Forced Evolution: Pep Guardiola, Mack Brown, and Urban Meyer

If you're interested in the other football, Barcelona, evolution, or just an interesting discussion about how tactical changes occur over time, then I highly recommend Kevin Alexander's new piece at Slide Rule Pass.  His basic thrust is to put Barcelona's style into context, tracing back the major innovations in football from Herbert Chapman's W-M at Arsenal through the Magnificent Magyars, the Brazilian Back Four, and Total Football,* and then to Guardiola's Barcelona. 

* - One common thread occurred to me while reading the piece.  Both the Hungary side of '54 and the Dutch side of '74 lost World Cup Finals to West Germany.  The Germans have never been credited with a major tactical innovation like the sides that they conquered.  Is that a compliment to German teams for overcoming innovators or a criticism that they win without giving anything to the world game, other than stereotypes about efficiency and determination? 

Alexander then gets to his point, which is that Barca have been trying a new 3-4-3 formation this year and that their attempts to take another step in evolving might be the reason why Real Madrid are three points ahead with a game in hand:

Though crowned Champions League winners in 2009 and 2011 Barcelona managed Pep Guardiola has sought to vary Barcelona’s approach this season. On one hand it is understandable that he wants to prevent other sides from figuring out a way to stop his side playing (as Inter Milan famously did in the 2010 Champions League), yet on the other hand one has to wonder whether trying to enforce a change on a fluid and evolving game is ever going to be truly successful.

The move away from the 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 that had served them so well to an, at times, 3-4-3 (often with no recognised centre-backs) has met with decidedly mixed success. Though there have been victories, it’s difficult to ascertain whether Barcelona won those matches thanks to their new system, or thanks to the extraordinary individual talents they possess...

Given time, perhaps Guardiola’s new way will take root, and set in motion the next stage in the evolution of Barcelona and, by extension, modern football. However, by trying to force change where no natural pressure exists, Pep may have found himself on a dead branch of the evolutionary tree.

The question of whether there is truly natural pressure is an interesting one.  As Alexander notes, Barca lost its European title to Mourinho's Inter in 2010, so Guardiola might have been thinking one step ahead: "if Mourinho is spending all summer trying to figure out how to deal with out style, then maybe I need to change the style?"  Additionally, trying a new formation is a good way to keep players sharp and interested, which is no small matter when one is trying to motivate a group that has won everything there is to win, both for club and country.  Finally, Guardiola was faced with a dilemma this fall in that both of his starting central defenders - Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique - were injured and he was faced with cobbling together a backline using a left back (Eric Abidal), two defensive midfielders (Sergio Busquets and Javier Mascherano), and a collection of Brazilian attacking fullbacks (Dani Alves, Adriano, and Maxwell).  Change or die, right?  Well, Barca have dropped nine points away from the Camp Nou in La Liga, they have scored only eight goals in their six road matches, and now they head to the Bernabeu in a must-win position, so maybe change wasn't such a good idea.

Alexander's line about forcing change where no natural pressure exists had me thinking about college football.  I remember having a conversation with a friend three years ago about how USC, Texas, and Florida were poised to dominate college football in the coming years.  They had the coaches, the systems, the fertile recruiting bases, and the rivals in turmoil to ensure a series of meetings with crystal balls on the line.  Leaving USC and their NCAA issues aside, as recently as two years ago, Texas and Florida were both coming off of years where they lost only one game: to national champion Alabama.  In the summer of 2010, we read numerous writers opine that both the Horns and Gators were moving away from the spread styles (pass-based for Texas and run-based for Florida) that they had favored in favor of more conventional, power-based attacks.  (I remember Tony Barnhart being especially pronounced in making this point, but I cannot for the life of me find a link to verify my memory.)

The results of this forced evolution (maybe devolution is a better term) have been disastrous.  Here is Florida's national rank in yards per play from 2008 forward: 3, 2, 78, 67.  And here is Texas's: 13, 57, 78, 67.  Both Florida and Texas had a style that worked for them and then have gone away from that style, whether by recruiting decisions or scheme.  They had evolved into approaches that moved the ball and then chose to eschew those approaches for something new.  Two years later, they are both picking up the pieces from those decisions to force change.

It's the Netherlands and Spain, so I'll be Switzerland

I feel very conflicted as to whom I will root for tomorrow. This is the problem that a sports bigamist can have. I have rooted for Holland since 1988, when I watched the Dutch play in Euro '88. (The tournament wasn't on in the U.S., but we were in Israel for three weeks and then in London for several days, so I saw everything but the final. I read about the final in The Manchester Guardian, which my parents got for the crossword puzzles. And you wonder why I'm an Anglophile.) The Netherlands played attractive football, they had cool uniforms and players with cool hair, and most importantly, they beat the Germans in Hamburg. If I would have known at the time that Ronald Koeman celebrated by wiping his rear with a West German jersey, I might have moved to Amsterdam right then and there. My affection for the Dutch was cemented when we saw them three times in USA '94 in Orlando, concluding with a 2-0 spanking of an Ireland team that I detested for aesthetic reasons. (I defy any human being to watch Ireland-Norway from 1994 without falling into a coma.) The Dutch fans were outstanding. They were a singing carnival; everything good about SEC fans without the nasty side. I was humming the tune from the Aida march for the whole drive back to Macon.



Side note: for years after the tournament, the expression that my brothers and I used for ripping a shot from outside the box was "give it a bloody Jonking."

When I was picking a club team in the aftermath of USA '94, I picked Barcelona in part because of the Dutch connection. Cruyff had played there, he was the manager there, they played the Dutch 4-3-3, and they had won the European Cup on a goal by Ronald Koeman. Plus, in the same way that I liked the Dutch for their opposition to the Nazis, I liked Barca because of the club's history as a bulwark against Franco. Being a Dutch/Barca fan seemed to make a lot of sense.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. I've been rooting for the Dutch for over two decades. I've been rooting for Barca for over a decade, to the point where I spend more emotional energy supporting them than any other team other than Michigan football. Over the past five years, I've become especially attached to the current core of Barca players. You know, the guys who are going to be over half of Spain's starting lineup tomorrow. If Spain win, then Puyol, Xavi, and Iniesta - the heart of the current Barca dynasty - are going to join the select group of Europeans who have won every major piece of silverware: their domestic competition, the European Cup, and the World Cup. Off the top of my head, we're only talking about the core of the West German/Bayern side from the 70s - Beckenbauer, Muller, Breitner, Hoeness, Maier - and the France side from the late 90s - Zidane, Henry, Desailly, and Thuram.

So here's the question: am I rooting for the uniforms or the players wearing them? My loyalty is to the Dutch. I had always hoped that they would win the World Cup at some point during my lifetime to reward a great collection of supporters and a culture that produces an obscene number of skilled players. A Dutch victory will validate that a small country doesn't need to play a conservative, limited style in order to compete, even if this is not the most expansive of Dutch teams.

However, I also have loyalty to and affection for the core Spain players. I watch these players once or twice a week for most of the year. With Michigan's football program attached to the bowl like a skid mark and Atlanta sports firmly in meh territory (subject to revision if the Braves keep playing like they have for the past two months), Barca have kept my sports sanity for the past two years. There have been more than a few occasions on which I've felt lucky that I liked Barcelona better than any other city in Europe when I was backpacking after graduating college in 1997.

This particular group of players are especially rootable. They play a passing style that is aesthetically appealing. They foul at a lower rate than other teams and rarely get carded. Their fundamental disposition is to attack, which means that they don't play boring games (as opposed to counter-attacking parasite sides that require the opponent to take risks for anything to happen). In contrast, this is harder Dutch team to love. I don't begrudge the fact that they play 4-2-3-1 in a relatively defensive fashion. Bert van Marwijk would be insane to throw everyone forward with his average back line. However, Mark van Bommel.



Arjen Robben is a diver with the most exaggerated pout I've seen since Bobby Hurley. Robin van Persie is a brat. Nigel de Jong broke Stuart Holden's leg. Jonny Heitinga is not good. I root for these guys when they put on the orange jersey, but I wouldn't choose to do so if they played for Neutral United.

So anyway, the only solution for my dilemma is not to make a decision. I'll just watch the match tomorrow with a smile on my face. I didn't like any of the teams that made the last four of the 2006 World Cup and, validating my opinion of those teams, the last three games were 1-0 on a penalty, 2-0 with both goals coming in the final five of 120 minutes, and 1-1 after 120 minutes with the most memorable event of the match being the best player of his generation imitating a Cape Buffalo. This tournament has been much better in terms of the quality of the knock-out matches and my favored teams winning, which I will of course view as being correlated. Rooting for two teams famed for getting their fans' hopes up with attractive displays and then crushing those hopes, usually in penalties, I never thought I would face the problem that has been flummoxing me for the past three days.

One final note: even though I did vote for Barack Obama, I would root for the U.S. over either the Netherlands or Spain.

I'm Going with my Eight-Tentacled Friend

Nigel Powers’ Favorite Side

My friend Tom has two sports passions: Dutch soccer and Ohio State football. Needless to say, we see eye-to-eye on the former more than the latter. It occurred to me when I was talking to him on Friday afternoon that he should be familiar with the emotions that would be created by the Dutch winning the World Cup because this edition of the Oranje would become the 2002 Ohio State Buckeyes. The ’02 Bucks were by no means the best Ohio State team of recent years. They were not especially talented (by Ohio State standards, anyway, and I’m mainly thinking about the skill positions) or impressive, but because of their Ecksteinian grit/luck, they went 14-0 and won Ohio State their only national title in the past 42 seasons. Forget the Clockwork Orange team of ’74, this Netherlands side is not as talented as the Koeman-Gullit-Rijkaard-van Basten generation of the late 80s or the Bergkamp-Overmars-Stam-de Boer-de Boer-Davids-van der Sar teams of the 90s. This team has two great players - Sneijder and Robben - and a bunch of functional parts that defend well. In other words, this team would be the last team that a Dutch fan would expect would bring the country its first World Cup, and yet here they are in a semifinal against Uruguay.

Speaking of Dutch teams of the past, I highly recommend Rafael Honigstein’s description of the myth of Total Football:

Claims that the Netherlands has now changed beyond recognition into a negative, cynical side are made only by those who wrongly bought into the opposite extreme of the Dutch as some sort of European Brazilians and eternal purveyors of the beautiful game before. In truth, they're no more defensive than 30 years ago; they've just found it very hard to break down opponents who have so far resisted from attacking them, unlike France and Italy in 2008.

"Beautiful football is difficult against teams who don't give you an inch of space," Wesley Sneijder said this week.

The fact that the Dutch have mostly grinded out victories does not reflect a diminished ambition or change of direction at all. It's merely been a function of coming up against deep-lying teams, difficult conditions (the heavy pitch in Port Elizabeth made it impossible for Robben to accelerate against Brazil in the quarterfinals) and not quite clicking up front.

There's every chance that all the obituary writers will quickly turn around to celebrate the resurrection of Total Football if a few well-executed attacking moves come off against limited Uruguay on Tuesday. Then we'll read that van Marwijk has given the team it's "true identity" back, and other nonsense. It's high time the old stereotypes were ditched, regardless of the result. Dutch soccer itself already did it a while back. Maybe the rest of the world should follow suit.

Leave it to a German to nail the Dutch just so.

The Brazil-Netherlands match was especially interesting to me because Brazil played against their reputation. Dunga’s teams are supposed to be athletic, sound defensively, impregnable in the air, and imbued by a winning mentality transmitted by their coach. Against Holland, Brazil were undone by a pair of crosses into the box, after which they panicked and turned into a bitching, unlikeable team. Was Brazil never as stout as we thought? Should we not read too much into what happens in 45 minutes of football, no matter how big the stage? I lean towards the latter. I love the World Cup as a sporting event, but I have to admit that a lot is made of very small sample sizes.

The Condor Legion Flies Again

I’m probably engaged in a bit of wishful thinking here to support Spain (my analysis is often at its worst when my rooting interests and my predictions dovetail), but I feel pretty good about Spain’s chances. Germany cannot possibly have another gear. They have played as well as possible for the past two matches, save for a ten minute spell when they lost the plot against England. However, they’ve been up against two teams that suited their style. England are more name than merit and Argentina, while individually talented, played a disjointed style that Alexi Lalas correctly derided as “sandlot.” (Never have I agreed so vigorously with Mr. Lalas.) Argentina was a perfect mark for an organized German team, especially with Javier Mascherano cutting a lonely figure as the only central midfielder on the pitch. Yes, I wish that I would have figured this out before the match, but if I would have trusted my gut from before the tournament when I took every opportunity to mock Maradona, the warnings were present.

Spain, on the other hand, have not gotten out of third gear. Moreover, there is an obvious solution for them: remove the restrictor plate that is Fernando Torres. Vicente del Bosque has been doing his best Bobby Cox impression in this tournament, sticking with Torres despite the facts that: (1) Spain obviously play better with one striker because the players they put on in place of the second striker give them width; and (2) Torres is hurt, bereft of confidence, or both. Over a long season, sticking with Torres makes sense. In a short knock-out tournament, Spain can’t wait for Fernando to come good, especially when he doesn’t have the greatest scoring record as an international to begin with. Spain could afford to piss away an hour against Portugal and Paraguay because those teams were not very threatening; they cannot do the same against Germany. I know this. Everyone covering Spain knows this. Paul the Octopus knows this. Will Spain’s manager figure this out? I’m guessing that he will.

So, imagine that Spain deploy their 4-2-3-1 with Xavi, Iniesta, and one of Pedro/Navas/Silva behind Villa. Now, you have a fast striker running at Germany’s slow-ish centerbacks. You have a proper winger to stretch the Germans horizontally. (Look at how much better Spain played when Pedro came on against the bunkering Paraguayans.) And then you have the in-form Iniesta on the left, attacking a centerback playing left back. Del Bosque has taken a lot of criticism for playing two defensive midfielders, but his system is just what the doctor ordered for dealing with Oezil and Schweinsteiger. And in the middle of the pitch, you have Xavi.

So yes, I’m doubling down on Spain. A team that has never won the World Cup or even played in a final. Against three-time champions and six-time finalists Germany. I never said that I made sense.

Five Thoughts on the Champions League

1. Barca figured something out at halftime of the match against Valencia on Sunday: Thierry Henry can still be a useful player. It's hard to say that a team that has lost one game out of 26 in La Liga (and that with a youth team player at right back) and qualified at the top of its group in the Champions League is struggling, but if there has been a cause for concern for the Blaugrana this year, it's been their struggles in replacing Samuel Eto'o. Zlatan Ibrahimovic started reasonably well, but he's ground to a halt over the past several months and the team looks less fluid when he plays. (There's a parallel to be made between Ibra and Allen Iverson. Both are tremendous individual players who are capable of incredible acts of skill. However, both also need the ball all the time, so they struggle to play a team game where the ball is supposed to circulate.) Thierry Henry has been mostly bad. Sunday, Barca went to the locker room at halftime somewhat fortunate to be 0-0 against Valencia. Pep Guardiola threw Henry onto the pitch at center forward and the team played one of its best halves of the season, thrashing Los Che 3-0. Henry didn't score, but he created space for Leo Messi to hit a second half hat trick. Henry's movement, passing, and presence made the space for Messi to run riot. The game illustrated Tim Vickery's point that players are a function of their surroundings and that Messi has the perfect surroundings at Barca, but he has no help for Argentina.

That dynamic continued yesterday. Messi was absolutely sublime. He scored two, he could have scored several more, and he set up a goal with a great pass to Yaya Toure. Again, Henry didn't score, but his understanding of how to play the center forward position was critical. It will be interesting to see how Guardiola plays his hand going forward. Is Ibra now out of the first choice XI? And given that Henry is getting up there in years, how much does he need to be rested now that there will be a temptation to play him every week?

2. Am I going to have to revise my negative view of Jose Mourinho? I started to dislike him in 2005 when he brought an expensively assembled Chelsea side to the Nou Camp and promptly parked the bus, then had the nerve to allege that Frank Rijkaard had gone into the referee's locker room at halftime to alter the result. Mourinho then followed that performance by taking part in the "shit on a stick" ties with Liverpool in 2005 and 2007. So you might imagine my surprise when Mourinho's Inter arrived at Stamford Bridge defending a 2-1 first leg lead and then deployed three strikers and an attacking midfielder. (Technically, Goran Pandev might be more of an attacking midfielder than a forward, but the point remains.) Rather than committing resources to defense, Inter took control of the game and were dominant by the second half, with their winning goal coming from a mile away. I at least need to change my view of Mourinho as a dogmatic conservative. In reality, he's an extremely detailed preparer of teams who analyzes the opponent and comes up with a specific approach. In this case, he saw the weakness of the slumping Chelsea back line and went for the throat.

Also, Mourinho deserves credit for remodeling the team. It would have been tempting to make few changes to a side that won four straight Scudettos (albeit two aided by Calciopoly). Instead, he bought five players in the summer - Eto'o, Lucio, Thiago Motta, Wesley Sneijder, and Diego Milito - and then added Pandev in the winter. All six started on Tuesday. Jose has turned the team over in the space of a year and they look like a more effective force. Specifically, they finally have the player (Sneijder) who can link defense and attack. (As a Dutch fan, I have to say that watching Sneijder and Robben drag their teams forward in Europe is an encouraging sight.)

3. On a related note, is it possible that Manchester United is better without Cristiano Ronaldo in the same way that Inter are better without Ibra? United lost the former World Player of the Year, but the side that they have now fits together a little better. Everyone has their role, namely Rooney scoring goals and everyone else on the team supplying him. They're like a Christmas tree with Rooney as the star on the top. On the other hand, United's back line isn't nearly what it's been for the past two years. Rio Ferdinand's health is questionable and Nemanja Vidic has had a noticeable drop in form. I'd be very interested to see them play Inter again to measure how United would defend the suddenly potent Nerazzurri.

4. I was definitely underwhelmed by the supposedly new and improved Bayern. Bayern have been torrid in the Bundesliga for months, but in their two matches against Serie A also-ran Fiorentina, they were outplayed for long stretches (and saved by some really shaky refereeing in the first leg by B&B favorite Tom Henning Ovrebo). I could just hear Der Kaiser grumbling away (in a language I don't speak), especially about the defense that could not handle Stevan Jovetic in either game. Daniel van Buyten was especially weak. Going forward, Louis van Gaal's strategy will have to be to put opponents under so much pressure with Robben, Ribery, and Gomez that the defenders have little to do.

5. My ranking of the remaining eight contenders headed into the quarterfinals:

Barca
United
Inter
Arsenal
Bordeaux
Lyon
Bayern
CSKA

I feel bad putting a quality Bordeaux team outside of the top four. If they draw one of the top four, they are going to have their chance for a coming out party. You know, the sort of coming out party that it took Lyon about seven years to have.

Five Thoughts on the Champions League Semifinals

1. This has been the best Champions League in recent memory in terms of exciting knock-out games. Pair this tournament with a proper football-playing Spain winning the Euros and I think that soccer is in a great patch right now in terms of risk-taking and excitement in big games. I'd like to think that Spain winning the Euros caused club managers to come out from their shells, but I don't really believe that. I will say that I can see a phenomenon where managers copy what other managers are doing. There is some sort of collective effect occurring where manager A sees that manager B isn't playing nine behind the ball and decides that he can push players forward, as well.

2. If not for the ridiculous Babel penalty at Anfield last year, the four teams in the 2008 and 2009 semifinals would be identical. This is probably something that concerns Michel Platini, although he ought to start by pointing his finger at the management of clubs like Milan and Real Madrid who have wasted resources and put out mediocre teams full of past-their-prime players for the last several years. The problem that he is probably grappling with right now is that the Big Four in England have asserted total control over the most lucrative league in the world. The question is whether Milan, Madrid, Juve, Bayern, etc. can compete with the Big Four if they get their s*** together. Barca can compete, but are they an aberration or a realistic possibility for the rest of the Continental elite.

3. Prior to yesterday, Ronaldo had taken the most shots of any player in the Champions League, but he had only scored once. I guess that goal made up for that stat. United fans, do you still want him to piss off to Madrid?

4. I cannot wait for Xavi/Iniesta/Toure vs. Lampard/Essien/Ballack in the midfield. For my money, those are the two best central midfields in the world. Gerrard/Alonso/Mascherano come very close. While plenty of attention has been paid to Bayern's inept back-line against Barca, their inability to stop Barca's central midfield from doing whatever it wanted to do was a major issue in their first half capitulation. Chelsea will do much better. That said, they have several match-up issues with the Blaugrana:

• Ashley Cole is suspended for the first leg, so who plays left back against Messi and Alves?
• Barca's biggest weakness is defending their flanks, especially the right flank because Alves gets forward so much. The problem for Chelsea is that their wide offensive players - Anelka, Malouda, and Kalou - are nothing special. Weakness against weakness?
• Gerard Pique can be vulnerable against quick forwards, but he can hold his own against bigger guys like, say, Didier Drogba.

On the other hand, Chelsea are excellent on set pieces and Barca do not defend them especially well, so there is some potential there for Chelsea to get goals. Chelsea also get the benefit of Barca having to go to the Bernabeu in between the first leg and second leg.

5. I'm not alleging any sort of conspiracy here, but didn't Howard Webb have a little bit of a conflict of interest when he was the referee for Barca-Bayern when the winner was going to play an EPL side. Funny that he gave Barca's best player a yellow card for having the temerity to be obviously fouled in the box by Christian Lell.

Right now, I'm picking a rematch of the 2006 Final (Barcelona vs. Arsenal), but no pairing of the four remaining teams would be especially surprising.

In the End, One of us will be Drunk

Frequent commenter and former legal colleague Klinsi is either very brave or very foolish, as he has taken a bet with on the aggregate outcome of the two Barca-Stuttgart matches in the Champions League. Barca has won four in a row by an aggregate score of 13-3 while Stuttgart has lost three of their last four, including a 2-1 loss over the weekend to newly-promoted Hansa Rostock. The bet, as all good bets do, involves hard-to-find beers. If hell freezes over and Stuttgart wins, I have to buy Klinsi a case of something called Stuttgarter Hofbrau, about which Klinsi surely has a story that starts with a lot of drinking at a long wooden table in 1988 and ends in the arms of a Belgian temptress names Anaïs behind a dumpster:



If Barca win, then Klinsi is on the hook for a case of the beer than has inspired countless stumbles and pratfalls by inebriated tourists on Las Ramblas (as well as my wife accidentally putting her hand in dog poo): Estrella Damm:



I'm probably tempting the fates by posting this, especially in light of the fact that the invaluable Yaya Toure is out for a month with a torn muscle in his leg, but, uh, I'm pretty confident. I have DVRed and watched Barca's last four games and the team is absolutely living up to expectations. Interestingly, they have gotten better since Ronaldinho's calf injury/secret suspension for being isufficiently committed to getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Playing Iniesta, a midfielder, at the left forward position instead of Ronnie has improved the offense because the ball circulates better. Toure has made the team significantly stronger defensively by preventing opponents from mounting any attacks through the middle. He can also pass the ball properly, which is a new thing for a Barca defensive mid. Eric Abidal has shored up Barca's perpetual weakness on their defensive left, although a new leak might have been sprung on the right now that Zambrotta is out and Oleguer is the new right back. Leo Messi has been playing at an unconscionably high level, Thierry Henry is finally starting to finish the bevy of chances that the side create, and Deco has been outstanding. The team of the past two weeks would walk all over Stuttgart; the question is whether a team with Oleguer at right back, Marquez in defensive midfield, a still-recovering Puyol in central defense, and Ronnie at left forward can do the same.