9 Comment

1. 

   Antonio says:

   3:42

   Lo primero, no se si ya te había felicitado por este blog, pero si no es así, lo hago ahora.
   
   Interesante artículo este que planteas. Sería interesante investigar que equipos en el mundo, o que entrenadores, mantienen una fidelidad al 3-4-3 o al 4-3-3. Hay que defenderlos a muerte. Si el Arsenal quiere jugar a la holandesa, ole Arsenal entonces

2. 

   Trapi says:

   11:04

   Hola. Acabo de descubrir tu blog y me ha encantado. Como periodista deportivo que soy, y admirador de Guardiola desde siempre, reconozco que ha supuesto una grata sorpresa encontrarme con este espacio.
   
   Seguiré visitándolo a menudo
   
   PD: Hace algo más de un año tuve la inmensa suerte de poder entrevistar a Pep. Si te interesa, ponte en contacto conmigo.

3. 

   Matías Manna says:

   20:30

   Dejo otra excelente nota que complemanta el post. "Caste for defence" escrita por Daan Schippers. Entre otras cosas explica que Koeman, por su manera de entender el juego como entrenador, no podrá ser DT del Barça.
   
   "Ronald Koeman continues to upset bigger teams in the Champions League but his defensive tactics might cost him a job at Barcelona
   
   Former Holland international Ronald Koeman was more famous for his long-range passing and ability from free-kicks – he scored Barcelona’s winner in the 1992 European Cup final from one – than his defending. But as a coach, ever since he took charge of Ajax in 2002, Benfica in 2005 and PSV Eindhoven last summer, Koeman has had to fight off accusations that he fields defensive sides for whom keeping a clean sheet is more important than scoring.
   
   These claims gathered momentum after PSV Eindhoven kept Arsenal at bay in the first leg of their knock-out tie in February, and scored a long-range goal against the run of play to help them get past last season’s Champions League runners-up. “Only one of the teams was trying to play,” said losing coach Arsene Wenger after the game, but Koeman had heard it all before.
   
   Four years ago, he was coaching Ajax when they drew 1-1 at Highbury and held Arsenal to a goalless draw in Amsterdam, to help them progress to the quarter-finals. Wenger made the same complaint then, when like now, his team had been knocked out of the competition. Koeman has the Indian sign over English opposition: last season his Benfica side knocked out Manchester United in the group stage and Liverpool in the knock-out round.
   
   His experience as a defender has informed his coaching style: remember, before he scored the free-kick that stopped England qualifying for the 1994 World Cup, he hauled down David Platt and evaded what seemed an inevitable red card; while at Barcelona, his coach Johan Cruyff employed Koeman as a ‘minder’ for Pep Guardiola. “I want to see beautiful football, but victory is the most important thing,” he told Sportweek on his appointment as PSV coach last August. “We will try to become champions in an attractive way, a way that is pleasant for the players. But victory is sacred for me.”
   
   It was never going to be easy for Koeman to replace Guus Hiddink as PSV coach. Hiddink performed minor miracles in his second spell at the club (he coached Koeman there during his first), leading them to three Dutch titles and a Champions League semi-final spot in 2005. While Ajax are supposed to play attractive football, PSV are seen as the winning football team. And Koeman does not mind that he has been labelled as a coach that, rather than creating a winning team, can maintain a winning team. “Isn’t the result the most important thing in football?” he asked recently. “We don’t play just to entertain the crowd and lose the match. I’m a realistic coach. I start with setting up a good organisation, which is based on defence. Maybe I took that from my career as a player, because I used to play there myself.”
   
   Goals are never a problem in the Dutch league – PSV average nearly 2.5 per game and have scored four goals five times this season (including a 7-0 win over Sparta) – but in Europe, the financial strength of clubs from bigger leagues makes a huge difference and PSV are forced to adapt to make life harder for their opponents. It doesn’t help that PSV’s best players are tempted away from the club every summer. “It used to be that a good defence was the defence that could play in an attacking way,” said Koeman. “Now you have to always respect the quality of the opponent. We cannot say: ‘Oh, we are the best in Europe, it doesn’t matter about the opponent.’ Sometimes you have to accept the opponent is better and do everything you can to get a good result.”
   
   Koeman’s win-at-all-costs philosophy is more suited to PSV than Ajax, according to former PSV coach Aad de Mos. “Koeman has gained big successes and is internationally recognised. He fits very well at PSV, maybe better than at Ajax. In Amsterdam they expect a different type of football,” De Mos told Voetbal International. “Koeman is realistic, as were earlier PSV coaches. Dick Advocaat, Guus Hiddink and in the past Kees Rijvers, they’ve all played 4-4-2. There’s nothing wrong with that. AZ plays 4-4-2 as well and even Ajax does in tricky away matches. But PSV is a machine. They let you have the ball and can be deadly on the counter-attack. They can play with lots of different tactics and Koeman has got the players to focus on midfield and defence. There is nothing wrong with that.”
   
   But football writer David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football, does find fault with the tactic. “The former kingpin of a great Dutch national side and of Barcelona’s ‘Dream Team’ is guilty of a sort of heresy,” he said. “He has turned his back on the credo of his mentor Cruyff and become the leading proponent of a ‘pragmatic’ new Dutch style.”
   
   Koeman’s assistant, Tonny Bruins Slot, hones PSV’s tactics and is seen as the brains behind the boss. Bruins Slot was assistant to Johan Cruyff during Barcelona’s ‘Dream Team’ era and also worked with Koeman when he won the Dutch league and Cup double with Ajax in 2002. Koeman started his coaching career at De Mos’s current club, Vitesse Arnhem, and his players remember that even then, Koeman’s tactical ability was his major strength. “It was never about playing beautiful football, but only about picking up points whenever we could,” said Theo Janssen, a midfielder in that side. “That’s why I think he is better suited to PSV, as their results always come first.”
   
   Koeman has heard that argument and disagrees. “I played with two strikers and five defenders at Ajax for a while and we got good results and everything was hunky-dory,” he said. “But at Ajax they do put pressure on you which makes it more difficult to work there.” In contrast, when Koeman switched the PSV from a 4-3-3 to a 4-4-2 in mid-season, there were no complaints. “Even if we line up with three strikers, it doesn’t mean our football will be more attractive,” he warned. After the change, though, PSV started scoring more goals.
   
   This ongoing debate has reached the Spanish league, where it is an open secret that Barcelona will be looking for a new coach this summer. Sevilla’s attacking coach Juande Ramos and Getafe’s Bernd Schuster have declared their interest and Koeman has admitted that one day he would love to coach there, saying, “The club will always be in the back of my mind, but I don’t have a clause in my contract that says I can leave if Barcelona comes knocking... but of course that’s something I would like to do in the future.”
   
   One thing in his favour is the hex he has on English teams, having knocked out three of them in the last two seasons: especially as Barcelona were eliminated from the Champions League by Chelsea and Liverpool in the last three years. In the middle of those seasons, they won the competition, playing a brand of exciting attacking football that no Koeman side has come close to. The perception that he encourages defensive, albeit successful, football remains hard to shake off and may yet cost him the Barcelona job. “Among the players it’s no issue if other teams play more attractive football,” said PSV captain and former Barcelona midfielder Phillip Cocu.
   
   “We don’t play like Ajax or AZ, but like PSV. I think we have enough attacking players in the squad. With Jefferson Farfán and Arouna Koné on the wings, you can’t say we play defensively. In the Dutch league we are expected to make the running, but nothing falls into our lap in Europe.”
   
   Cocu was also keen to note that the biggest critics of PSV’s style are the coaches whose teams are no longer in the Champions League. “Our intention is to win everything,” he added. “If some people don’t think that’s attractive, then it’s too bad for them.”
   
   The Brazilian Backbone
   
   PSV coach Ronald Koeman praised the efforts of defensive duo Heurelho Gomes, and Alex, after edging past Arsenal in the last round. The Brazilian duo were outstanding in both ties, Gomes making world-class saves while Alex, whose own goal had brought Arsenal level, scored the winner with a towering header at the Emirates Stadium.
   
   This is not the first time Gomes has impressed in the competition: he saved penalties from Lyon players Michael Essien and Eric Abidal in helping PSV reach the Champions League semi-finals in 2005 and has claimed his penalty-saving expertise could help PSV go even further. “I learned my penalty-saving technique in Brazil,” Gomes said. “You have to keep still and wait for the player to shape to shoot.”
   
   PSV’s European Cup-winning goalkeeper Hans van Breukelen has said that Gomes’s 6’5” frame, long reach and size-10 gloves are his huge advantage: “His arms are incredible, I have never seen arms that long in my life.”
   
   Gomes moved to Holland from Cruzeiro in 2004, a conscious decision to follow the example of compatriots Romario and Ronaldo. “They became world-class stars by choosing PSV Eindhoven and this has convinced every player in Brazil that it is better to go to Holland,” he said. Gomes did not take long to adapt to Europe, and in his first season went 971 minutes without conceding a league goal, putting him second in the all-time Dutch goalless-run list. Earlier this season, he went 956 minutes without conceding, putting him third in the same list.
   
   Just in front of him is Alex, who came to prominence as a 20-year-old during his first season with Santos in 2002, when they won the Brazilian championship. He was signed by Chelsea in 2004 and this is his third season on loan in Holland. “He is a fantastic defender and in the really big games, the best players show themselves,” said Koeman. “Sometimes, in the Dutch league he loses concentration more easily because the level’s not as high. But he’s one of the best central defenders and I’m amazed that he is still playing with us.”
   
   Koeman added that Alex, nicknamed ‘The Tank’, was undroppable from his side, even if Chelsea end up facing PSV later in the competition. “He’s a player of Chelsea and PSV rent him from Chelsea,” he added. “But he can play against them because he is registered to us for the whole season.”

4. 

   Matías Manna says:

   20:56

   Otra lectura recomendable. Dialogo entre David Winner, Neeskens, sobre Australia y "dutch style"
   
   Craig Foster: Fundamentally we're playing a completely different game of football. Hiddink had an extremely short space of time to change things. Essentially, coming out of Dutch football is one of the most tactical football cultures, certainly in the world. So our football historically is derived from the British game, which is very much a physical game, and tactically and in terms of technique, we say technically, is quite some distance behind the more technical European cultures of France, Italy and certainly Holland. Hiddink comes from that. Frank Farina comes from our culture, so that if you watch the performances of the Socceroos in the last five years and even going way back; I was watching a 1985 game the other day, and it was just horrid to watch.
   
   It's very much based on, We're going to work very hard, we're going to close people down, we're going to tackle, we're going to go forward, we're going to try our best. That's a physical football culture. Hiddink came in and changed it overnight, because overnight he said, in the first training session, he said to the Australian press: The problem with Australian players is that they're over-committed. He said, They just rush in and play with their passion and their heart, rather than with their head.
   
   And the Dutch coaching culture is based on technique and tactics, rather than the physical side. They don't want to be particularly strong, some are, defenders, but in general they want players who are technically very, very skilled. He came in and said, Right, first thing we're going to rein back on that, we're going to start to learn a tactically higher level of game, which is based on possession of the football. That's where it all begins from and that is what we've missed in this country for 30 years.
   
   DUTCH FOOTBALL CHANT
   
   Dan Hirst: At the World Cup this year, Australia will be one of four teams with Dutch coaches, and this brand of football that's so popular the world over, was born out of a football revolution in Amsterdam during the late '60s when the club Ajax Amsterdam developed a system of play now known as 'total football'. David Winner is the author of 'Brilliant Orange, the Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football', which tells the history of the Dutch Game.
   
   David Winner: Well 'total football' is a term that refers really to the football as it was played in the 1970s when this emerged. The Dutch had, until the mid-'60s, been nowhere in international football. Every now and again they'd produce a decent player, but they weren't professional and they weren't renowned for anything. They were third, fourth rank in Europe, let alone the world, and then there was a football revolution to go along with a sort of cultural, political, social, sexual revolution, centred on Amsterdam in the mid to late '60s, and coincidentally, this was when a generation of extraordinary talents centred around a genius called Johan Cruyff, emerged in football, first at the Ajax Club and later in the national team, and they played a style that had never really been seen before.
   
   It involved relentless attack, it was technically very beautiful, it was full of imagination and style and swagger, and it was also tactically, completely new, in that there were two elements to it. One is that instead of rigid fixed positions in the old-fashioned English, perhaps Australian way of playing, the players were not just allowed, but encouraged to switch with each other and rotate all around the field, so you'd have defenders popping up in attack, and attackers clearing balls off the goal line and so on. That was one element, the position switching. And then they would attack all through the game, and they would press the opponents deep into their own half, so they'd be defending kind of on the half-way line. It was spectacular to watch, and its finest moment was in the 1974 World Cup, which coincidentally was the last time Australia were there.
   
   Dan Hirst: That Dutch 1974 team made it to the World Cup Final only to be beaten by arch rivals Germany. But they're still often hailed as the best national team never to win football's top prize. And at the heart of the Dutch midfield in 1974, was one Johan Neeskens. The Dutch legend is now Guus Hiddink's right-hand man and was made Australia's assistant coach last year. Neeskens says that period in Dutch football is still celebrated the world over.
   
   Johan Neeskens: Yes, because they always were talking about the great time in the '70s with the great team like Ajax Amsterdam, but also like the national team, what we have shown in '74 in the World Championship in Germany. We lost unfortunately, the final, but everybody was impressed by the way of the 'total football' that the Dutch team has played there.
   
   Dan Hirst: And they played beautiful football; that's quite important isn't it, not just winning, that's part of the total football ethic?
   
   Johan Neeskens: Yes, of course now we always go thinking winning is very important and very nice, but also playing good and attractive soccer that people who come and watch the game, that they are happy and enthusiastic about the way the team has played. So it is not only defending a lot and maybe one or two counters and try to score, no. You always try to dominate your opponents the way you like to play, that you can show the people and they go happy at home.
   
   Dan Hirst: Do you feel a sense of pride that you were part of the early development of total football, and now you've gone to see the evolution of that be taken to so many countries around the world, and you yourself are teaching the Australian team those tactics?
   
   Johan Neeskens: I think every player who played in that time, I think can be proud that you were part of that team, and now to be part of one of the best coaches in the world, and I worked together with him, also in France with the national team with him, and now with Australia, I'd be very happy to be part of that so I can perform well with the Australian team.
   
   Dan Hirst: Former Dutch national team player, Johan Neeskens who's now assistant coach of the Socceroos.
   
   The author of 'Brilliant Orange', David Winner says total football came about because of a uniquely Dutch way of thinking. He says total football reflects the culture, philosophy, and even the geography of the Netherlands.
   
   David Winner: Nobody had ever played in quite the Dutch way. It was characterised by very elegant, intricate passing, and a kind of way of treating the field like an accordion. You could squeeze it and make it big, depending on what your needs were. And this I think comes out of a very long Dutch tradition of using space in a very creative, original, clever way. The Dutch don't have very much space in their tiny country, much of which they had to dredge out of the sea, the Polderlands, so they always did very clever things with space, and you see it in their landscape, you see it in their architecture, you see it in their art, as well. Look at a painting by Vermeer or the church painter, Saenredam, and then you look at what the classic Dutch footballers have done on the field, and you realise you're looking at something that's the product of the same sensibility.
   
   Dan Hirst: As well as this use of space, you talk about this idea of totality, and how that is also seen in Dutch architecture as well as Dutch football.
   
   David Winner: In most areas of Dutch life, actually. They live in a very public way; the individual is always in Dutch society, responsible to wider society in a way that's slightly less individualistic than say, Britain or Australia. You see it in their transport system - this isn't in the book, but it's just occurred to me, that you don't just buy a ticket on a railway in Holland, you can also buy a ticket that will take you on a railway and then the whole transport system, every tram in the country, you can use the same ticket, and then you can get a ticket for a train and a taxi, so they're thinking about what is the social purpose of this person's journey? And they plan for every eventuality.
   
   And there was some of that in the football. So the Dutch way of thinking about how to read a football game is not you just stick in your position, you do if you're a fullback, your job is to defend against the winger coming against you, and then clear the ball off the goal line, and cover up to somebody in the middle of the field. No, you have to be aware of what's going on right at the other end of the field. Every player on the team has to know and be thinking ahead to try to solve the problems spatially, of every event on the field. That's a really Dutch way of thinking about things.
   
   Commentator: ... the space it. Here's Harry Kewell, he's hit it - and it's in! Australia has scored!! Marco Bresciano ...
   
   Dan Hirst: So how are the Socceroos players themselves coping with the shift towards the Dutch way of thinking. I caught up with goal scoring hero from the Uruguay matches, Marco Bresciano, who was enjoying his morning espresso in a noisy café in Parma in Italy, where he plays his club football. And I asked him if he and his team mates have had to change the way they think on the park.
   
   Marco Bresciano: Obviously yeah, because it's probably different to what every other player is used to, besides Jason [Culina] and now Archie Thompson, they are now based in Holland. But I think every league, has got their own style of play, and we are now probably adjusting to the Dutch style of play, which obviously, it's a thinking game as well, just the positioning on the park, and the movements.
   
   Dan Hirst: Is it a style of play that you like playing?
   
   Marco Bresciano: Yeah, because it's free-flowing as well. So it's quick football as well. So something that I think anyone likes, because it's a lot of players get involved.
   
   Dan Hirst: It's kind of democratic in a way, because everyone has to play every position.
   
   Marco Bresciano: Exactly. So I guess it feels like it's more of a team, because everyone's got an important part in the team.
   
   Dan Hirst: Socceroo Marco Bresciano who's likely to play a huge role in Australia's World Cup campaign under the great Dutch manager, Guus Hiddink. And while Hiddink has the great tradition of Dutch football behind him, his other great strength is his ability to get the best out of less fancied teams. His crowning glory was taking South Korea to the semi-finals last World Cup. The author David Winner says the Socceroos could also play above themselves in Germany.
   
   David Winner: One of the elements of the classic, the great total football, was that it was almost all geniuses on the field, and Australia doesn't quite have that talent, any more than South Korea did in the last World Cup. But Guus Hiddink is not just an idealist in football, though he is that, but he's also immensely pragmatic, and very sensible and very brilliant at getting the best out of his players in whatever level of football he's playing. So you will see a tremendously well organised, tremendously coherent I think, Australian team, you'll be playing an attacking style because that's Hiddink's trademark which is a Dutch trademark, which will involve a lot of intelligent use of space off the ball as well as with it.
   
   Some of these things are no longer classically only Dutch, it's the modern way of playing since this revolution I talked about in the '70s, but you'll have an attacking, coherent, well-motivated and tremendously well organised and fit Australian team, which will give opponents a hard time I think, even Brazil.
   
   Dan Hirst: I hardly think Ronaldinho and his Brazilian team-mates are shaking in their boots, but all the teams in Australia's World Cup group, Brazil, Croatia and Japan, will be well aware that Hiddink has already taken two teams to the semi-finals: in 1998 his homeland The Netherlands, and then in 2002, Hiddink's South Korea beat some of the best teams around, like Spain, Italy and Portugal. And those mighty feats have made Hiddink a national hero wherever he's gone.
   
   Craig Foster: There's been great stories here about back in his home town in Holland they have a museum of Guus Hiddink now, and his history, for Korean visitors. Because after what he did in 2002 when all of Korea effectively took the streets, and I think they gave him numerous properties on an island somewhere, and they gave him all sorts of things, and made him an honorary citizen and the whole lot; I mean he can't walk into Korea, he's one of the most famous people now in history for them. And they still make a pilgrimage to Holland to go and see his home town and see. That's the sort of rarefied air that this guy operates in, and I think his reputation has only grown through his work with Australia.
   
   Dan Hirst: He's taken these two teams to the World Cup Semi-Finals, both Holland and Korea; are we getting our own hopes up to believe that we can get that far?
   
   Craig Foster: Not really. The thing about Australians is, even when we weren't that well organised, we're the best competitors that there is. And our guys are all playing in Europe professionally, whereas the South Koreans, quite a number of them weren't. The advantage you had with Holland is that they're quite frankly a far better football nation, far more advanced than us. South Korea, he had the benefit of having 18 months with the team, not only 10 months by the time we hit the June World Cup in Germany. So he had an enormous amount of time, he had them in camp as well. Most of the South Koreans were playing domestically in Korea, with the exception, I don't know, probably a handful, and he could work with them all the time. He actually put them in camp and he argued and received the right to do that.
   
   So he had benefits with both those he doesn't have with us, thirdly, we have a stronger group than I think either of those did, you know, you talk about Japan, the Asian champions, Croatia who had a magnificent qualifying campaign through their European group, and are very, very strong, and of course Brazil, who is really putting out in Germany, one of the greatest national teams ever to be assembled. They're almost going back to their 1970 great side. So we're up against it from those terms.
   
   And so when he was at the draw, if you watched the draw on SBS FIFA World Cup draw last December, they asked him straight after the draw, and he said, 'Well, it's mathematically possible, but practically it's difficult to get through.' That really sums up, to me, the man, but it also sums up this Dutch technical culture. We would have said, 'Oh well, it's really tough and we'll go and give it our best and we'll have a go.' He says, 'No, no, it's possible, but practically we'll have to see how we go.'
   
   Commentator: ... and success and Guus Hiddink is a legend.
   
   Commentator: Oh, he's a freak, he's a genius. And his legend grows.

5. 

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   14:00

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7. 

   Joseph Kovacs says:

   3:11

   manda carallo (permíteme la expresión); has sido un visionario y has acertado en todo. Guardiola nos ha devuelto el fútbol.

8. 

   Joseph Kovacs says:

   0:54

   HOla, oye, había que contactar con editoriales (a lo mejor tú ahí en argentina lo tienes más fácil) para que traduzcan y publiquen el libro de The brilliant orange, es una maravilla.

9. 

   Matías Manna says:

   12:00

   Excelente idea Chris!
   
   Vamos a ver cómo podemos hacer. David Winner es un frecuente entrevistado por este medio. Voy a ver cómo puedo hacer para acordar con él.