by Michael Cox
This moment, while utterly surreal, somehow felt fitting. Football’s hugely increased popularity in England had started before the formation of the Premier League, with England’s run to the 1990 World Cup semi-final in Italy. ‘It was a seminal moment in terms of football in this country,’ recalled Lineker, England’s star striker at the tournament. ‘Lots of different kinds of people got interested in football, all different classes of people, and I think it had a significant effect on the growth of football.’ The BBC famously soundtracked the tournament with Luciano Pavarotti’s version of ‘Nessun dorma’; this piece of music subsequently held a special place in the hearts of English football fans, immediately conjuring up that tournament – and that tournament alone.
Using ‘Nessun dorma’ in another footballing context was unthinkable. But then again, so was Leicester City winning the Premier League.
25
Second Balls & Back Threes
‘Sooner or later, a coach has to prove himself in the Premier League.’
Pep Guardiola
By the time the Premier League celebrated its 25th season it was unquestionably home to European football’s greatest talents.
Not, however, in terms of footballers. Only two Premier League players finished in the top ten for the 2016 Ballon d’Or voting – and they were Leicester duo Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, who were both enduring hugely disappointing post-title seasons as the Foxes found themselves battling against relegation. Three other Premier League players received a handful of votes: Manchester United’s new duo of Zlatan Ibrahimović and Paul Pogba, both being recognised for performances for other sides, while West Ham’s Dimitri Payet received a single vote but was on the verge of returning to France. The top six players in the world, according to this vote, were all based in Spain, and three of them – Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suárez and Gareth Bale – had all departed for La Liga, having effectively outgrown the Premier League.
In managerial terms, however, the Premier League offered up Europe’s finest. Arsène Wenger and Mauricio Pochettino were still in place at Arsenal and Tottenham respectively, Jürgen Klopp was starting his first full season as Liverpool manager, while José Mourinho had recovered from his setback at Chelsea to be appointed at Manchester United and Ronald Koeman had jumped ship from Southampton to Everton. Most excitingly, Manchester City had appointed Pep Guardiola, the coach who had done so much to influence Premier League tactics before he’d even arrived on these shores, while Chelsea appointed Antonio Conte, who had transformed Juventus before impressing as manager of the Italian national side.
The seven favourites for the Premier League, therefore, were led by managers from seven different countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Italy and Argentina. Between them they’d lifted no fewer than 26 major European league titles, with only the up-and-coming Pochettino not contributing to this figure. Of course, this stellar group didn’t even take account of the Premier League’s reigning champion, Claudio Ranieri.
The Premier League’s managerial line-up therefore boasted its most exciting combination ever, a level of talent and diversity never previously witnessed. Following a few seasons during which Premier League sides struggled with their organisation, strategy and tactics – reflected in their mediocre Champions League performances – suddenly England was the place to go for top-class coaching. Amazingly, even the second tier was home to two Champions League-winning managers: Newcastle’s Rafael Benítez and Aston Villa’s Roberto Di Matteo. Winning club football’s greatest prize was no guarantee of a top job.
The jewel in the crown was Guardiola. Upon taking charge of Barcelona in 2009 he’d won three La Liga titles in four seasons, then enjoyed a season-long sabbatical before moving to Bayern Munich and triumphing for three successive Bundesliga seasons. Appointing Guardiola was seemingly a guarantee of success, and yet he offered so much more than simply results, particularly the clear footballing identity that had seemingly become the Premier League’s most prized quality. Manchester United and Chelsea were both keen on Guardiola too, and he would surely have been a perfect post-Wenger replacement at Arsenal. But Manchester City won the race to land the most revered coach of his generation, in part because they’d appointed Guardiola’s friend and former teammate Txiki Begiristain as director of football. ‘Txiki was so, so important in my life,’ Guardiola said upon his arrival. ‘When I was absolutely nobody and nothing, he trusted me to handle Barcelona, an amazing club with amazing players. I said to him once, I will go to England and, if you are with a club I will go to you. It was so important to me that Txiki was here.’
Guardiola announced his arrival in bold fashion by immediately declaring his intention to sell Joe Hart, Manchester City and England’s long-time first-choice goalkeeper. Hart had endured some difficult spells over the previous couple of seasons and had made a crucial fumble in England’s shock 2–1 Euro 2016 defeat to Iceland, but Guardiola was more troubled by Hart’s poor distribution skills. ‘When we first had a conversation he said he had his reservations about me,’ Hart explained. ‘I shook his hand, I said it was professionally honest, but not what I wanted to hear.’ Hart found himself without any obvious Premier League escape route and surprisingly moved on loan to Torino, a grand old club, but one who had just finished 12th in Serie A. It was a dramatic comedown for one of England’s few undroppable players.
Hart’s replacement was Claudio Bravo, who had enjoyed a decent couple of years with Barcelona but wasn’t truly regarded as a top-class goalkeeper. He was most famed for his sweeper-keeper ability, having impressed behind a high defensive line in the Chilean national team, and had been recruited by Barcelona primarily because of his excellent distribution, which made him an ideal goalkeeper for Guardiola’s City. It was notable, however, that Bravo was the Premier League’s joint-shortest goalkeeper, standing at just six foot, a good indication of Guardiola’s emphasis: technique over physicality.
Bravo made his debut on the most testing stage imaginable: a Manchester derby at Old Trafford, where he provided a perfect summary of his progressive goalkeeping style. Notably, he positioned himself significantly outside his penalty box when City were building passing moves, almost as a third centre-back, and impressed with his calmness in possession, starting the passing move that led to Kevin De Bruyne’s opener. However, he also made a significant error that underlined his lack of physicality – Bravo came out to claim a lofted Wayne Rooney free-kick but dropped the ball to Ibrahimović, who converted in typically acrobatic fashion.
Later, Bravo recklessly charged off his line to close down Jesse Lingard, who easily passed around Bravo to Ibrahimović. The Swede theoretically had an open net but was off-balance and could only weakly steer a shot goalward that was easily cleared by the recovering John Stones. Next, Bravo received a back-pass from Stones and attempted to dribble past Ander Herrera, but overplayed the ball and lunged two-footed into Rooney, a truly terrible tackle that surely would have been punished with a penalty had Bravo been an outfielder. Rooney later got revenge with a poor challenge of his own, an unnecessarily late tackle after Bravo had played a sideways pass to Kolarov.
Bravo’s performance felt like a parody of a sweeper-keeper: some impressive moments in possession, but a tendency to find himself caught out of goal, to make errors with the ball at his feet and to be found wanting in traditional goalkeeping respects. But City won 2–1 and Guardiola was delighted with his goalkeeper. ‘What Claudio did today was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen,’ the City boss surprisingly said. ‘I like the keepers to play, and after the goal he continued playing – and that means a lot for me.’
Guardiola’s emphasis upon possession play started from the goalkeeper. This, of course, was now 24 years on from the transformative back-pass change, and yet the stress placed on goalkeepers being comfortable in possession was still reaching new levels – and Guardiola, as ever, was particularly progressive. But while Bravo was confident with his feet, he often appeared entirely incompetent
as a proper goalkeeper. At one stage, in January, he conceded six goals from six consecutive shots on target. He simply didn’t save often enough to be considered a top-class goalkeeper, although Guardiola seemingly didn’t consider this a major problem.
In his opening weeks Guardiola’s City system was quite extraordinary. In addition to playing a goalkeeper who seemingly couldn’t save shots, Guardiola recruited Stones, a defender clearly brilliant in possession but who often made defensive errors. Even more extraordinarily, at centre-back he also often fielded Kolarov, who was such an attack-minded left-back that he insisted on wearing the number 11 shirt. Bravo, Stones and Kolarov were a trio based entirely around passing quality rather than traditional defensive attributes, and City frequently found themselves vulnerable to crosses.
Furthermore, Guardiola asked his full-backs to make extremely unusual movements when City had possession. Rather than making overlapping runs, as had become customary, Guardiola instead wanted them to drift inside and become supplementary central midfielders, which was particularly evident in the opening-day 2–1 victory over Sunderland, with Bacary Sagna and Gaël Clichy moving inside to form a midfield trio with Fernandinho. Guardiola had often done something similar at Bayern, where he could count upon David Alaba and Philipp Lahm, who were naturally full-backs but also unusually had experience of playing in central midfield. In English football the idea of a full-back moving inside to become a central midfielder was unheard of, providing extremely unfamiliar roles for both Sagna and Clichy, who had never played in midfield.
In turn, these movements allowed City’s two advanced central midfielders, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva, to push forward. This was crucial, as both players were attack-minded midfielders at home roaming between the lines in a 4–2–3–1 rather than tucked into a 4–3–3. They were number 10s, not number 8s. But with the full-backs pushing inside, De Bruyne and Silva had freedom to push forward into their natural positions, often exchanging passes as they attacked directly.
Meanwhile City’s wingers – usually two of Raheem Sterling, Nolito and Leroy Sané – stayed extremely wide. Rather than making runs in behind to become extra strikers, as Guardiola demanded of his wide forwards at Barcelona, they concentrated on hugging the touchlines and stretching the play, creating gaps between opposition defenders. Because of the drift inside of the City full-backs, these wingers could also find plenty of space when retreating into deeper positions, then pick up speed before racing past opposition full-backs. It often felt like City were attacking with a front five, all positioned in the spaces between the opposition’s four defenders, with a solid base of two defenders and three midfielders – or vice versa, according to the positioning of the hugely versatile Fernandinho. It wasn’t too far away from the old pyramid formation widely used a century earlier.
More than anything else, this approach was designed to guard against opposition counter-attacks. The previous season, Leicester’s success had largely been about attacking into the channels between the opposition centre-backs and full-backs while keeping their own centre-backs and full-backs close together. Managers now seemed particularly focused on exploiting that space in the channels.
But Guardiola, a manager determined to play possession football, couldn’t set his side out in the Leicester manner. Instead, he created a structure that allowed his players to maintain the basic qualities of a natural 4–3–3: in possession, City still stretched the play (simply with wingers remaining wide, rather than full-backs overlapping), supported the central striker with attacking midfielders (with them advancing from deep positions rather than drifting in from wide) and offered three players in midfield (with full-backs drifting inside rather than with central midfielders). At defensive transitions, City’s full-backs had less distance to run to regain their traditional defensive positions. Nevertheless, that crucial full-back role was very difficult to master, primarily because it was so unusual. Besides, City’s four full-backs were all the wrong side of 30 – it’s difficult to teach old dogs new tricks.
Indeed, the inability of the full-backs to properly grasp their new roles, combined with their relative lack of quality in possession, meant Guardiola abandoned this system relatively quickly and started playing the 4–1–4–1 system in a more orthodox manner. City showed flashes of brilliance but were also entirely unconvincing at times, falling to 1–1 home draws against Everton, Southampton and Middlesbrough. Their most damning results, however, came in December away at Leicester City, when they lost 4–2 having been 4–0 down, and in a 4–0 thrashing at Everton in January. In both matches they simply appeared too weak in key defensive positions, with Stones making crucial mistakes and Bravo seemingly incapable of rescuing his teammates. It felt like those who were convinced Guardiola’s purely technical football would prove unsuited to the Premier League were right, as effectively confirmed by De Bruyne.
‘Where Pep is most surprised is that there are still a lot of teams playing with long balls,’ De Bruyne said. ‘Sometimes he thinks the teams will try to play football, because they do that against other teams, but if it is against us they change their way of playing. I think that sometimes he must be annoyed by it. He puts so much time and energy in looking for things, where spaces might be, but then he tells us that the opponent will surely use the long ball.’
But this was inevitable when Guardiola had become so focused upon technical quality and passing dominance that he fielded Stones and Kolarov together at the back, neither of whom offered traditional defensive qualities, plus a goalkeeper in Bravo also more concerned with passing than repelling opposition attacks. Guardiola was clearly an innovative, sometimes revolutionary, manager, but his progressive football was encouraging teams to play Route One against City.
It was also notable that Guardiola emphasised how he’d been forced to adapt and cope with the importance of winning ‘second balls’ – the simple, Sunday League concept of being first to the loose ball after an initial challenge.
‘We have to cut out some of our mistakes but the main thing in English football is controlling the second ball. Without that you cannot survive,’ Guardiola explained in December. ‘The second goal at Leicester came from a throw-in, the second ball was a goal. Here the football is more unpredictable because the ball is in the air more than on the floor. I only needed to see one game to understand English football, Swansea 5–4 against Crystal Palace. Nine goals, eight from set pieces. That is English football and I have to adapt … all the strikers, like the ones at Watford for example, are good at this kind of thing. They win the duels, and at that moment their strikers are better than our defenders.’ This was Guardiola, the manager more concerned than any other with possession football, talking about the importance of his defenders winning aerial battles and his players getting stuck in.
‘Many times the ball is more in the air than the grass, and I have to adapt,’ the City boss said in another interview, with Thierry Henry before Manchester City’s 2–1 win over Arsenal. Before that contest Guardiola had his squad practising ‘second balls’ on the training ground for two hours every day. ‘I was in Munich and spoke with Xabi Alonso, and he said, “You have to adapt – it’s the second ball, the second ball!” But really, you have to adapt to the second ball, and the third ball and the fourth. I never before was focused on that, because in Barcelona or in Spain, more or less the players try to play for the culture … here it is all the teams, except maybe Chelsea because Antonio is playing really well and having them build up, but the other teams are taller, stronger, physical – and you have to adapt and build from that.’
This was a slight exaggeration – there were plenty of other teams who built from deep – but it was notable that he complimented the nature of Chelsea’s play under Conte.
While the media’s initial focus was on Guardiola, it was Conte who proved to be the Premier League’s most inspirational coach in 2016/17. Although the Italian had won three straight Scudettos with Juventus and his Italy side had been hugely impressive
at Euro 2016, particularly with their extraordinarily dominant 2–0 win over Spain in the second round, Conte’s appointment at Chelsea felt like something of a background development amid the obsession about Guardiola and Mourinho rekindling their El Clásico rivalry in Manchester. That clash was relatively low-key, with few media spats and surprisingly little talk of ‘mind games’. In part that can be attributed to the way Conte avoided petty squabbles, got on with business and took Chelsea to a commanding lead at the top of the Premier League table.
Conte started playing a 4–3–3/4–1–4–1 system that recalled the old Chelsea under Mourinho, complete with N’Golo Kanté, signed from champions Leicester, effectively deployed in the Makélélé role sitting in front of the defence. Conte had made his midfield intentions clear in pre-season, explaining that his system had no place for Cesc Fàbregas, who was among the most prolific assisters in the Premier League but lacked tactical intelligence, often playing an ‘anarchic’ role that compromised his side’s shape. Fàbregas was omitted, with Kanté deep, the sturdy Nemanja Matić to the left and the creative but disciplined Oscar to the right.
In Chelsea’s victory over West Ham on the opening weekend it was notable that the full-backs, Branislav Ivanović and César Azpilicueta, were encouraged to push forward extremely aggressively when their team had possession. This was an unusual tactic for Chelsea, who had largely been resistant to the shift towards attacking full-backs over the past 15 years. Indeed, the fact that both players were regulars in those positions was largely for defensive reasons: right-sided Ivanović was a converted centre-back who naturally tucked inside and minimised space in the channel, while left-sided Azpilicueta was a converted right-back, which meant he protected space on the inside and rarely overlapped. The first time they’d been instructed to attack simultaneously only came during Conte’s reign.
