We don't train tackles
The duel of the fates
We don’t train tackles:
This was perhaps the most contentious quote of Pep Guardiola’s when he first arrived in England. It was polemical in its desire to juxtapose traditional English ideals of blood and thunder. This is something Pep likes to do quite frequently; cast your assumptions about football into doubt and suggest the opposite. Think of him telling Fabian Delph or Rodri that they run too much (going against what Delph referred to as ‘the basics of football’). Or the 15 pass rule; imagine not looking to break forward instantly in transition!
Bravery: Guardiola’s willingness to fight the status quo, never be happy in the present and look too continually improve by consistently challenging both conventional and his own conceptions of football is what makes him a alien in the footballing landscape. Sometimes, this leads to him even juxtaposing his own myth, or calling into question the results-based narrative surrounding some of his decisions. Perhaps Pep, more than anything else throughout his rhetorical career (which manifests itself in practice), has attempted to oppose the results-based conception of football and its judgement.
With Pep there is always a degree of sarcasm, elitism and desire to cast himself as an outsider in response to the traditional platitudes thrown at him. Nevertheless, often within the sarcastic rhetoric is truth, even if exaggerated, with the underlying principles comprising the embellishment being pertinent in what makes his football so, so, good. In this post I will investigate the art of not tackling, particularly as it pertains to forward facing pressing and why it is fundamental to how Pep’s team play and what sets apart his school of thought in many ways.
One way of conceptualising the desire not to tackle, which I think is a good starting point, is to distinguish whether it is done as a point of principle or as a point of practicality. Think about it: Pep’s teams are centred around having small technical players who thrive in small spaces, leading to the emphasis on physical abilities like acceleration and agility, perhaps to the detriment of the power and long-limbedness required to successfully win dues with consistency. The players he signs in offensive areas are typically not good ball winners in the traditional sense because their physical profiles are oriented more towards escaping pressure rather than applying the final action. Nevertheless, work rate is something emphasised, with lazy players not being accepted and pressure being crucial to the overall ideal of control. Ergo, placing pressure without engaging is the logical conclusion from the attacking profiles he prefers. Therefore one could surmise from this, his grander ideas of how football should be played which are oriented around possession influence how he must press, rather than those methods of defending being perceived as objectively ‘better’.
This is where calling in Socrates, or Jay Z depending on preference is useful. Essentially, is pious pious, or is what G(od)uardiola loves pious. Now, this is a very complex question because of the integrated nature of football leads to this type of bifurcation being reductive at a holistic level, but I think for explanatory and thinking purposes, it is useful nonetheless. Essentially, Guardiola preaches ideas like stability is the ball, and the ball is the best defender, in addition to scripture like ‘we do not train tackles’. And these seem to fit within the overarching conception of what I described previously as potentially being adaptions to what Guardiola likes in possession, and a rationalisation of preferences on ball, into claims of superiority off-ball, or defensively. The off-ball versus defensive distinction is where the ‘we do not train tackles’ takes extra pertinence however; as the defensive encapsulates a more holistic concept of goal prevention whereas the ‘we do not train tackles’ refers to a particular off ball method which can perhaps be more detached from in possession approaches when attempting to determine motivation and what is ‘better’. Nonetheless, this as mentioned previously can be ascribed to player profiles… or is pious actually pious?
So, onto the theory of not training tackles - I think @thewittyjacks (great name) - concept of technically clean versus technically dirty helps describe this well:
Essentially, City are a team which prioritises control of matches and want to create legible off ball actions they can prepare around. The aim of their off ball approach is primarily defensive, rather than something like the mythologised geganpressing of Klopp which seeks to create more ‘dirty’ conditions, predicated on concepts like first pass forward which directly juxtapose things like the (albeit outdated but conceptually useful) 15-pass rule. Technically dirty teams often embrace the quicker the ball goes forward, the quicker it goes back as opposed to clean teams who seek to establish control and not get caught in tight skirmishes of possession under the understanding that it will produce net positive, but high variance outcomes.
Technically clean play on the other hand wants clear and legible outcomes which generate predictability and establish a starting point - this is more defensive in that it seeks to establish control and fits within the overarching theme of stability being the ball, regaining it, and reestablishing it in a controlled manner is the aim. This is something @minimumwidth likes to emphasis as well in regards to Nagalsmann - he does not like the variance introduced by duels, which are technically dirty actions but rather prefers anticipating and intercepting to attack facing play. This is about guiding and directing a bad pass over creating a direct turnover through a forward facing direct engagement. You can already picture it - Foden, Bernardo, Grealish, all swarming around the ball in wide areas, creating a sort of cage around the player in possession to limit his options without actually touching the ball. The strategy is predicated around forcing the opponent to create their own, clean possession loss, typically through attempting a long ball, where by this time City have limited the options through their cage, and seek to quickly re-establish possession. The possession wins which are not directly shown down the channel can then occur in central areas with the defender having the dynamic superiority over the attacker coming from behind to intercept forward facing and potentially generate a transition. Kovacic’s goal against Chelsea this season is the perfect example.
I still think this overall distinction does not get to the heart of Guardiola however; who while seemingly having a distaste for duels, also recognises the need to embrace their necessity, and that has arguably been the latest evolution of his model as compared to somebody, who for simplification sakes still emphasises the ability to defend space and the channels over the direct interaction per se.
Throughout this article I can imagine the screaming internal voice as I described the small, nimble players involved in the press with the omission of the 4 centre back set-up recently embraced by Guardiola. And this is the latest piece of the defensive puzzle Guardiola seeks to solve - his pressing is now oriented around creating forward facing duels for physically dominant players to win cleanly, as they are facing play as opposed to the attacker who is back to goal, limiting the potential for ricochets, and allowing more clean access to the ball - through duels!
That’s the issue with tackling fundamentally - it generates unpredictability through having a forward facing player engage with another forward facing player, with your favourite Irishman Rick O’Shea profiting. Comparatively, movement from behind, either to duel or intercept can be done more predictability. In addition, it fits within the overall game model of siphoning play and showing play to regions of better recovery, but adds in the qualitative as well as positional aspect to that.
The traditional narrative of Pep’s Barcelona team involves the swarming press - and the logic underlying that still fundamentally true. The players would gather around the ball, rather than attempt to win it directly to force the opponent longer. Intensity of pressure to force players into making bad decisions was the key behind the press, and again, this logic remains the City. Manchester City press higher than any team I can think of and with greater intensity, and part of this is related to on-ball style as well, as a lower-tempo on ball style facilities more intense pressure off the ball through allowing domination of the ball.
Part of this logic is shared with the Red Bull model of ball-orientation, which while encouraging duels, places an emphasis above all on intensity of pressure. This includes features critical to Manchester City’s play, like following your run of pressure to continue cutting the passing lane while also creating a 2v1 versus the ball carrier, attempting to overwhelm with pressure, limit both time and space through movement of the body to curve play down a particular direction, and make the loss of ones ‘man’ through following that pressure irrelevant. It is about intensity to limit the effective space the ball carrier has and seek to continually compact, limit options and eventually force long through guidance. Through making the exits more complicated and time more fraught, you simplify the opponents decision making, encouraging the easy out. City just frequently do not make what Jesse Marsch calls ‘the last step’.
An interesting aspect hypothetical to consider is, what if the opponent does not launch it? This is potentially an issue with many play styles predicated on psychologically playing with the opponent and can be considered analogous to de Zerbian build-up in this regard. Its an identical question to the what if you don’t press one?1 What if the opponent just holds waiting for the engagement in a wider area to force a more high variance outcome?
I would argue the style of pressing is oriented around safely getting players around the ball carrier to prevent exits, and therefore continual holding, while undermining the rhetorical principle of not tackling, would not successfully undermine the point of the press in itself. If you think of it through the cleanliness lens, if you can gather enough support around the ball to lock in ball carrier, you can often cleanly win possession for your team through tackling. Essentially, the style of pressure gets players around the ball, and through doing this also limits the variance of ricochets by getting more of your players in a position to connect if play is one in a more ‘dirty’ way, serving to negate some of the aspects associated with more direct ball regains. Through having players around the ball, which is achieved through limiting options, and being passing-lane oriented in positioning, you gradually encroach to the point where a clean engagement becomes more possible, and therefore holding onto possession in worse regain areas seeking to get a thrown-in (?) to either team does not actually work as a negating strategy (unless you think negating the potency of your own attack is a ‘negating strategy’). You still need to be able to play threw, above, or around, while facing this type of pressure.
I think one of the assumptions inherent in this type of pressing for example is the potential for a clean intervention and the effects that has on the opponent with the key thing from the City players perspective not to take the bait too easy, and hedge upon not taking the bait over taking it in situations lacking clarity. Thus, we do not train tackles is just a rhetorical advice to juxtapose what has been consistently hammered into players heads about what comprises good defending. This is similar to something Ian Graham mentioned in his book How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football's Data Revolution, of Brentford encouraging constant attacking regardless of the situation because risk aversion was so instilled into the footballing zeitgeist.
Carrying forward with the logic of not engaging, this perspective I think can almost be considered an extension of traditional defensive principles of not committing too early, being careful of what’s behind you, and looking to contain and isolate more than win possession back. With the effectiveness of this logic with regards to regains being amplified as there are fewer backwards recycling options for the team in possession with ball losses being worse, increasing the panic, increasing the chances a safe option is taken when then allows City to continue their convergence and generate a predictable guiding path to prepare around. There are of course differences in intensities which come with the different risks you take at different parts of this pitch, but the principle of not tackling actually extends defensive logic more consistently, and treats all areas of the pitch with a bit more equality.
This fits within the Summersellian paradigm of allowing the opponent to take their desired action ‘unperturbed’ but guided by body orientation action. And as with Chris’s point, it's not necessarily that you will allow the opponent any shooting opportunity, but rather, in his instance, allowing vision of the goal is beneficial in many long range circumstances - thus don’t block shots. And similar to the point regarding tackles, avoiding ricochets for more clean interventions plays a large part in underscoring the logic. And similar rhetorically, there has been an insistence surrounding the desirability of blocking shots which is deeply ingrained, and thus as a rhetorical device ‘don’t block shots’ works at a non-literal level. Jonathan Wilson notes in his book Barcelona Legacy, Louis van Gaal at Manchester United commentating the players often took his instructions too literally. This was opposed to more argumentative Dutch culture surrounding football which required additional polemiscism in delivery to ensure the right message was conveyed, and these are potentially similar instances of, don’t take the phrasing literally, but attempt to internalise the message generally when making decisions.
Thus, you must become better are playing through pressure, rather than attempting to find some form of psychological undercutting. As pressure is not (primarily) man-oriented additionally and pressing stops in intensity with proximity, eliminating a press through dribbling against this type of pressure is less likely, and often requires more systematic solutions (or qualitative superiorities in higher areas). They are intense but do not commit, which often makes finding the far-side the most reliable solution to playing through, as the downside is typically worse coverage in those areas as the type of pressure requires numerical superiority.
This aspect can perhaps most pertinently be seen through counter pressing scenarios after City have already forced you into a compact block, lose possession, but then press the first pass with numbers around the ball while the opponents compact shape following the regain makes it difficult to play out, from there a launch can often hit off a City player and often back into the fray. With this type of dynamic perhaps best exemplifying what I imagine would happen if the don’t play into what they want occurs.2
However, as build-up and counter attacking play has become more sophisticated simply forcing errors is often not sufficient as I explored recently in Escapology - you need to have players who can reliably win duels and defend large spaces to allow for pressure to be sustained as more teams commit numbers deeper to play through the press and force the adaption of man-orientation in crucial areas.
You see, even axioms like stability is the ball which seem more untouchable within Guardiola’s dogma are contingent on certain factors he is all too aware of. This has always included defenders good at covering large distances to cover the ball and defend against 1v1 dribblers/transitions when the press is broken cleanly. Having complete defenders is what elevates the style and allows for the sustenance of pressure which much of the success is predicated on. Structure and players are not dichotomous but rather inform each other and allow for certain affordances which enables a style of play. And the transition in Guardiola’s style of play, and player profiling defensively is to place greater emphasis on playing ‘clean’ in duels over supremely technical players in defence. Of course, players like Gvardioal, Ake and so on are ridiculously good on the ball, but they are also extremely good space defenders, 1v1 duellers and strong in the air. They consistently allow for more clean regains to sustain pressure and control. Compare that to say Zinchenko or Cancelo who pre-dated them. Those two are perhaps the best in their position on the ball but have weaknesses when it comes to defending space, with this aspect, when considering the sustain pressure high in the opposition’s final third, taking precedence.
And this perhaps is an aspect only afforded to the elite who do not have to prioritise between certain skillsets and specialists but rather can get all-rounders, but this movement to all-rounders from Guardiola at the back does mark a change in priorities as his game has adapted to become more anti-fragile.
Therefore, Guardiola’s pressing still reasonably fits the passing-lane orientation described by Rene Maric in 2014. It seeks to ‘attack the pass’, creating proximity around the receiver to force them into uncomfortable zones through intensity and overloaded movement towards the ball side. This fits within the overall Barcelona tradition of conceiving of football as time-space. You limit the time the receiver has through intense pressure then block the space around him, giving him less time to think, fewer options, and therefore a more legible path to prepare around. It differs from man-orientation insofar as it often commits greater numbers than the opponent to the pressure in an attempt to suffocate, with intensity and body positioning to limit options through cutting passing lanes being the key. With this element of body positioning, not directly attacking the receiver, and especially not 1v1 being key. However, the 1v1 aspect is now something to be played into when the player is receiving back to goal, which is an adaption following a greater emphasis on teams building from deep and looking to exploit dynamic superiorities via half-space receptions.
Football has evolved to a stage where teams are happier to try risky passes centrally. They often adopt more vertically stretched but compact around the ball structures when building which makes it more difficult to crowd out the receiver and can create spaces to attack - forcing man-orientation to a greater extent to create compacting effects upon reception. However, the fright of intensity forcing obvious and suboptimal actions to force teams down a directed, and seemingly logical path until they are trapped remains. As too does the desire to force teams long from these limited positions for centre backs to recover, or midfielders to anticipate as they are positioned ahead to he players involved. But this is not always possible, with third man combinations, greater willingness to play risky in the centre and so fourth creating avenues outside this, where more direct confrontation is required.
Overall, I think cries of qualitative superiority are fair as better players grant access to tactics not accessible by other teams. Quality and strategy are not dichotomous but rather quality and completeness typically generate greater affordances which allow you to pursue a more abstractly optimal strategy. However, that is not to say there is not transmissibility of lessons. Just because Barca in 2008 held possession in a way which was not directly replicable to many other contemporary teams did not mean lessons could not be derived and long-term shifts towards a particular direction observed.3 Probably the biggest lesson from watching City defend is that you often do the most when you are not directly engaging, but directing, as you have more control of the game through your orientation and intensity as opposed to scrappiness, as often the benefits of engaging in wide duels once you have the opponent pinned is low and too variable. City are great, and Pep is always challenging the zeitgeist - some things never change.
Addendum:
There are two games within this style of pressing that I would like to explore in more detail. Arsenal versus Man City (0-0, greatest game of all time) and Brighton vs Man City in the second half of last season - this is more of an addendum because I feel I lack the visual aids to really bring the points to life - but nevertheless, first Arsenal.
This game was nice because Arsenal exemplify many of the principles, sometimes to a greater degree in their intense pressure towards the carrier without engaging, to limit time and space, and force play backwards while not actually produce a direct turnover or create a direct opportunity for intervention.
A big point where Arsenal differ is the time they allow the goalkeeper, with a type of orientation which is focused more around the man and forcing teams longer. This essentially places more faith in centre backs in aerial duels and seeks to reduce the control the opponent have over their progression by prioritising above all else the inability to play around or through. Ideologically whether you consider this more or less protagonistic is interesting because it forces the opposition to play a type of way, but in a way is less proactive because it less oriented around forcing a decision through intensity. Provided you have the centre backs, it is also less (directly) risky because you are committing few players higher.
However, very speculatively and I conjecture that it might be more intensive to maintain as through the recycling phase you have to pounce on various triggers to maintain the hybrid pressing shape, and gradually fall back into more of a block through not pressing the goalkeeper as often, which means you spend less time passive with the ball in contrast to City, who burn brighter in their intensity for less time, which allows them to more decisively either create a turnover, set-piece or transition. Essentially, less time is spent in the ambiguous and presumably tiring gradual encroachment to force a less aimed long ball.
The pressure applied by Bernardo around the 12th minute is a good example of this - firstly, he ensures he gets in-front of Rice to prevent him dribbling and forcing the ball backwards. He then follows the ball, first to Kiwior, then to Gabriel, as Haaland looks to converge and prevent the back pass. His body positioning throughout is interesting because of the simultaneous intensity but noncommittal nature of it, which emphasises the importance of agility in this style of pressing when it's required to be ‘scary’. Rodri then moves onto Rice after the pass is guided in his direction, with the backwards pass to Kiwoir being the only option as Bernardo and Rodri now look to converge on him now that he is isolated.
The complexity in this type of pressing is pronounced because it requires players often to act on principle rather than a defined structure per se, as it trusts them to know when an how to adapt their body positioning and follow a pass to create isolation. Through those steps, City were able to isolate Kiwior, but being able to see that in advance is difficult from a coordination perspective. But the most pertinent part is the pressure applied to the ball in a noncommittal manner which really needs an agile, intense player capable of consistently harassing on the front line, with follow through coming behind, often from more physically imposing players like Rodri.
Even the subsequent pressure after the regain and attempted attack is telling in its principles as Bernardo does not gamble on the goalkeeper which players often do but rather continues his siphoning run as he knows Saliba is isolated, forcing a back to goal duel between Akanji and Jesus. This underscores a principle element underlying the logic of not gambling, not committing, but sticking guiding unless the engagement becomes clear and clean to produce more legible and easier won outcomes to sustain pressure. The aim is then to win back possession, rather than score directly, which might sound odd as you need the ball to score, but sometimes the engagement directly closest to goal will also increase the chance of an opponents set-piece, or less controlled possession being won.
Brighton:
Manchester City versus Roberto de Zerbi’s Brighton also provides quite an illuminating an example of this team which refuses to engage in ‘forced’ long balls, and thus puts to the test the ‘we don’t train tackles concept’ thereby exemplifying all the next steps. I think it also demonstrates an example of locating the spot where you want duels to occur and guiding play towards that direction.
Essentially, City set up with a narrow pressing front 6 which left the full backs who were deep and wide for Brighton free - the aim was to be able to quickly overload each side and look to pin Brighton into the corner, where they would typically allow a pass into the half-space after getting Brighton to commit numbers deep for one of their centre backs to engage back to goal against an isolated player. This sought to produce a more positive turnover as it occurred in a central location while having many players around the ball supporting the transition.
When the ball was played from side-to-side across the defence, they would leave the half-space passing lane deliberately open to try and create these forward facing duels. This is interesting because it used Brightons biggest strength at the time, half-space progressions, against them and weaponised it in City’s favour through prepping for it, and crafting a defence plan around pouncing on that desire.
This was also necessary as a feature, because the narrowness of the press invited those opportunities following switches when playing it across the keeper which made covering the ground to block the access difficult. The ball-sided commitment also sought to negate a common strategy of Brightons which was playing it in the direction of pressure to counteract the press, as they left the side numerically committed in the siphon to the far-side half-space contingency. The tactic is contingent upon trusting defenders to be able to defend the channels well in addition to engaging aggressively at the back because the defence themselves have little cover, particularly in behind. It banked on idiosyncrasies of Brightons play, where direct channel running off the ball is rare from the forwards, as up-back through style combinations are preferred to simply up. But I also imagine the contingency of that was prepared around and seen as negligible because Brighton did not have the players to play that way - and City’s defenders are often quick enough over large distances in comparison to Brightons attackers to defend more direct play into the channels.
In a way, City killed Brightons combination play in higher areas through baiting them deeper and deeper, or at the very least being fully aware of that willingness and subsequently being willing to exploit it. There was an awareness of the cat and mouse game of dropping deeper, and through refusing to engage directly in deeper areas, and instead block off space, they could kill forward combinations, while leaving open the one they sought to produce. Its using defensive orientation and intensity to have the game played where you want it. From a more abstract perspective of the plan, I imagine City pin pointed Brightons requirement to use tight link-up play to bypass pressing through dropping players and saw compacting potential within that, and thus would prioritise not allowing them to turn as opposed to direct engagements to force more commitment, limiting the potential for link-up in higher areas and therefore allowing the defender to commit more to the duel as there are fewer players capable of now exploiting the space in behind.
So essentially, the lesson to be learnt is this style requires the crafting of duels which are beneficial but in probability of winning, and in net swings in a particular directions - central turnovers are generally more valuable and if you have the players capable of winning those regularly and an opposition determined on playing through it, creating those situations works. City done the exact same thing against Chelsea, this time with more passivity behind the pressure as they were happier to allow Chelsea to hold possession, but Kovacic’s goal was directly produced by refusing to engage in wide areas and rather allowing the pass under the pretence the player in possession is uncomfortable, wants rid of the ball, thus showing some space knowingly to escape, to then be backed up by the defender was the best way to produce a positive swing.
I think this approach thereby often achieves the best of both worlds through the typical siphon play out wide negation of build-up and maintaining central compactness, while creating sort of pathways towards central turnovers - some could say pressing traps!!!. However, what I found most interesting was the maintenance of the high block to high press as many high blocks suffer from the fatigue issue associated with teams passing it around the defence and having to constantly respond to triggers but not engage as it does not transform into a high press. It was that they were able to manipulate the spatial conditions so that being both teams being underloaded on the far side benefitted them when it came to pressing, which juxtaposes traditional logic. Universal applicability of this might not be possible because City have access to complete players others don’t, but lessons can be derived - such as thinking of defending in terms of qualitative and dynamic superiorities. Football is a game of space and time, how can you most dynamically attack space after transition, what is your rest-attack looking like and and how can you produce situations where the players you want to engage in certain situations can do so. Not every team has Gvardiol, Akanji or Ake, but you can have strong athletic duellers capable of marshalling a channel and engaging to an extent. And then you have the more explicitly tactical (I don’t like the dichotomy but this part is more ‘principle-based’) elements where advantages attained are less contingent on quality, such as using the compacting effect of a dropping and isolated player to know the touch will be backwards, hence through not engaging, the stance of the players is generally more flexible to turn around then compact on the now carrier to produce a turnover - particularly as played has been shown deep and wide via commitment of the opponent meaning opportunities to link are killed, and hence the ‘dynamic superiority’ cannot be exploited.
To summarise it is something like this:
Compact central 6 players block direct access to the middle and maintain close proximity to deeper central players of the opposition
Pressure is lightly applied to goalkeeper until he exits the box, but dropping central players are not tracked in a man-oriented manner with the block generally looking to sit on the box as a reference point for engagement
Play is then siphoned out wide with large ball-sided commitment from the central block and full back getting ready to jump and look to compress and pin while also opening up the channel
Players do not directly engage but rather seek to keep them trapped in the corner and draw support from opposing players
Pass into the half-space is generally left open after the opposition drop because support around the ball no longer exists to link through
But all of this is crucially predicated on the concept of being comfortable defending the channel, often 1v1 - for example when one of Steeles longer balls were successful as he had sufficient time and space to encroach slightly at the 17th minute and City snuggled with the aerial ball, Akanji was just able to sweep in behind. You can be overzealous in your positioning and bait certain more direct actions when you got comfortably with recovery which alters the risk/reward dynamics.
As I have previously explored, City’s massive qualitative superiority is crucial towards the tactical flexibility they are capable of displaying, in addition to allowing them to try riskier and more committal defensive strategies. Nevertheless, I still believe they are at the frontier of how defending should be conceptualised with their reticence to engage style backed up by domineering centre backs.
Maybe there’s something interesting to be said about how both my favourite styles of attacking and defending are predicated on waiting for the opponent to make the first action.
Tangentially, this type of thinking is always fun because it shows you how many assumptions are baked into the way we conceptualise football. ‘What ifs’ which lead you to see the logic which we present and market in a certain way only continues, if the opponent act as expected, which itself is a logical adaption, which if not followed often leads to worse consequences.
This argument feels a little bit too much like sophistry for me, but I think it exemplifies the point that what works at the top is often very transmissible when interpreted, adapted, and trained.