The development of human beings is over, our brains have reached their limits.
Political history is over. And architecture? That's dead, too!
But what about football? Have we already seen everything?
We've had 2-3-5 systems
3-5-2
4-3-3
we had the libero
two holding midfielders
false nines
possession
counter pressing
and vertical passing. What's next?
I don't know!
Everything's been tried. There were world champions with seven strikers on the pitch
and world champions with none,
there was kick and rush and tiki-taka
there was the back three, the back four, back five
there were these shirts and these and these
what's next?
Will there always be something new?
Or have we reached the end of football history?
It's worth taking a look at the trends of the current football era.
There are coaches who rely on extreme offensive pressing or counter pressing.
Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool is the best example. In the Bundesliga now it's Peter Bosz at Leverkusen,
and also the Red Bull teams have it in their DNA.
Then there are coaches who swear by a lot of ball possession and
circulation. Mauricio Sarri developed 'Sarri ball' at Napoli a few years ago,
and then of course there's Pep Guardiola, the king of ball possession.
And third, there are teams with extremely defensive systems.
No other team in the world plays as deep and compact as Diego Simeone's Atletico.
Mourinho's teams also don't take many risks.
But of course top teams don't rely on just one tactic.
Thomas Tuchel brought the word "gameplan" to the Bundesliga about 10 years ago when he was
coaching Mainz. Every week he gave his team a new tactic and formation, depending on the opponent.
That's standard now. Every team masters every tactic.
Mourinho's defensive bulwarks for example can also play offensive pressing.
Like Real here against Barsa.
And teams that for decades played automatically with the back four
have suddenly switched to the back three.
So if everyone can do everything, is football now like chess, with thousands
of variants but all of them already tried? To get closer to the answer we have to look back.
Every few decades humanity has spawned groundbreaking revolutions, fundamentally changing
life. Steam engines, electricity, automobiles, television, and the internet. In football there
have been technical revolutions at similar intervals, fundamentally changing the game.
The innovators dominated world football for years.
A look at the history of tactics might help to see where it ends.
1872 - first international match ever. England fielded the 1-1-8,
while the Scots were almost walled in with the 2-2-6.
Fourteen strikers on the pitch. The result: 0-0.
A few years later, the so-called pyramid emerged, a 2-3-5, the usual system for several decades.
In the early 30s Arsenal coach Herbert Chapman
was incredibly successful with his more defensive WM system.
No one could beat Arsenal at that time, they probably thought they had
found the perfect tactic. But back then people also thought telegrams
where the hardest communication s**t the world would ever see.
The pyramid and the WM system were also the most
common formations in the First World Cups. And then came the Hungarians.
The proud English were stunned when
they lost 6-3 at home against the Hungarian national team in 1953.
What was the tactical twist?
Hungary's center forward Nándor Hidegkuti simply dropped back a
little. This completely confused England's men marking, zone marking hadn't been invented yet.
Hidegkuti scored three goals, the first "False 9" in football history was born.
And this is now highly relevant again, at Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool for example.
They made a decisive change before last season: the 4-3-3 remain in place, but Firminho's role
changed dramatically. Again and again the nominal center forward dropped back like Hidegkuti back
in the day while Salah and Mané moved more into the center. And it worked quite well.
The Hungarians tactics didn't last long however. In the 60s defences took their
turn in the spotlight, in particular catenaccio.
It was invented by the Swiss Karl Rappan in the thirties, but became a real phenomenon with
coach Helenio Herrera and his grande Inter Milan, the top European team of the 60s.
Catenaccio is more than just strong defensive walls, the crucial element is the ball oriented
movement. If the opponent's are attacking down a flank, one defender shifts over,
while another covers the space he leaves. A revolution that is still important today.
Whether Inter's success wasn't more down to
the special coffee the players drank before every game is another matter.
Was catenaccio the final word? No!
The 70s: Rinus "the General" Michels established total football with Ajax,
the Dutch national team and later Barcelona.
The playmaker in each case: Johan Cruyff. The principle each player
can play any position on the pitch but the wide formation always stays the same. The
4-3-3 was born. And Michels later became FIFA coach of the century.
Ajax still plays kind of Total Football today as do Barcelona with a few exceptions. And even
what Bayern plays today is still based on Louis van Gaal's 4-3-3 from the year
2010 with the wingers extremely sticking to the touch lines when in possession.
Pressing high up the pitch also derives from Total Football.
Today no team has played the system as consistently as the Dutch in the 70s,
maybe in part because it turned out you don't become world champions like that .
And that's why it wasn't the end of football history, of course.
Argentina and Germany dominated the 80s with ugly defensive football. Germany won the 1990 World Cup
final by having their defender Guido Buchwald do nothing but mark Maradona for 90 minutes.
Even though man marking had long since been abandoned by then. Same for the libero.
This man was to blame, the wizard of the next great tactical trend Arrigo Sacchi.
A large part of today's football is based on his tactical visions at the end of the 80s.
When we talk about remaining compact we mean the principle
Arrigo Sacchi's AC Milan used to win the European Cup in 1989 and 1990.
The distances between the lines we're short. Sacchi was the first to play consistently with
a flat back four and with an aggressive offside trap. A t that time a revolution,
today standard with every football team.
Among the major revolutions that changed the game Arrigo Sacchi's
innovations can be described as the end of tactical development.
In order to develop tactics for their teams today, coaches are not inventing anything
new but taking elements from the past and put them together. If we take again Klopp's
Champions League winning side from last year: what are the building blocks? The
4-3-3 formation pressing high up the pitch? Holland in the seventies. A high backline
and expanding or contracting the lines when in possession or not? Arrigo Sacchia. And Firmino
as a centre forward moving between lines? Hungary 54. I t's all been done before.
So isn't there anything new in football? Are the cards already known? Not completely.
What Pep Guardiola has been doing with his full
backs in recent years was kind of a mini revolution.
Sometimes they play so far inside that they form a 2-3-5 system, when they are in procession,
creating an enormous number of triangles in the centre, which in turn facilitates his extreme
tiki-taka. It's no coincidence that Guardiola invested 140 million Euros in new fullbacks
after not winning a title in his first Man City season. But that still wasn't enough
for him. This summer he bought João Cancelo, the most expensive right bank in the world.
So are the players the key to further fundamental development
in football tactics? In any case the trend in transfers is towards expensive
defenders because they are essential for implementing technical refinements.
Jürgen Klopp's high-risk game has only worked perfectly since Virgil
van Dijk came along to safeguard against the risk.
Real Madrid hadn't won the Champions League in years until they found the
right defensive pieces to the puzzle, Dani Carvajal and Casimiro in 2013. And bang,
they won the Champions League four times.
In this summer the top clubs are pimping their back lines like never before.
Militao to Real for 50 million, de Ligt to Juve for 75 million,
Hernandez to Bayern for 80 million and Maguire to Manu for 87 million.
But aside from expensive defensive transfers no technical revolution has taken place for years.
Like in technology: the iPhone 5 looks like the iPhone 6 looks like 7 like 8 like 9.
So if there isn't anything new you need to celebrate the old.
In football, too, the trend is retro. Three phenomena that had long been forgotten can
currently be observed in top-class football. The good old kick in rush. Why deal will complicated
build up play in your own half? Red Bull Leipzig aren't afraid of long risky balls,
because sometimes they work quite well. Or returning to Liverpool's
Champions League season once again. Similar tactics helped them destroy Barcelona.
They let Van Dijk and Joel Matip repeatedly send
long diagonal balls towards Barcas left back Jordi Alba.
The second technical refinement that can make the difference in such fast paced perfect games
is "la pausa", the pause. A technique from the old times. Pele hesitates and lays on
Carlos Alberto in the 1970 World Cup final. Today Lionel Messi is the main protagonist of la pausa.
And also David Silva uses a change of pace as a weapon.
And perhaps the most important means of gaining advantage against technically accomplished teams.
set pieces. At the 2018 World Cup almost half of the goals were scored from dead ball situations,
more than at any other World Cup. England coach Southgate spent half
of their preparations practicing corners and free kicks. The result:
the English scored nine of their 12 goals from set pieces.
And last season's most important Champions League matches were all decided by corners.
Ajax against Juve, Tottenham against Man City and of course Liverpool against Barcelona.
So to sum it all up: yes, the history of tactics has reached the end.
What else can there be? A defender who plays as the second goalkeeper? The team
that only plays on the left side? A coach who only fields nine players?
And yet: No, the end is not the end.
Aren't the best politicians the ones who have learned the most from the past? Isn't
the best ice cream good old-fashioned vanilla with crunchy caramel bits? And isn't the best
coach the one who best internalizes the great revolutions and then adds his own touches to them?