SPayne is European Champion. Real Madrid won the Champions League. Rodri has become even more important since winning the Ballon d'Or and suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury. The Spanish manager won the Premier League, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 last season. There are at least five Premier League clubs run by Spaniards.
It has been another year of Spanish supremacy, but the coach who, more than anyone else, was the architect of what is now considered the Spanish style, is facing the biggest crisis of his career.
The speed of Manchester City's collapse is astonishing. It was just two months ago that everything started to go wrong as City lost to Tottenham in the Carabao Cup. The reasons are manifold, but from a tactical perspective two factors stand out.
First, pressing is a risky way to play the game. Operating a high line narrows play, employs offside as an attacking method, and helps a team regain the ball, but it creates obvious vulnerabilities if insufficient pressure is applied to the opponent in possession. remain. Liverpool suffered similarly in 2020-21, losing eight of their 12 games when a small glitch led to their collapse, but there has never been more distance between manager and team than at City. . This is one of the great strengths of football as a sport. Almost every ploy involves risk, and strengths can quickly become weaknesses.
Second, the flowers are never allowed to be in full bloom. Erling Haaland was never a natural fit for Pep Guardiola. Guardiola demands control. He wants to hold onto the ball until his team is in a position to prevent a breakaway if they lose it. Haaland prefers the ball to be played quickly forward. Kevin De Bruyne is very skilled at playing those split-second passes, but inevitably City aren't set up as well when a more direct ball leads to a turnover. means.
Last season, City conceded seven goals on fast breaks, the most in the league. The problem has worsened this season, with City providing 25 fast-break chances, more than anyone other than West Ham. Against Aston Villa last Saturday, Youri Tielemans took advantage of the space behind the defensive line, often under pressure, and pulled City apart on numerous occasions. On Boxing Day, Everton had multiple chances to turn things around, limited only by their own insane lack of pace.
Perhaps we have seen something similar at Stefan Kovac's Ajax and Kenny Dalglish's Liverpool, where players were freed from the constraints they had previously played under and adopted a more overtly appealing style of play, leading to high public opinion. You will be rewarded with a recognized victory. .
For Ajax, it was the 1973 European Cup, where they humiliated Juventus in the final, winning 1-0, but showing great skill and denying Juventus the ball. For Liverpool, John Barnes and Peter Beardsley transformed Liverpool into a thrilling attacking side, resulting in the league title in 1987-88. But in both cases, there was a sense that the moment when the fruit was at its sweetest was also the moment when the plant began to rot, knowing that other factors were at play.
Haaland similarly helped City finally win the Champions League by giving City more diverse attacking modes and reducing the feeling that a highly structured approach could become predictable against the best of defences. But the price was probably the same pattern of maturation and decline. Quite apart from the fact that his demand for immediate service means that City will not be able to establish themselves, despite all the talent he has in opposing areas, his pace and strength They don't have everything and in finishing there are players who drop back into the midfield and enter the defensive phase. With Rodri in the side, City have largely been able to cope with a player who hasn't fully integrated himself. They couldn't do it without him.
But there is also a broader point: Guardiola's style has become hegemonic. Almost all teams are pressing and possessing at the moment, and Nuno Espirito Santo's preference for a deep, compact core at Nottingham Forest, darting forward through quick wide men, seems radical. everyone guardiolistathere is guardiolista Not enough. Even Guardiola has tweaked and evolved in recent seasons. I can feel more and more variations in Guardiorismo I took over. The pure form of his philosophy, which Barcelona embodied when they won the Champions League in 2009 and 2011, has been superseded.
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The era of ideologues may be over, and pragmatism may be back. Russell Martin, Ange Postecoglou, and even Ruben Amorim have all realized, in their own ways, that it is not really appropriate to claim that flaws are an inevitable consequence of one's methods. Luis de la Fuente won the Euros by adding two direct wingers to the traditional possession-based Spanish model. Coaches such as Mikel Arteta, Andoni Iraola and Unai Emery play variations on the Guardiola/Spain model.
Beyond Spain's direct influence, flexibility and adaptability are in vogue. Carlo Ancelotti's continued extraordinary success is partly due to the quality of his team, but also because of his unflinching pragmatism. Lionel Scaloni made a series of match-specific adjustments to his midfield and added yet another Copa America honor for Argentina.
Slightly more conservative than his predecessor, Arne Slott steered Liverpool in a better direction. guardiolista A variation on Jurgen Klopp's style. Gian Piero Gasperini's Europa League winners and Serie A leaders Atalanta press, but in a more considered manner than the blood-and-thunder percussive style that was once so popular. . A new focus on set-pieces can also be seen as an element of new pragmatism.
there was first Adjust positiona modern reimagining of Total Football. Croppy's reaction was then more about retaining the ball than getting it back. This is an era of synthesis, with slight variations on the dominant theme established through the Guardiola-Klopp rivalry, and Spain are currently excelling in that regard.
