I came across this fantastic Youtube post (about the place of tactical systems in modern football, and their limitations) from The Football Purist a few days ago, and felt I had to share it. (I don't think I'd come across him before; he hasn't been posting much recently - but a piece like this obviously takes a long time to prepare. I note that much of his previous output has been on a similar theme - celebrating the primacy of individual creativity over rigidly structured tactical systems.)
This video essay promotes the idea that individual flair can still trump tactical structures, and should be prioritised over them. Taking an analogy from complex adaptive systems found in Nature, like ant colonies, it suggests that a 'collective intelligence' between players can be an emergent phenomenon within the team performance - if they are given the freedom to 'self-organise' and improvise their own solutions to challenges on the pitch, rather than following 'rules' conditioned into them as part of their coach's game model. Further, it demonstrates that the swift and fluid passing patterns that grow out of such an approach - lightning-quick intuitive interactions between players that theorists have dubbed synergies - can still be cultivated through structured training drills (slightly paradoxical though that may seem!).
Some coaches, like Ancelotti and Scaloni, seem to be achieving a lot of success with this kind of philosophy.
Let us hope that this is the 'future' of our game - a game that can once again be less like a chess match and more like a piece of art.
I just came across this interesting video from Youtuber Dagnal Diagonal, which provides a pretty good survey of some of the most egregious examples of VAR screw-ups over the last couple of seasons - and presents some suggestions for improvement. (Strangely, although it's invariably a major focus of discussion on TV highlights shows, I haven't seen very much commentary on this issue anywhere online.)
Dagnal's main points are:
1) The overall quality of officiating needs to improve. And in particular, referees need to focus more carefully on getting their initial decision right. There does seem to be a psychological reliance - perhaps unconscious! - on the presence of VAR being able to get them out of trouble, which may lead to them making hasty or over-cautious - or, sometimes, over-bold - calls at first instance. (I suspect, in particular, that they will often give penalties a little more easily, with the 'safety net' of thinking that VAR can overrule them, or suggest a second look, if they've misread the incident. And that they'll often be hesitant to give a red card for a bad tackle, knowing that VAR will take a closer look.)
2) The scope of VAR responsibilities needs to be expanded - particularly with 'second yellow', or potential 'second yellow' incidents (which are just the same in game impact as a straight red card, so it's absurd that they should be treated differently under the VAR protocols).
3) Refs need to get over the prejudice that there's an overwhelming expectation they ought to change their original decision if they're directed to the pitch-side TV monitor (easier said than done!). Dagnal suggests it might help if they're allowed an additional category of response, as in pitch-side reviews in American football, where an initial call can be simply 'not overruled' - instead of actively confirmed - if the TV playbacks are not readily able to provide conclusive evidence one way or the other.
I rather feel that this last suggestion of his really goes to another issue: the frequent fallibility or inconclusiveness of the available TV coverage of an incident. Encouraging referees to be more confident in their original decision, and not put under any weight of expectation as to what conclusion they should reach when sent for a second look at an incident, is more a matter of training.
And I think stricter guidelines on the way that the on-pitch and off-pitch officials communicate with each other are essential too. They should not be getting into any extended conversations; the VAR official should not be giving any indication of what he thinks happened. There should be a set list of formulaic 'instructions', giving the reason for the suggested review, the particular event or events that need to be looked at - but without any extended detail, which might be prejudicial. And the word 'possible' should always be included, to emphasise that the question is entirely OPEN for the referee: 'Possible contact on ball by tackling player', 'Possible handball by goalscorer', 'Possible holding by x and y', 'Possible obstruction of goalkeeper's sightline by z' - that's ALLthe VAR official should ever be saying.
And there's a lot of scope for improvement in the technical side of things too (something that Dagnal omits to comment on in his video). We often see a referee apparently only being shown a slow-motion or freeze-frame picture on the monitor (which, again, tends to be prejudicial), or only being shown one or two camera angles of the incident, when more - and much better ones - do exist. WHY??? This is the kind of staggering incompetence in the implementation of the system that they need to stamp out, if they are to build any public confidence in the operation of VAR.
Let us hope we'll see better things in this area next season. But I'm not at all confident we will.
Football Meta's amiable and insightful Cormac has become one of my favourite Youtube tactical analysts over the past year or so. And I was particularly glad to see him just drop this video, detailing the shortcomings of the dread 'building out from the back' philosophy. (For me, he doesn't really go far enough in his critque...)
I find this tiresome dogma, which has become almost universal in the Premier League during the past decade, is stifling the life out of the game - it is the new anti-football.
It is painfully dull to watch.
It imposes far too much pressure on keepers and defenders - which, I think, wears them down mentally, undermines their confidence, and utlimately tends to make them more error-prone not just in build-up, but in all aspects of their play. (Because mistakes by a keeper or his defenders often tend to be castastrophic, yielding a goal and perhaps costing the game, their errors are placed under far closer scrutiny than those of attacking players, and tend to be given more weight than their successful defensive actions. And when they are on the ball so much, in dangerous situations, and committing costly errors - or at least coming close to doing so - so often, in almost every game, these poor buggers are often now getting pilloried by the fans.... when it's really not their fault; it's down to their manager's style of play.)
And it is founded on what I believe is a fundamental misconception: the fearful, over-conservative conviction that restricting the opponent's chances is more important to ensuring victory than creating your own. (The problem here is that you cannot play football purely as a matter of statistics, because the element of chance can never be eliminated. Even if you can prevent your opponent from getting any clearcut chances [which is just about impossible], while you manage, say, 10 chances,.... your finishing might not be good enough to convert any of the 10 chances, while your frustrated opponent might yet produce a worldie of a goal out of nothing, or perhaps pick up a soft penalty. This approach does not guarantee wins; in fact, it makes them painfully hard to achieve. If you're content to accept a more free-flowing, 'chaotic' sort of game, in which both sides might enjoy something like 20 chances, you should be able to win - and win more easily, and by bigger margins - so long as you can defend the chances made against you better than the other side defends against yours.)
Even if the core philosophy behind it weren't so misguided, it is still wrong-headed in practical terms. Its supposed justification is encapsulated in the tiresome mantra: "The quicker it goes up, the quicker it comes back."Build-up from the back started because managers like Pep became afraid that long balls out from the goalkeeper were too often resulting in an immediate loss of possession, and the more patient approach was seen as being a way to hold on to the ball more effectively,.... and eat minutes off the clock.
However, that's a very questionable proposition. If your goalkeeper can kick accurately, and if you have some well-drilled routines to create different medium- and long-range passing options for him, and if you have very quick players who can run into space behind the opposing back line to chase down a long ball over the top, or big strong players who can win most of their aerial duels and hold the ball up until other teammates can link up with them,.... there's really not that much of a problem in retaining possession from a keeper's kick. Well, yes, it is always going to be a little risky; and you might end up losing possession perhaps as much of half of the time (at worst...). But so what? Losing possession in the opposition defensive third of the pitch shouldn't be a big deal. You ought to be set up for a quick counter-press to win the ball back again, or at least hamper the speed and ease with which the other side can start to move the ball back up the pitch. And even if they do start quickly on the counter, you should have good defensive midfielders who can snuff out most such moves in the middle of the park.
A loss of possession deep in the opponent's half isn't often going to result in a goalscoring chance against you. A loss of possession in your own final third, however, almost always does.
And we are seeing such turnovers during failed build-up play more and more often in recent years.
Perhaps when building-out-from-the-back first started to appear, there was some clearer benefit to it. It had the advantage of novelty in its favour; and most sides weren't equipped to counter it very well.
Teams were still often only playing with one outright forward, or at most two; and 'high pressing' wasn't yet much of a thing. So, a back-four, or even a back-three, usually had a comfortable numerical advantage in the first line, even without having the keeper step up into the back-line to create an additional passer - and sides playing out from the back could thus usually bypass initial pressure quite easily.
But now,.... many more teams are playing with a front-three,... and are regularly pushing one or more of their midfielders or advanced full-backs up on to the opposing back-line as well; sometimes, the numerical advantage is with the attacking team. And even though it mostly still isn't, pressing has become much more sophisticated and well-drilled: teams will choose their moments to press most vigorously, saving their energy for when it can be most effective, most devastating; and they'll target particular players or areas of the pitch, so that, even though they are outnumbered across the whole back-line, they can quickly achieve a crucial overload in the area around the ball.
The slow build-up idea might have 'worked' up to a point, when it was a surprising innovation. But things have moved on, the game has caught up with it - and overtaken it.
Any tactical idea becomes limiting, self-damaging if it is too obvious, too predictable. And we now see so many managers who are so insistent on the slow build-up that they almost never stray from it, never allow their players to vary the way they play out. And that makes them very easy to 'read', easy to press,... easy to nick the ball off in dangerous positions.
I'm not sure that building-out-from-the-back ever really worked all that well. But it has now clearly become an absolute liability for many teams.
And did I mention, it's SO FUCKING BORING to watch? Aesthetics matter; this is 'the beautiful game', after all. Most fans, I'm sure, would far rather see their team come out on the losing end of a 4-3 humdinger of a game occasionally than watch them grinding out arid 1-0 and 2-0 wins most weeks. I know I would, anyway.
I think, I hope we are now seeing the last days of ponderous slow build-up from the back, in favour of more diverse, dynamic approaches to moving the ball forward from your own penalty area. It's been a long time coming. Too, too long....
Joe Devine narrates this interesting short - posted the other day on The Athletic magazine's Tifo sub-channel on Youtube - about why football is intrinsically much harder to analyse than almost all other sports.
The killer quote in the middle of it comes from Christofer Clemens, the Head Analyst of Die Mannschaft when they won the 2014 World Cup, who once noted ruefully: "We are increasingly convinced that there's a lack of data that provides real information about the things that make you successful in football..." Even the World Cup winners didn't know how they'd done it!
The main point of the video is that a continuous sport like football is much harder to analyse effectively than one which is more broken up, divided into a series of discrete, short passages of play. In cricket or baseball, for example, there are only so many types of delivery that the bowler/pitcher can produce, and only so many ways that the batsman/batter can respond; and once the fielding side have dealt with whatever happens, the ball quickly becomes 'dead' - the game is paused while the fielding side reset and the bowler/pitcher prepares to deliver the next ball. In football, the ball becomes dead far less regularly, less often; and while some teams will try to eat time off the clock by putting the ball into touch as often as possible, it is common for sequences of uninterrupted play in a field game like football to go on for a minute or two.... and occasionally even for several minutes at a time. The possible patterns of play are thus almost infinitely complex.
The video points out that there are a few games that are arguably even more continuous in their play: ice hockey, for example, allows for substitutions to be made without pausing the game. What it doesn't go into, however, is that these games tend to have fewer players and/or shorter playing periods - again making the challenge of analysis just that bit more manageable. Most field games have settled on 11 as the number of players; a few, such as rugby have more - but again, they usually have rules which restrict the variety of play. In rugby because the ball can only be passed by throwing, there is a fairly narrow practical limit on how far and how fast the ball can be moved with each pass; also, the ball cannot be passed forwards in that game. In football, almost any part of the body is able to be used for controlling and moving the ball, and passes in all directions are allowed, and it is possible to move the ball when struck with the foot a huge variety of different distances and at different speeds - and even to shape the trajectory of the ball by deliberately applying spin to it. This almost limitless range of potential movement for the ball also means that in football almost every player on the pitch can potentially receive the ball next, whereas in most similar sports there are generally only a very small number of likely receivers. (Stick-and-ball games like hockey have similar fluidity of movement, but are much more heavily biased towards passing the ball in a particular arc of the field.) Thus, even a relatively short passage of play, just 4 or 5 passes, can move the ball enormous distances and involve almost the entire team. There are few other games - probably NONE - which have anything like this level of variety and complexity in their potential patterns of play.
The video notes that as statistical analysis has become more thorough in recent years, it has started to prove useful in some areas - particularly in identifying the 'skills profile' of individual players, and deciding if they might be a good match for a given squad and style of play (Brighton's business model is founded on this, and they've become very, very good at it). Where it still falls down, and probably always will, is in assessing the effectiveness of tactical approaches, and determining how far they contribute to a team's overall success.
I would suggest that this is not just because it requires one to look at an entire game (or a whole series of them) rather than just individual game actions, and at the team as a whole rather than just an individual player - although obviously that is a massive (and insuperable) part of the problem. Surely, it's also that it's impossible to define with any precision or consistency what team tactice are. They change from minute-to-minute, as players seek to adapt to shifting circumstances on the field; they change as the manager makes in-game tweaks, or galvanises his team to greater efforts with a rousing half-time pep talk; they change with shifting game-states. They change from game to game, as a manager seeks to adapt to a particular opponent. They change from season to season, and even within the course of a season, as managers seek to stay fresh - and surprising to the opposition. And however clear and consistent the tactics may be in the manager's vision, how cohesively and consistently and effectively they are realised on pitch by the players can vary drastically from game to game.... and within a game, sometimes even from minute to minute. Plus, of course, the effectiveness of the chosen tactics always depends not only on how accurately the team impements them, but on the response of the opposition.
In a fluid game, like football, with an almost unlimited range of possible movement, and long uninterrupted sequences of play.... any attempt to statisticallly analyse success or failure in terms of the overall team tactics is usually going to be doomed to failure.
Caveat: Unless the tactics are really, really bad! If a team has a really obvious flaw, like Ten Hag's United having such a huge gap between their midfield and defence, because they didn't have the pace in defence to mount a high defensive line, even though their high-pressing style really required that - then, yes, you can see why a team is losing all the time, and the statistical data will expose that flaw too. But when you have two very good teams going up against each other, it's far more daunting to try to disentangle the impact of the tactics from the importance of individual moments of skill from the players. [Maybe Pep's tactics have never been that good, and he's just been saved over and over again by the brilliance of his teams...??]
I'd go further and say that I think you can usually determine the tactical basis of a result in indvidual games via the 'eye test' - watching closely, and analysing multiple different interacting factors at once. It's much harder, usually almost impossible, to reliably draw such conclusions from data alone. And disentangling the impact of 'tactics' - amid the web of other elements: form, fitness, confidence, refereeing decisions, the 'luck of the bounce', the quality of the opposition - in overall results over a run of games.... that, i think, is a very elusive - probably illusory - Grail to be chasing with statistical analysis.
Like many football fans, I've been feeling rather bereft over the last few weeks - since the unhappy news broke that Adam Clery was quitting the FourFourTwo Youtube channel that he'd made essential viewing over the last 18 months.
Now it's emerged that, in partnership with The Independent newspaper, he's launching his own Youtube venture, The Adam Clery Football Channel (ACFC), where we'll be getting more of the chirpy, irreverent tactical analysis videos we've come to love. (It looks like he might still be working with FourFourTwo occasionally as well - but on more 'magazine'-type pieces, mini-documentaries rather than game analysis.)
I'm pleased to see that his first posting on the new channel concurs with my own positive impressions of Thomas Tuchel's debut in charge of England....
For those who don't know.... Adam is, as we say in Britain, a top bloke: unpretentious, down-to-earth, a regular guy - but also very shrewd about his football. He's become the 'gateway drug' for tactical analysis videos. There are other guys out there who will go into more detail about particular patterns of play, or how a team seeks to morph its formation between different phases of possession and so on; but if you just want to understand why Team X is doing so well recently, or how Team W has fallen away, or why the weekend's Y-Z derby game ended as it did... Adam's your man. He's brisk, breezy, accessible - with just the right amount of silly, self-deprecating humour to help hold your attention across a discussion that will often stretch to 12 or 14 minutes or so. His videos - sometimes on teams, sometimes on individual players, but mostly breaking down particular big game outcomes - are always both entertaining and enlightening, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Do go and check them out.
The engagingly daft little 'teaser' vid for the new channel that he posted a few days ago is a fine example of the man's unique style.
So, finally, the new man in the England job gets to pick a team and run a match....
But, of course, every other football fan in the country is imagining how they'd do it differently, including me.
In a way, I think injuries have made Tuchel's job a lot easier in this instance. One of the biggest problems England face is an over-abundance of talent in certain positions, and a challenge in trying to fit certain players together into the starting eleven (I fear a multiple repeat of the classic Gerrard-OR-Lampard dilemma which hamstrung our progress in the Noughties). With Alexander-Arnold, Palmer, Saka, and Mainoo all missing, that conundrum can be kicked down the road for a while.
Here's what I'd go with:
Pickford, obviously has made the No. 1 jersey his own. And I think Guehi and Konsa are looking like our strongest central defensive pairing for now (although Stones is still in contention, when fit again; and I imagine Branthwaite and Tomori will be providing some competition going forward; Branthwaite, for me, should have been in this squad, ahead of Colwill). Lewis-Skelly has made an outstanding debut for Arsenal this season, and looks our strongest option at left-back now (again, injuries really make it a forced choice); Livramento has been rather less convincing for Newcastle, but deserves a chance - ahead of Walker, who now appears to be past it. (I hope to god Tuchel hasn't included Colwill and Walker because they'd fit a possible back-three better; I really do not want to see us playing that system ever again!)
Rice and Jones are a fairly obvious double-pivot midfield, from what we've got available (though again, I would prefer Gomes and Wharton, and I don't know why they weren't selected this time).
Kane - for now - has to continue as the main striker. We have to see if we can find a balance of players to support him, who can compensate for his chronic lack of pace. With Palmer and Saka missing, the selection becomes more straightforward: Foden and Gordon on the flanks, and Bellingham in a free role in the middle.
The main variations I'd be intrigued to explore would be to have Kane mostly drop deeper, lining up more alongside Bellingham as a pair of '10s' or 'false 9s', perhaps inviting Bellingham to move into the centre-forward space on occasion; or... to drop one of the pivots (probably the less experienced Jones) and have Bellingham play in the centre alongside Rice, allowing Kane to occupy the No. 10 space on his own (mostly; I'm sure Jude would still push up there quite often!), while using Watkins as a more advanced forward. I think we need to make more use of Kane as a playmaker rather than just a battering-ram striker, and this could possibly extend his playing life by a few years too; and it would be useful to see if we can find a way of - sometimes - fitting him and Watkins into the same line-up. However, I suspect that these tactical riffs are both a little too bold for an initial outing - even against a team like Albania. Perhaps Herr Tuchel will become a little more adventurous and experimental over the coming monhs. I do hope so. (I may have more to say in a while about my ideas for how the England squad might develop going into the next World Cup, and beyond...)
The always amusing 442oons Youtube channel marked Tuchel's entry into the fray like this:
I've been following Derek Muller's excellent science channel, Veritasium, on Youtube for several years, but I only just stumbled upon this video of his from 4 or 5 years ago on the role of 'LUCK' - in sports, and life.
Just over 3 minutes in, he has a fascinating example of a mathematical simulation he ran of the competitive selection process for NASA astronaut training - which apparently demonstrates that, with even a very small element of 'luck' at play in the process, at least 80% of those finally selected (overcoming daunting odds of around 1,700-1!!) will have displaced more able candidates by virtue of that little bit of crucial luck.
He doesn't go into a lot of detail about his simulation. I suspect that it involved multiple 'elimination rounds', rather as with a knockout cup competition - which would tend to cumulatively exaggerate the impact of the participants' luck. Nevertheless, it is a striking example of how great an effect luck can have in competitive outcomes.
And he was only allowing a weighting of up to 5% for the 'luck' factor in his selection tests. I think in Fantasy Premier League.... it's probably at least 50%!
I hate it when people naively brag about their rank in the game. Your rank proves nothing about how smart or capable you are. You can't get into the top 100,000 or so without having a substantial amount of good luck. And statistics would suggest that the great majority of that top 100,000 are there mostly through luck (that 80/20 split comes up everywhere.....), at the expense of far more capable managers.
I have thrown in the towel - in protest at the introduction of the ridiculous, unnecessary, game-distorting 'Assistant Manager' chip.
However, since one of the many infuriating deficiencies of the FPL user-interface is that it does not allow you to delete a team without deleting your entire account, I am obliged to leave my team going as a dormant - or 'zombie' - competitor.
[I'm not so concerned about losing my prior game history, as I've lost my account twice before for various reasons, so only have one or two previous seasons recorded under this one. I prefer to keep my own records of progress anyway. And I'm not keen on having a publicly available record published on the Internet - I value my privacy too much!
However,.... it seems I would also delete a couple of mini-leagues I administer, and I don't want to do that to the other participants. So, I'm stuck with having to remain nominally involved in a game I'd rather walk away from completely. Sigh.]
Nonetheless, I am ever on the lookout for a new 'challenge', a new focus for my boundless curiosity.... So, I am finding myself quite intrigued to see what will happen to an unchanged team over the remainder of the season.
Last year, a competitor in my local mini-league had an outrageously lucky start to the season and was 200 points or so ahead of the field by Christmas. But sometime around January or February, he somehow got himself locked out of his account (although his 'form' had already started to crumble a bit while he was still active). I think it was only in the penultimate week of the season that I and another competitor finally managed to overhaul him.
I'm top in that league again at the moment, but without a very substantial cushion; so, I imagine it will not take my local rivals very long to outpace me. But it will be interesting to see.
I've set up what I hope will be a strong squad for the remainder of the season, and it should continue to produce pretty well - unless I get hit with a lot of injuries. But of course, I will get slammed by the blank and double gameweeks that I can't adapt to. And I won't be playing that 'Assistant Manager' chip, which is potentially worth a huge number of points....
"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox...."
John Lennon - 'Across the Universe'
This is one of my favourite covers of The Beatles: Fiona Apple's version of 'Across the Universe', commissioned for the soundtrack of Gary Ross's 1998 film, Pleasantville.
