Hi all,
It's still me in my recent romance with football and it's tactics. I'm still intrigued with what I call "modern football" and you keep hearing me mention Mr. Johan Cruyff because he pioneered this brand of football; a brand most big teams employ these days.
Let's hear from one of his faithful students–
Guardiola on Cruyff: "At half time we had played badly, we expected to be told to push ourselves to fight more, to run more. When Johan spoke, he told us that we were playing badly because we were running too much. You had to send the ball where you wanted it to go and not to run after it."
That's Cruyff for you, from that chat with Pep Guardiola above, we can glean from it some pillars of his system–
possession, intelligent play and control. So he de-emphasized physicality, wanting his team to send the ball where they wanted it to go, to forestall chasing it around the pitch.
Therefore it's quite clear that this approach emphasizes brain power, brain speed. So it means the players are required to have understanding the game, of time and space.
Players are not lazy too, but it's quick feet to make smart choices, and maintaining possession. Maintaining possesiom helps them to dictate the rhythm and flow of the match. This therefore gives them a winning advantage.
Memory and records serve as a reminders of the core principles that underpin Johan Cruyff's football philosophy.
Credit Phase of Play
TODAY
Well, today there has been adaptations to Cryuff's philosophy. For example, Guardiola arrived in the EPL and discovered he needed to add physicality for real triumph, so he began to bring in physically imposing players to his defensive unit eg he got a guy like Fernandinho and today Rodri. We saw how Manchester City fell apart without Rodri last season.
PSG coached by another of Cruyff's choice graduates, does the intelligent passes thing and possession football Cruyff deamands, but they are full of running without the ball and they have physicality too – not the famous Mourinho Chelsea physicality of being rough though.
Another who drank of this Cruyff's stream through Guardiola is Mikel Arteta and you see his adaptations, tall centre-halves for set-piece, exceptional organisation/pressing without the ball. Other examples exist too.
Overall, I sit back and just enjoy this evolution that has brought football to this latest ideology, an ideology that for example makes the good old number 10 role, extinct.
BY THE WAY
Well the Club World Cup is ongoing. Never mind, it's finally going to look like another European Champions League, as the various continents will eventually fade away.
I pick PSG as favourites, but also watch out for Bayern Munich and one of the Italians.
Thanks for reading