Let's settle this once and for all...

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What is the "right way to play"?

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This thread should be good .

My opinion is there is no right way to play. That's the beautiful thing about soccer. There are many approaches and philosophies. I like to see them all at work. Every team wants to get a result when they step on the field. It is up to the manager to employ the tactics he feels are best to get that result. He has to take into account the players at his disposal versus the players at the other team's disposal. While innovative and attacking tactics are often effective, there is no responsibility to attack full-throttle every game. In fact, that can often be a foolish approach, depending on the circumstances.

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What is the "right way to play"?

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Great question. I think there are two schools here. People who want to watch their team win and the neutral observer who want to be entertained by beautiful football. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but I don't think it's that much of a stretch. Obviously as a fan of a team I'd rather win, but from the game I don't have any rooting interest I want to see beautiful football. I think the last couple of years has put this divide into clear focus.

In general, possession based football favors smaller, more technical players. Counter-attacking football favors faster, bigger players who aren't on the technical level of the midgets. We could make endless distinctions.

I think the right way to play is whatever it takes for a team to win. Of course you are going to be upset if your team can't break down West Ham who pack ten men behind the box, but you don't mind if your team does it against a good team. I don't think it is a particularly harmful form of cognitive dissonance to hold both those views at the same time. It simply represents reality.

So in this sense, is Spain or Barcelona boring because they realize they don't have the size and speed of other teams, and thus want to emphasize their technical advantages by employing tiki-taka? It's boring because of its particular execution in a certain game, mostly when all the players ask for the ball to feet and refuse to make any sort of run to create space. It isn't boring unto itself. It can have entertaining iterations, just like counter-attacking football.

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Apparently playing brilliant counter attacking football is not the way either because we all hate Jose's time at Real.

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On the field they were pretty enjoyable I thought, with they way they counter-attacked at speed. People just hate Mourinho because he's easy to hate. I thought Munich last year was hella enjoyable with the way they counter-attacked.

So in conclusion, I don't know.

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The right way to play is entirely based on your teams players,

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This.

But, I like to see the game played with style.

Score goals and don't let the other team score goals.

Gotta play in a way that benefits your strengths and will minimize your weaknesses and your opponents ability to exploit them. In other words, whatever works.

I don't think you'll have much disagreement here, Americans accept a win at any cost mentality. Over there I think it's different (for some people) it's their purist debate, like the DH here or something like that.

Possession football and 300+ passes per game is clearly the right answer here.

But seriously...if a coach designs a system and gets his players to buy into and execute it...that's the best way to play.

So pretty much the exact opposite of the England National Team.

Punt and Run. Nothing but Route One.

I don't know, results are results. To me, if a manager pushes his style and theories into his team and they see success, there's really no reason to fault the man for it.

I'm a fan of the way Pellers has MC playing this year. Kamikaze attacking with Silva and Yaya (and Nasri earlier in the year) going crazy.