himself about. Selling Donati was the major contributing factor to Mowbray’s failure in my opinion. He and N’Guemo complimented each other very well and gave a nice balance to the midfield.
Is it nostalgic to look back at Mowbray’s side and say it was better defensively than we are at this present juncture?
Donati at the start of that Mowbray season was terrific. As you say he was getting fairly stuck in for a guy who there were doubts about physically before. And he was excellent on the back there and could bring it out easily. But his real position would have been as a defensive midfielder who could drop into the back four and offer us protection or collect it from the centre backs and bring it out. He wasn’t appreciated by the management, fans or teammates though - I think we’d no idea how to build around his game.
I may be risking the ire of a few by suggesting Caldwell wasn’t our worst ever defender in that respect. He wasn’t good enough at either the basics of defending or at playing passes to be anything approaching acceptable but at least he had the courage to try and bring it out from the back once or twice and play sympathetic passes to midfielders. I’m not talking about the regular moments when he thought he’d land it at McDonald’s feet at the edge of the opposition box and bypass everyone in between - but he did at least seem to value possession sometimes. Mulgrew has a similar quality about him whereas Majstorovic, Loovens and McManus are only comfortable thumping the ball as far as they can.
Yeah, I’d cut Caldwell a bit of slack in that respect too. For example, his pass out from the back to Naka before he lauched that swerver past McGregor from 35 yards on April 16th 2008 - one of the greatest sporting occasions I’ve ever had the pleasure to be present at.
Not quite the same but he also had the dink to McDonald who flicked it back for Jan to score the winner in another of the greatest sporting occasions you’ve been at.
He also played a lovely slide rule pass to Henry in the last 16 of the CL.
:lol:
Is 4-3-3 dead?
The truly great passing midfielder stood out during that era - Andrea Pirlo. Xavi needed tactics and a whole team on the same wavelength, to come back. The reason I asked the question about 4-3-3 (which none of you cunts replied to) was I wanted to discuss the rebirth of the no.10 that I envisage happening very soon.
I really like this picture of how Pescara kick off (or used to) under ZZ - 8 players on the halfway line: