Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics

by Jonathan Wilson

“How do you beat a team that has a great forward?” Lorenzo asked. “Very simple. If you don’t want somebody to eat, you have to stop the food coming out of the kitchen. I don’t send somebody to mark the waiter; I have to worry about the chef.”

Brazil’s economic inequality and the importance of soccer in creating the sense that the social order can be overturned makes it particularly so there. If a skillful player jinks by a defender and leaves him in the dust, it doesn’t matter what their backgrounds are or how much they earn; the pawn can become king. That is why tricks are important, why Brazilian soccer is in thrall to the ethos of the malandro.

Only a poor coach comes to a new club and says, ‘I will play with this system’ without respecting the attributes of the players he has in his squad. Only a poor coach becomes a victim of a system.”

They do mesmerise you with their passing and we never really did control Messi… In my time as manager, it’s the best team I’ve faced.”

HOLD DATTTTTTTT

That, perhaps, is also a feature of the age of the super-club: success becomes so expected that the slightest dip in form or results prompts panic, and long-term thinking becomes all but impossible—something that makes tactical radicalism far less likely.

There’s not only a psychological dimension—does the obsessive focus on the system perhaps deny players the individuality that would allow them, in difficult circumstances, to demonstrate the initiative to yank a game back their way? Do Guardiola’s players, as Zlatan Ibrahimović claimed, become in some way little more than obedient schoolchildren?—but also a tactical one.