At the start of 2018-19, Tottenham Hotspur were in a pickle. No team had more representatives in that summer’s World Cup semi-finals, raising concerns over a lack of preseason training. No team in Europe had signed fewer players.
Few first-team squads in England had more injuries across the first month of the season – 13. Tottenham didn’t even have the home they wanted. After promises were made over a move to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the start of the campaign, Wembley would have to do.
But Mauricio Pochettino had his press. The previous season, Tottenham had finished third in the league by using a high-intensity pressing game that he had refined over time. It wasn’t that Spurs’ players went harum-scarum across the pitch; no team can do that. Instead they picked their moments perfectly.
Eighteen Premier League teams applied pressure to an opponent with the ball more often than Tottenham that season; none did so with a higher success rate. Replicate that with a communal understanding forged by a low turnover of players, Pochettino believed, and Spurs could succeed in the Champions League and the Premier League simultaneously. He was proved right.
The decline in Pochettino’s Tottenham was a decline in that pressing intensity. It began before the Champions League final against Liverpool as league form dwindled, but that was a handy indicator. In Madrid, Tottenham attempted 64 pressures to Liverpool’s 250.
That said as much about Tottenham’s sterile domination of possession as any flaw without the ball, but the following season the amount of times they won possession in the attacking third dropped by almost half. By design or by accident, something changed. Pochettino lost his mojo.
Pressing is one of those terms that provokes deep cynicism in parts. To quote Harry Redknapp: “All this stuff about pressing is nonsense. It’s nothing new. All teams who are successful have to work hard.” Of course he’s right, but according to most modern coaches that specific type of press – picking when and where to apply pressure and paying particular attention to the final third of the pitch when your opponent has just won the ball – has increasingly become crucial.
In the 2019-20 Champions League, more than half of the goals scored in the competition came after possession was regained in the opposition’s final third. After Jurgen Klopp became the face of “gegenpressing”, effectively what is being described above, others from the German coaching model also adapted and moulded it. Perhaps it is no coincidence that German coaches have won the Champions League in each of the last three seasons.
Which brings us back to Pochettino and takes us off to Paris. If we present modern elite football as a battle between systems and individuals, with talent now increasingly hoarded by the few, PSG have spectacularly embraced the latter path. Like Manchester City, PSG’s owners consider European dominance as the final piece of their geopolitical jigsaw. Unlike City, they have shunned the strategy of allowing a coach to build a team in his own footballing vision but simply handed Pochettino a collection of extraordinarily expensive stars and instructed him to make it work.
Watching PSG play – even when they play well – is to witness a collection of individuals rather than a team. It is so evident, and seems to occur whomever their manager is, that it appears as if it is ingrained within the club’s fabric. It is as if PSG’s pursuit of the European Cup is not enough. Instead they must pursue ideological perfection, a corporate brochure of a football team in which everybody is smiling and having a lovely time and the images of the hard work are left unpublished. They don’t want to sprint; they want to glide.
That strikes as the antithesis of Pochettino’s Tottenham masterplan. Last season in the Champions League, PSG won possession 313 times in the opposition’s third of the pitch, fewer than eight other teams despite reaching the semi-finals. They are ostensibly not a pressing team. But then that stands to reason: you do not create a forward line of Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Lionel Messi because you want them to hassle and harry; you buy them because a) you want to entertain, and b) you can.
There is a misnomer that life in Paris is easy for Pochettino; that’s unlikely to be the case. When your success is gauged only by your performance in one competition – PSG have won eight straight Ligue 1 matches to start the season and nobody has bothered to notice outside of France – pressure builds ahead of each game. The draw in Brugge in their opening group game drew (deserved) stinging criticism and plenty of sniggers from across the continent. Nor can Pochettino expect any sympathy; that is surrendered when you sign onto this mega-project.
There is a feeling in Paris that the city’s superclub is still waiting for its breakout Champions League night at the Parc des Princes. Their run to the final in 2020 predominantly came via single-leg victories in Lisbon after football’s restart, and their recent home record in knockout matches in Paris is wretched: lost to Real Madrid, lost to Manchester United, drew against Barcelona, lost to Bayern Munich, lost to Manchester City. Borussia Dortmund in the last 16 in 2019-20 is the honourable exception.
And that’s the nagging problem for Pochettino and for PSG supporters desperate for European silverware. That emphatic individualism will generally work in Ligue 1 (although Lille beat them to the title last season) where the talent gap is so vast. In the Champions League, they have consistently been found out.
And yet Pochettino has no option but to persevere. You cannot leave the superstars on the bench. You cannot make Messi and Neymar press. You can only hope that the sheer weight of your individual ability eventually wins out. Lose to Manchester City, and it will take a double dose of optimism to believe that will happen this season.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3m2mwbt
Post a Comment