SHOPPING

I think that in the coming weeks and months there will be a noticeable increase of flights to Germany, mainly to Munich and Dortmund. Football runs on "fashion" and now, after the Champions League semifinals, the Germans are "fashionable", the new trend to follow. Everyone will want to do like them, in all aspects.

If, until yesterday, the working model were Spanish teams (and in particular Barça, with the entire collection of titles in recent years), starting today this is over, and we'l hear, among other things that:

1. The "tiki-taka" is not longer useful.

2. The possession game has expired.

3. Smaller players are useless for this type of matches.

4. The game should be based more on playing against what the opponents are doing, and not, to apply what we work.

Really? Are you sure? Do we have it clear?

Step by step. The first two statements go together. Believe in what I just put is not knowing what is football based on "possession", or how it works, and how to train it (beyond that like it or not this model: each one plays as he likes, make it clear ). This kind of football - like any other - is about principles at all levels and you have to follow them. I talked about this in the previous post, and now I will not return to it. What should be clear is that, like any recipe or chemical formula, if you don't have the right ingredients in the right order and with the right timing, the final "product" is not adequate. And for me, that, as I said, is what happens now.

More. It has been given the example of small players to understand this model football. Why? Very simple: as the big players are to defend, small are to attack. This I think is also wrong. It's true that having players with 1.90 m. help defend corners and faults but, as Cruyff said, if we have problems defending corners, what we have to do is not to concede corners. What does this mean? Well, we have to play the way we have the greatest choices to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses. On the other hand, I've never been clear that the big players can not be players of high technical quality. I just think that in general, the training of these players has been directed to destroy and not to create play and, therefore, this is what we see happening today in football fields. And, conversely, as only small players are taught to touch and touch and not taught to fight splitted balls, when they find with it, they have problems.

Finally, now you have to be reactive. Everyone says that you have to be proactive, but what we see is more and more to play according to opponents. I disagree. I think the ideas are confused. One thing is to have a model/style of play and make the necessary adjustments based on the opponent that we facing. One day, we will play with the higher defensive line. Another day players at the flanks will be wider; another day, we'll do something else, but we always have to respect our game idea. And this has nothing to do depending on the opponent's play: if the opponent is offensive, we play counters, if the opponent is defensive, we'll play the attack, if ... what you want. Changing of scheme/system means changing mechanisms, and if this has not been worked well in practice, we will not see it at matches. In football there are no miracles. There is much work. Professional teams, may be they do have so many hours that allow them to do things completely different from one day to another but, even that, they have a basic idea of ​​how they play. For the rest, which work grassroots or amateur teams, things are very different. Not better, not worse, but different.

We have to think about all this when we go shopping in Germany. It is not the same a BMW than a Mercedes or a Porsche, even all them are manufactured in the same country. And, may be we are more interested in having an Opel or and Audi made around here.