The Question: is this the end for tiki-taka? | Jonathan Wilson

Jonathan Wilson

Jonathan Wilson's Articles (Bot)
Joined
Aug 1, 2010
Messages
695
Reaction score
0
Points
0
The success of defensive rigidity and rapid counter-attacks against possession football hints at another tactical evolutionPeople are unhappy. They're unhappy at teams like Bayern Munich who keep the ball, preserving possession and looking to pass opponents into submission, and they're unhappy at teams like Chelsea who defend deep, allow opponents to have the ball and try to pick them off on the break. People, over the past fortnight, have declared themselves bored by and opposed to both proactive and reactive football.
That's not actually as contradictory as it sounds. We live in an age of extremes. When Barcelona first started to play tiki-taka under Pep Guardiola, they began to achieve unprecedented levels of possession. For the first time probably since Arrigo Sacchi's Milan almost two decades previously, there was a new philosophy about. This wasn't just a minor tweak of positioning, a tendency for one centre-forward to drop slightly deeper, or for the full-backs to push a bit higher. It wasn't a slight change of shape: it was a whole new style.
Continue reading...

More...
 
Top