Barcelona and the problems of the domination game
After their defeat against Athletic Bilbao last week, Barcelona again stumbled against a relatively weak Villarreal side this Sunday. Just as in the Bilbao game, Lionel Messi saved the day with a wonderful free-kick goal and grabbed a point for Barca in the last minute, but unfortunately his free-kick skills cannot save the team all the time. Although almost every statistic was in favor of Barcelona -70 percent ball possession, 20 shots in which seven of them hit the target and 600 successful passes - the team just could not find a way to score a goal until the last minute. Of course, a team can be out of form sometimes, but I do believe that the domination game also has some fundamental deficiencies, just like counter-pressing game as I mentioned in my previous piece.First of all, when the domination strategy reached its peak with Pep Guardiola, everyone except them used to play with primitive and individualistic methods. In other words, there was no true adversary for their tactics. Now counter-pressing is very effective for utilizing the fundamental deficiencies of the domination strategy and it is as sophisticated as its adversary. Barcelona's game has not expired yet, it has just found a worthy opponent that has made football much more entertaining.
However, if you check what counter-pressing teams do against a dominant team without exception, you see that they do not accept the game in their half and they press their opponent in their half. Therefore, the dominant game, which is designed to utilize the circulation of the ball, cannot find the safe-space that classic counter-attacking teams once generously offered to them in their half. Now, the dominant game must either increase the pace and leave their half with a more uncontrolled manner or in contrast make at least 15 or 20 passes to get out of from the opponent's press in a much more controlled manner. Now, none of these options are desired by a dominant team because the former would be too imbalanced to conduct organized collective action and the latter would be too slow to catch the opponent off-guard.
Secondly, the nature of the dominant game requires that every player must share equally in defending and attacking, regardless of their position. For sure, Lionel Messi and Javier Mascherano have different duties on the field, but they are both responsible for both sides. Thus, the fractioning and alienation of defensive and offensive blocks only makes the domination team a sitting duck against counter-pressing, given there is no way to maintain offensive flow or defensive strength without the unity of blocks in the domination game.
This style requires much more teamwork and cooperation than any other style in modern football. Thus, the result of these two deficiencies is that individuals gain more importance than the game to overcome these issues. It is a vicious circle, the more you put more weight on individuals, the harder the effort to get the ball to the other half and unify the blocks, because both of them requires a team in which all players assume the roles of the whole strategy. Thus, the reason why Barcelona are having troubles in the first place is not that Neymar or Luis Suarez is out of form, but they are started to fracture and play more individually, which has made them an ordinary team with high-quality players.
However, if you check what counter-pressing teams do against a dominant team without exception, you see that they do not accept the game in their half and they press their opponent in their half. Therefore, the dominant game, which is designed to utilize the circulation of the ball, cannot find the safe-space that classic counter-attacking teams once generously offered to them in their half. Now, the dominant game must either increase the pace and leave their half with a more uncontrolled manner or in contrast make at least 15 or 20 passes to get out of from the opponent's press in a much more controlled manner. Now, none of these options are desired by a dominant team because the former would be too imbalanced to conduct organized collective action and the latter would be too slow to catch the opponent off-guard.
Secondly, the nature of the dominant game requires that every player must share equally in defending and attacking, regardless of their position. For sure, Lionel Messi and Javier Mascherano have different duties on the field, but they are both responsible for both sides. Thus, the fractioning and alienation of defensive and offensive blocks only makes the domination team a sitting duck against counter-pressing, given there is no way to maintain offensive flow or defensive strength without the unity of blocks in the domination game.
This style requires much more teamwork and cooperation than any other style in modern football. Thus, the result of these two deficiencies is that individuals gain more importance than the game to overcome these issues. It is a vicious circle, the more you put more weight on individuals, the harder the effort to get the ball to the other half and unify the blocks, because both of them requires a team in which all players assume the roles of the whole strategy. Thus, the reason why Barcelona are having troubles in the first place is not that Neymar or Luis Suarez is out of form, but they are started to fracture and play more individually, which has made them an ordinary team with high-quality players.