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Opposing coaches could pick the perfect defensive game plan, but in the end, no game plane could contain Messi. Messi brought another dimension to Guardiola’s tactics, a dimension that made Barcelona almost unstoppable. However, Guardiola had something nobody before him had at Barcelona, Lionel Messi.
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Pep brought his own version of tiki taka, positional play and extreme pressing to Barcelona. Guardiola revolutionized Barcelona in 2008, as they won almost everything between 2008-2012.
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After Rijkaard left Barcelona, in came the new manager Pep Guardiola. Rijkaard made adjustments to the tiki-taka system, mixing it with positional soccer, as Barcelona continued to be one of the world’s best teams. After Cruyff, it was Louis Van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard who further developed the Barcelona philosophy of play. The tiki-taka style was later adopted and used by the Spain national teams, under Del Bosque and Aragones. The style Cruyff developed became known as tiki-taka soccer, and it brought Barcelona instant success. When Cruyff became the Head Coach of Barcelona in 1988, he built on the ideas of Rinus Michels, developing the Barcelona philosophy even further. Michels stressed the importance of interchanging positions, attacking with the pass and the dribble, and relentless defensive pressing. Michels coached Cruyff at Barcelona from 1971-1975, and also in 1974 for the famous Dutch national team that introduced “Total Football” to the world. Johan Cruyff is most commonly credited with creating the Barcelona style of play, but it was Rinus Michels that influenced Cruyff’s soccer ideas. In fact, when Guardiola was leaving Barcelona as the manager, he credited his work to, “being built on the shoulders of giants.” What Guardiola meant was that he didn’t create the way Barcelona played, he only put his influence on what was already built, because long before Guardiola, the likes of Johan Cruyff and Rinus Michels helped forge the style of Barcelona. Positional play is an important aspect that has influenced Guardiola’s tactics over the years, but to fully appreciate Guardiola, you must grasp an understanding of the ideas behind positional soccer, tiki-taka soccer, total football and the Barcelona way. The secret in possession is positioning and the secret on defense is positioning. The former Barcelona great, Johan Cruyff was asked, how do Barcelona win the ball back so quickly? He replied, “It’s because they don’t have to run back more than 10 meters as they never pass the ball more than 10 meters.” That statement alone sheds some light into the secret of positional soccer, with and without the ball. This is one of the important aspects of positional soccer that makes it so effective. Once the teams positioning in attack was established, if they lost the ball, the players are already in a good position to press the ball to win it back. In tactical periodization this would be called the attacking organization phase. Guardiola believed in order to build the proper team structure, the team would need to complete roughly 15 passes, this would fully create an attacking team shape. Draw in the opponent, then hit them with the sucker punch.” The tactics Guardiola speaks about sound simple but in order to accomplish this way of playing, the team structure must be correct. That’s why you have to pass the ball with a clear intention. When you’ve done that, we attack and score from the other side. The secret is to overload one side of the pitch so the opponent must tilt its own defense to cope. Guardiola spoke about this aspect of positional play saying, “the objective is to move the opponent, not the ball. If a team can fully shift the opponent by drawing them to one side of the field with short passing, the opportunity to attack the weak side becomes the objective. The central theme behind positional soccer is to create superiority of numbers in a specific area of the field, using mainly shorter range passing. The interesting thing about positional soccer is that the player’s options to some extent are predetermined by the position of the ball. The positional soccer field is divided into vertical and horizontal zones that indicate positional responsibilities for the players. Positional soccer provides a set of guidelines and structure for the attacking phase of the game. If used correctly, the grid will serve as a cognitive roadmap for players, helping them in their understanding of the game, increasing their soccer IQ and making their decision making slightly easier.Įxplanation of Guardiola’s Positional Soccer But the real ideaof the book is give coaches an insight behind how Guardiola’s positional grid can be adapted to teach the style you want to play. The book focuses on using Pep Guardiola’s positional grid to teach positional soccer. This article is an exerpt from my book “Pep Guardiola’s Positional Grid”.