The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines

by Michael Cox

  Shortly afterwards, Balotelli became an ambassador for firework safety ahead of Bonfire Night. ‘They can be very dangerous if they are not used in the right way,’ he confirmed. ‘People should follow the firework code.’ Balotelli proved one of English football’s most compelling characters, also receiving attention for his inability to put on a training bib, for being substituted after attempting a backheeled finish when through one on one in a friendly, and for being arrested back in Italy for breaking into a women’s prison to have a look around. For all the viral moments, however, Balotelli was sometimes devastatingly effective on the pitch – never more so than in that famous 6–1.

  City were top for the majority of the campaign, but appeared to have blown their title chances with a run of one victory from five matches in spring. But then United slipped up with a shock 1–0 loss at Wigan, followed by an extraordinary 4–4 draw with Everton, when they’d led 4–2 with seven minutes remaining. With three games left, City were three points behind United but had a superior goal difference – and the next game was the Manchester derby at the Etihad. A City victory would make them title favourites, while United could play for a draw.

  It showed. In the closest thing the Premier League has witnessed to a genuine title decider, United were astonishingly negative. Park Ji-sung was fielded centrally to nullify Touré but performed poorly and kept losing his balance, while Nasri and Silva drifted in behind Carrick and Scholes to ensure City dominated the centre along with Agüero and Tevez – who had suddenly reappeared after burying the hatchet with Mancini. Ryan Giggs’s narrowness on United’s left opened up space for City right-back Pablo Zabaleta to force spells of pressure, and from Nasri’s corner from that flank, captain Vincent Kompany powered home the crucial winner. It finished 1–0, a slender victory, but United performed considerably worse than in the 6–1.

  City’s penultimate victory was a 2–0 win at Newcastle, sealed after Mancini surprisingly introduced De Jong for Nasri, freeing Touré to push forward and score both goals. Then came the Premier League’s most dramatic day. City and United were level on 86 points, but City boasted a considerably better goal difference, and were at home to relegation-threatened QPR. City had the best home record in the division, QPR the worst away record. An easy home win seemed inevitable.

  At Sunderland Wayne Rooney headed United into an early lead, so United had done their part and were relying upon QPR. City’s display was extremely nervy and they took nearly 45 minutes to go ahead through Zabaleta. But shortly into the second half Djibril Cissé equalised for QPR, who were still desperately fighting for survival. Their prospects of beating the drop took a significant hit, however, when their captain Joey Barton got himself dismissed for elbowing Tevez, and reacted with typically good grace by kicking Agüero and headbutting Kompany on his way off the pitch. QPR were surely doomed, with 35 minutes remaining, a numerical deficit and knowing a single concession could condemn them to relegation. But, remarkably, ten minutes later they counter-attacked through Shaun Wright-Phillips, who crossed for Jamie Mackie’s precise headed goal. QPR were 2–1 ahead, and suddenly City required two goals in 25 minutes.

  By this stage, the home side were panicking, but Mancini introduced Džeko in place of Barry, and then Balotelli – who had recently been dismissed against Arsenal, with Mancini promising he’d never play for City again – in place of Tevez. These changes proved crucial.

  As the clocked ticked past 90 minutes, Manchester City still trailed 2–1. Manchester United had won 1–0 and were ready to celebrate on the Sunderland pitch. But equally crucial was what had happened at the Britannia, where Stoke’s Jon Walters scored his second goal of the game to equalise against former club Bolton Wanderers. This is a hugely underrated goal in terms of its probable bearing upon what followed; it meant Bolton, who needed to win to stay up, were relegated. On hearing that result, a member of QPR’s coaching staff shouted across to his players, ‘We’re safe! We’re safe!’ While it’s impossible to be certain of the significance of that call, it surely affected QPR’s concentration.

  Still, City still needed two goals and attacked with incredible force. Their tally of 44 shots against QPR is the most in Premier League history, and, brilliantly, they scored with their 43rd and 44th attempts. First, supersub Džeko powered home Silva’s corner, and then almost immediately City attacked once again. The ball found its way to Balotelli, who recorded his first and only Premier League assist by finding the composure to slip in Agüero. The Argentine took a touch, steadied himself and then crashed home the winning goal to send the entire Etihad wild. And it was literally the entire Etihad – QPR supporters, now assured of their team’s survival, decided to celebrate the goal for the sheer lunacy of it all. City were champions because their goal difference was 12 better than United’s – and, with 6–1 and 1–0 victories over their city rivals, that exact goal difference had come from those two Manchester derbies. In the dying seconds of the Premier League’s 20th season, the division now had an undisputable greatest-ever moment.

  Yet just like Ancelotti, Mancini was fired after a second-place finish the following season. Was his problem the same as Ancelotti’s, a lack of a clear identity? Quite possibly. In a confusing statement confirming his sacking, City said Mancini had failed to meet targets and, notably, ‘combined with an identified need to develop a holistic approach to all aspects of football at the club, has meant that the decision has been taken to find a new manager’. That implied that City wanted an overarching ideology, which Mancini never truly provided.

  There was also another Italian success that season, one almost as dramatic as Mancini’s. In March Abramovich decided to sack Ancelotti’s replacement, André Villas-Boas, a young coach whose approach to football certainly possessed a very clear identity – it just didn’t suit Chelsea’s players. He was replaced on a caretaker basis by his assistant Roberto Di Matteo, the former Chelsea midfielder who had taken West Bromwich Albion to the Premier League before being dismissed because of his team’s defensive shortcomings. Somehow, he turned Chelsea into an extraordinarily solid defensive side that produced an astonishingly unlikely Champions League victory.

  After turning around a two-goal deficit to Napoli and easing past Benfica, there came an extraordinary two-legged semi-final against Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona side, who were European champions and overwhelming favourites. Pep Guardiola’s Barca played some astonishing football in the first leg at Stamford Bridge, but Chelsea produced a classic counter-attacking performance and scored on the stroke of half-time. Frank Lampard played a long, diagonal ball to the energetic Ramires, who crossed for Didier Drogba to convert. Somehow, and thanks partly to excellent midfield positioning from Lampard, Jon Obi Mikel and Raul Meireles, Chelsea saw out the game 1–0.

  The away leg was even crazier. Barcelona went into a 2–0 lead thanks to goals from Sergio Busquets and Andrés Iniesta, while Chelsea had captain John Terry dismissed for needlessly kneeing Alexis Sánchez. But then, again on the stroke of half-time, Chelsea scored another crucial goal. Again it involved a long diagonal from Lampard into Ramires, who this time didn’t look for Drogba and instead produced a wonderful, entirely uncharacteristic chip to put Chelsea ahead on away goals. It was still an uphill struggle. With Terry dismissed and Gary Cahill off injured, Chelsea were forced to play Branislav Ivanović and José Bosingwa as their centre-back pairing, with Ramires at right-back, while Drogba spent most of the game on the left wing. Chelsea played extremely deep and extremely narrow, defended brilliantly and were fortunate Lionel Messi missed a penalty. Somehow, Chelsea actually ended up winning the tie thanks to a breakaway goal from the comically out-of-sorts Fernando Torres.

  Most miraculously, Chelsea repeated that performance against Bayern in the final – which was effectively an away game, at Munich’s Allianz Arena. This was another backs-to-the-wall defensive effort, with Bayern battering Chelsea throughout and going ahead late through Thomas Müller. But then the ultimate big-game player, Drogba, pro
duced a thumping near-post header to equalise with Chelsea’s first shot on target in the 88th minute. Extra-time was even more one-sided, and again the opposition’s star player wasted a penalty, with ex-Chelsea winger Arjen Robben’s effort foiled by Petr Čech. It came down to a shootout, something Chelsea had bad memories of. But, for once, the Germans didn’t win on penalties – and Drogba converted the final spot-kick to seal a barely believable victory.

  Just like Manchester United’s triumph in 1999 and Liverpool’s in 2005, this was an entirely bonkers Champions League success for an English side – Chelsea had been completely dominated, 35 shots to 9, and required an improbable comeback to win. These three victories supported the old cliché about English sides: lacking in technical and tactical quality, but full of hunger, determination and never-say-die spirit. Chelsea, like Liverpool in 2005, had actually slipped outside the Premier League’s qualifying spots for the following season’s competition, although they sealed their requalification as holders.

  Yet like Ancelotti and Mancini, Di Matteo didn’t last long. Despite this Champions League success – and also guiding Chelsea to the FA Cup just beforehand – Di Matteo was dismissed six months later following a Champions League defeat to Juventus, which left Chelsea on the brink of an early exit. ‘The team’s recent performances and results have not been good enough and the owner and board felt a change was necessary to keep the club moving in the right direction,’ read a Chelsea statement. Di Matteo had embraced more positive football for the new season, incorporating recent signings Eden Hazard and Oscar in the same side as Juan Mata, creating the most technically impressive Chelsea team of the Abramovich era. In the league they were just four points behind leaders Manchester City, who they were hosting that weekend. It was, among stiff competition, Abramovich’s harshest sacking considering Di Matteo’s tremendous success in such a short period.

  2012 also saw the departure of another Italian manager. England boss Fabio Capello, who had achieved impressive qualifying results but whose tactics proved unsuccessful at the 2010 World Cup, resigned in February. It happened in quite extraordinary circumstances and was linked to the fallout from John Terry being charged with racially abusing QPR’s Anton Ferdinand. Terry was stripped of the England captaincy pending his trial in the summer, a decision Capello disagreed with, and the Italian resigned in protest. ‘I cannot permit interference from the FA in my work,’ he explained. That was a perfectly honourable stance, although the FA’s decision was surely more justifiable than Capello’s own decision to strip Terry of the captain’s armband two years earlier over allegations he’d had an affair with the ex-partner of former Chelsea teammate Wayne Bridge.

  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the tiresome debate about whether Terry should wear an armband, Capello had little impact upon English football. Players disliked his stern disciplinarian manner, but more crucially found his tactics alarmingly simple. England usually played a flat, boxy 4–4–2, while Capello continued with immobile target man Emile Heskey up front at the World Cup, despite the Aston Villa striker hitting just three goals in the preceding Premier League campaign. It’s notable that England’s two foreign coaches, Eriksson and Capello, have both been wedded to 4–4–2 and traditional English centre-forwards more than any homegrown England managers during the Premier League era.

  Meanwhile it was difficult to pinpoint any particular legacy from the reigns of Ancelotti, Mancini and Di Matteo – despite the fact that, between 2010 and 2012 they won two league titles, the Champions League and all three FA Cups. The impact of French coaches Arsène Wenger and Gérard Houllier in the late 1990s was clear, as was the transformative effect of Iberian managers José Mourinho and Rafael Benítez in the mid-2000s. The early 2010s, then, should have been about Italians re-educating the English about tactics – but teams wanted a positive identity, and Italian coaches weren’t famed for that. Top teams now elsewhere for tactical inspiration: Spain.

  20

  Tiki-Taka

  ‘If you are better than the opponent with the ball, you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game.’

  Brendan Rodgers

  The overwhelming majority of the Premier League’s significant tactical influences have been foreign, but there’s been a shift through three completely different forms of foreign revolutionaries.

  In the division’s formative years it was largely about the arrival of foreign players, with the likes of Eric Cantona, Dennis Bergkamp and Gianfranco Zola particularly pivotal. Then, it became about foreign managers, with Arsène Wenger, José Mourinho and Rafael Benítez offering notable legacies: better physical conditioning, new formations, more attention paid to opposition tactics. Later, however, it became about foreign teams. As English football broadened its horizons, actually participating in the Premier League was no longer a prequisitite for becoming a major influence on it.

  Around the turn of the decade, world football’s dominant club side and its dominant international side were effectively the same thing. Barcelona won the Champions League in both 2009 and 2011 with a ground-breaking system featuring Lionel Messi as a false nine and a remarkable commitment to the dominance of possession. Barcelona’s players, albeit without Messi, also comprised the majority of Spain’s starting XI during this period, and the national side achieved the historic feat of winning three consecutive major international tournaments: Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. That four-year period, also the four years when Barcelona were coached by Pep Guardiola, saw possession football popularised like never before.

  This was a hugely significant development. As a player, Guardiola was a gifted deep playmaker who held his position and spread possession reliably from flank to flank, the symbol of Barcelona’s ideals. But his top-level career was effectively over at the age of just 32, and he moved to Qatar and Mexico because no major European clubs wanted him. Guardiola, entirely reasonably, blamed the shifting demands upon central midfielders. ‘I haven’t changed … my skills haven’t declined,’ he claimed in a 2004 interview published in The Times. ‘It’s just that football now is different, it’s played at a higher pace and it’s a lot more physical. The tactics are different now, you have to be a ball-winner, a tackler, like Patrick Vieira or Edgar Davids. If you can pass too, well, that’s a bonus. But the emphasis, as far as central midfielders are concerned, is all on defensive work … players like me have become extinct.’

  A look across the Premier League demonstrated that nicely, as there were very few genuine deep-lying playmakers. The likes of Vieira, Claude Makélélé, Didi Hamann and Roy Keane dominated, although in 2004 Liverpool signed Xabi Alonso, a creative rather than destructive deep midfielder. Other exceptions could be found at mid-table clubs: Manchester City’s American deep-lying playmaker Claudio Reyna was hugely underrated, while Blackburn’s Tugay Kerimoğlu also deserved to play for a bigger side. ‘He’s a one-off, he’s creative and a different type of player to the holding player most teams employ,’ said his manager Mark Hughes. That was a prescient comment – there simply weren’t many deep-lying playmakers around. ‘People say to me, “Don’t you wish he was 10 years younger?” My answer is “No,” because if he was, he would be at Barcelona.’

  During their joint spell of success, Barcelona and Spain both featured, at various points, the likes of Carles Puyol, Gerard Piqué, Jordi Alba, Cesc Fàbregas, Pedro Rodríguez and David Villa. But the most important link was the wonderful midfield trio of Sergio Busquets, Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta. All three grew up in Barcelona’s La Masia academy, where they were schooled in the importance of possession football thanks to the legacy of Total Football architects Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff, and told to learn from the playmaking skills of Guardiola. In Barcelona’s midfield trio, Busquets sat deep and protected the defence, Xavi played to the right, orchestrating play, while Iniesta slalomed forward into attack. Spain were even more dependent upon midfield passers; their midfield and attack were similar to Barcelona’s, but they couldn’t count upon Messi a
nd therefore utilised another deep-lying playmaker, Xabi Alonso, with Iniesta moving into the forward trio alongside Villa and Pedro.

  Barcelona and Spain’s greatest legacy wasn’t their astonishing run of trophies, but in convincing the rest of Europe to play possession football. No one else, however, could depend upon an overarching philosophy that had been in place for decades, and only Barcelona had the five-foot-seven trio who were, according to the 2010 Ballon d’Or results, the world’s three greatest footballers: Messi, Iniesta and Xavi. The two Spanish midfielders were particularly militant about their footballing principles. Iniesta recalled his footballing education with the simple phrase: ‘Receive, pass, offer. Receive, pass, offer.’ That’s what he did, again and again and again, while Xavi outlined something similar. ‘I get the ball, I pass the ball. I get the ball, I pass the ball. I get the ball, I pass the ball.’ The repetition should be infuriating, but it perfectly replicated the feeling of watching their endless passing moves.

  This overwhelming focus upon short passing became widely referred to as ‘tiki-taka’. The phrase was intended as a term of derision when coined by Javier Clemente, who won two league titles with Athletic Bilbao – traditionally Spanish football’s most direct major side – in the 1980s, and who later coached Spain. Clemente was effectively a Spanish Tony Pulis, renowned for favouring direct and physical football, and it’s notable how similar ‘tiki-taka’ is to the dismissive English phrase for unnecessary short passing. When Pulis took charge of West Brom he vowed not to copy previous managers who had ‘played tippy-tappy football, and not winning football’.