Tactics thread: Pep's Bayern edition

Claudio Pizarro is the other striker. Thomas Müller and Mario Götze can play it though. TM started up top against Barcelona. It was pretty fluid though. Robben spent a lot of time uptop as well.

I've been saying this a lot lately but where people start in offensive positions is not nearly as important as where they're receiving the ball.

Yeah, that counterpressing site does a lot of this stuff. They had some good stuff about Bayern last season. One of the biggest things you get from these videos is a realization of how fluid formations are. There's not one set formation that elite teams just stay in.

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u crazy for this one, hh

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This Mandzukic guy reminds of Luca Toni (when he wasn´t worth anything).

Bayern´s scary enough, however, had they pulled off the Lewandowski signing, there would have been no point playing this season in the Bundesliga, and you could probably skip to quarters, probably semis, in the CL as well.

Lewa is coming to Bayern for the 14/15 season. I love Pizarro though, I'm gonna miss him when he retires.

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Hojbjerg

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Saw that he's 17 in my cursory Google: loan, reserves, squad?

I still think lahm looks like a pre crossfit sean payton

Yeah, it's hard to call that a 4-1-4-1. It's too fluid.

It's really a 4-3-3 or 4-5-1 with a really fluid midfield triangle.

That's a tough system for teams without a lot of experience together to run. I'm interested to see how a midfield of Schweinsteiger, Kroos, and Thiago works off each other. I imagine Thiago will plug in nicely, as well as his footballing brain should be trained.

I like the idea of three attackers that can play anywhere too. Pep loves fluid football where playmakers can get themselves in space, and an attacking trio of Muller, Ribery, and Robben should provide that, because all three can play anywhere up top.


fluid

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Yeah, it's hard to call that a 4-1-4-1. It's too fluid.

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I disagree, namely with the notion that fluidity determines the formation. Total football necessitates that fluidity, so reasoning a formation is too fluid negates the need to call a formation anything.

I tend to think of it as how a manager interprets space. Watching the video, I was amazed at how quickly and instinctively the Bayern players understood their positioning. I mean, he's been coaching this team for less than a month, and already the team is advanced in terms of their understanding.

So let's say that Pep describes his formation as a 4-1-4-1. I think that tells us a couple of things. One, Pep sees the field in four areas excluding the GK. He's interested in the areas between the lines.

Let's think about forward position. Let's say that Bayern's forward ensures that he is no more than 5-7 yards away from the furthest forward midfield player. In most typical formational understanding the relationship between the two would be described as a strike partnership, with one playing providing support for the other. But Pep sees it differently. The space is smaller, because conversely, the smaller you make the field of play, the wider you make the pitch. It's Pep's understanding of horizontal space that makes him revolutionary. The pitch is always wider when we realize. Thus if you position a "forward" 5 yards from a midfielder, you draw the CB upfield, and create horizontal and vertical space. In traditional, vertical notions of the game, space is created in 180 degrees. The way Barca played and Bayern will play show that space is created 360 degrees.

I remember seeing my first soccer game live, and thinking how small the space is on which the game is actually played. The inclination for teams, even seasoned professionals, is to always follow the ball, and thus become narrow. Pep realizes this and tries to battle this inclination, which is inculcated in players from a young age. Hence there needs to be a close relationship between players in the wide quadrants, a fluid interchange, as well as a midfield triangle which can account for that interchange at all times.

I don't know what my point here is, except maybe to say that the way we understand formations doesn't account for the natural fluency of the sport. Within that small clip, we saw a team switch between numerous shapes, from a defensive shell, to a pressing shape, to an attacking shape, all dependent on the area of the pitch.

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I'm just curious how Mario Gotze fits into it all.

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This.

I would love to see a video that detailed on the USMNT's recent tactics.