Yeah, good players make everything easier, that's for damn sure.For me, thats the gist of it. To apply it effectively you need the better player. Saying that, I guess its the same for any style you play.
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Yeah, good players make everything easier, that's for damn sure.For me, thats the gist of it. To apply it effectively you need the better player. Saying that, I guess its the same for any style you play.
Good post mate.Excellent article and a tactical discussion, (now that we have a manager that actually understands tactics), is a discussion well worth having.
Having said all of that calling anything the anti football crew, like Mourinho and Simeone, do pressing renders the word meaningless for me. If it isn't high pressing than it really isn't pressing in any meaningful way, it is just defending and counter attacking.
The Poch, Guardiola, Biesla, Klopp, Enrique, Tuchel, etc. press are real pressing and they all come from total football and Cruyff. These teams want the ball because they can use it. They can press because the press demands abandoning a rigid shape and interchanging positions to at least some degree in order to press and hunt. Dortmund, Barca and Spurs all have versatile players that can play everywhere and interchange because truly pressing demands that.
Here is a different article which I can link if someone would be kind enough to like my first post... this one.
These days, pressing has come to seem as fundamental a part of the game as grass, white lines and goal nets. But this, too, was a Dutch invention.
It developed at Ajax in the late 1960s because of one of Cruyff's energetic and ferocious teammates, Johan Neeskens, whose job was usually to harass the opposition's playmaker. Neeskens' victims usually tried to escape by retreating ever deeper into their own half. Neeskens, following his instincts and the emerging spirit of the team, followed. Michels, noticing this, incorporated it into his developing philosophy and told the whole team to follow.
Ajax began hunting in packs deep in the opposition's half of the field. Playing a high offside line inevitably followed. If the whole team was camped in the opposition's half, the last thing you wanted to do was to run all the way back to your own half if you lost possession.
Taking the idea one stage further, Cruyff invented the sweeper-keeper. In old football, a goalkeeper's job was to stay on his line and stop shots. But in the run-up to the 1974 World Cup, Cruyff persuaded Michels to pick Jan Jongbloed, a goalkeeper who liked to roam far from his line and was unusually good with his feet. His style, now routinely copied by goalkeepers around the world, allowed the Netherlands to press even higher up the field.
There's an article in last month's 442 that suggests it's bad players that make the difference. You are only as strong as your weakest link.Yeah, good players make everything easier, that's for damn sure.
Liverpool in the 80's were good at this rush was their first defender. Nothing is really new.There's literally nobody who has studied football tactics who thinks the Dutch or Ajax in particular invented, or first started using consistent high pressing. There's no question that by the mid-70s the Cruyff led teams were using it very effectively and in dominant fashion, but they were far from the originators.
Viktor Maslov at Dynamo Kiev in the early 60's was the first to use it on a consistent basis, likely in part influenced by the Soviet ice hockey tradition where the concept of "forechecking" had been existence for a while (that originated in the 30s in the NHL) and was really starting to come to the front of the sport. Maslov's player and disciple Valeriy Lobanovskyi took up the mantle in the late 60s and really pushed the concept of aggressive pressing even more.
An Austrian (Ernst Happel) influenced by football from the east a bit more than western managers was then managing Den Haag and introduced pressing to Dutch football. By 1970 he was managing Feyenoord and won the European Cup (the first major European trophy won by a Dutch team - Ajax followed in 1971). While Ajax went on to master the concept with a brilliant team, they weren't even the first in their country to use the system or win a major trophy with it ... they just ended up being the best at it.
There's an article in last month's 442 that suggests it's bad players that make the difference. You are only as strong as your weakest link.
Our weakest first team member this season is better than our weakest last season. It's why more successful teams don't buy at the top end of the market, but get a few middle of the road players instead.
Coaching has made two of our previously weaker players (Walker and Rose) into two of our stronger players.
Vertonghen is now probably our weakest player.
It would seem our squad is capable of dealing with all but the worst injury crisis as well - except maybe against the very top level Champions League teams.
It gives a new perspective on AVB's failed high-line.
I remember a lot of people's stubborn insistence at the time that the high-line doesn't work in England or against English teams, despite repeated examples of English teams being humbled by the high-line in European competition or international play.
Really nice video from TTT , Eriksen is doing really well in his new role. It would make sense if we brought in Isco to be an attacking midfielder with Eriksen moving down