Teambuilding

They say no-one ever remembers who finished second, but in the case of the 1974 FIFA World Cup that adage proved to be entirely untrue.

In fact, you can make an argument that the team who finished second in ‘74 changed the face of global sport more than any team who has ever won anything.

The Netherlands lost the final to West Germany, with the Dutch playing what became known as ‘Total Football’ under manager Rinus Michels — FIFA’s coach of the twentieth century.

Total Football has numerous elements, including positional fluidity, spacial awareness, and technical versatility. As a system, it has become associated with attacking exploits, but Michels himself points out that it was primarily a defensive concept.

“For me, it would be better to call my game ‘pressing football’. This is what I wanted to create with my teams; a basic game where all ten outfield players push forward even when we don’t have the ball. We’re always pressing forward.”

He saw his philosophy as a teambuilding exercise, not just a tactical system.

(Historical Note: similar systems had been seen before in football, particularly by Hungarian and Austrian teams, as well as in smaller surface-area games, like ice hockey and basketball. Tommy Gorman’s forechecking Chicago Black Hawks, or Phog Allen’s Kansas pressure defense are notable examples that pre-date Michels’ Dutch team, however the system seeing success on the world stage, in the world game, is where it really began to take hold as a viable innovation).

In his book, Teambuilding, Michels writes: “In 1974, pressuring the opponent in their own half with the purpose to win the ball back as soon as possible, was still an unknown strategy.”

He continues: “The aim of playing pressing football in the opponent's half of the field is to: disturb and interrupt the build-up as early as possible, force them to deliver an inaccurate long ball to no one in particular, force them to play a square ball to gain time in which the lines can get organized again, or regain possession of the ball on the opponent's half of the field, followed by a quick transition.”

You can see this play out when you watch footage of the tournament. Opposition players are surprised by when and how many defenders Holland send to win the ball back, and either over-possess or make a panicked skill error. Due to the attacking fluidity, the opposition also don’t know who their defensive assignment is once Holland have regained possession.

Watch this short clip to can see the surprise, and the panic, from the opposition players (Argentina, Brazil, East Germany, and West Germany, no less):

Like most great innovations, pressing football wasn’t really meant to be an innovation. Michels was merely trying to solve the big problem of the day — organized defenses.

“Total Football was the consequence of my search for a way to break open the enforced defenses,” he writes. “This required actions during the build-up and attack that would surprise the opponent. This is the reason that I chose to have frequent changes in the positions, within and between the three lines. All players were allowed to participate in the build-up and attack as long as they also felt responsible for their defensive tasks.”

He was trying to find ways to scramble the opponent.

“The key factor is to make it as hard as possible for the opponents,” Michels writes.

Fast forward to today and every major team invasion sport is obsessed with pressing. Everyone has intricate triggers, are adept at setting traps for the opponent, and there’s even counter-pressing. Just about everyone uses the word ‘hunt’ to describe the mentality of how they want to approach winning the ball back.

All of this, in one way or another, traces back to Rinus Michels over 50 years ago.

What this has created is a new challenge: there’s a generation of players who have emerged who have all grown up playing against the press. You can see the emergence of young players unfazed by when and how many defenders you send, or where you send them from. As Bane tells Batman, “you merely adopted the darkness, I was born in it.”

Being born into the pressing system, these young players have often already calculated your move before they’ve received the ball, and have a technical arsenal to deal with whatever you send. It’s truly something to behold!

Ironically, this is where the story comes full circle. The problem we face today is the same problem that Rinus Michels was trying to solve: how to break down an organized defense in a low-block. We now have a generation of players who can deal with the press, but struggle to even conceptualize how to deal with a defense that will sit in front of its own goal.

As coaches, we often try to solve defensive problems with offensive systems, but we must remember that Michels did the opposite. What if the way to break down an organized defense starts with your defensive system?

In my mind, the real lesson from Total Football actually lays in its defensive origin: “A well organized defensive effort performed by 11 players in a cohesive team tactical unit forms the realistic basis for the building-up and attacking team functions, and therefore for the result.”

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