Spain have divided not only the critics but my mates this tournament. They've divided me a bit too.

In certain moods, I find Spain's dissection of defences fascinating. But even in those moods, I never really find it fun. Fascinating on its own isn't really enough; not without enterprise and drama. And when it's not quite working for them, as against Portugal, it gets very sterile.

I'm not saying they should abandon it in favour of hoofing it up to the big lad at the front, but I'm not sure I can be doing with the "false nine" and all that. (I didn't really feel this way at the World Cup, but now the novelty's worn off...)

Perhaps Portugal are harbingers; perhaps other sides are close to finding a way to play against it. Every tactical innovation is self-limiting in the end.

What's the verdict of OTF's collective wisdom?

I think the general verdict is it's pretty awe-inspiring when you have deadly penetrating finishers like Villa, and quite a bit less so when you don't.

I don't remember being entirely convinced by Spain's defense, either. Whereas Italy's, on tonight's evidence, seems pretty solid, even expert.

I was thinking about tika taka watching Italy, as they really were passing the ball around well, often even beautifully. But it had a more spontaneous, improvisatory feel to it, always with a mind to transitioning as directly as possible to outright attack. Italy have Pirlo as their vision guy while Spain have four Pirlos all circling around each other. That doesn't lend itself to direct play as well.

Spain miss Villa terribly. They also don't have any players who are really in form, apart from possibly Alba. Xavi and Iniesta look tired, and the team is basically phoning it in. Can they find the legs they need for the final?

The trouble with what Portugal did is that while they disrupted Spain's passing very effectively in the first half, they (a) didn't create many chances of their own and (b) tired themselves out with this tactic. So I'm not sure they've rumbled tika-taka as such, though I guess a better side may have created a killer chance and scored while dominant in midfield.

Spain to win convincely on Sunday. I think they'll be happy that Italy won.

Jimski wrote:


I guess it relates back to the Chelsea-Barca game at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea had one good chance to score and took it. Bottomline you have to be clinical against Spain and lets be honest Portugal just don't have the forwards and what few half chances they had they squandered (compare the Lampard-Ramires-Drogba counter with the break Portugal had when Miereles gave Ronaldo a pass that was slighly behind him which caused the momentum of the move to be lost).

I think Italy will win on Sunday:
a) They have their Drogba in super Mario,
b) They have the type of, as Vialli put it quarterbacking passer who will find the holes in the Spanish defence (on the counter) in Pirlo,
c) No team has won 3 x championships in a row at this level and I think that Spain are spent, this group of players has peaked creatively and physically.

This is not a good matchup for Spain in my opinion, Italy are their equals defensively but have a more diverse array of attacking options. This is the game where Villa's absence and Torres decline will finally catch up to them.

PS. I hope I'm wrong.

Mykolai on Earth wrote:


I wouldn't say Spain lack enterprise. It has an element of reduced risk about it, but then any side who find a way of playing and winning without taking undue risks would do so. But the passing and the retention of possession are not without purpose. They are constantly probing to score.

What it lacks for the viewer at times is dynamism, what David Foster Wallace in his brilliant article on Roger Federer from a few years back termed the kinesthetic sense. Top level sport generally requires actions to be taken in timeframes that do not allow for conscious choices, but instead require reactions based on instinct and feel. This sort of play is often/for many people a key part of what is entertaining about football, as actions that are taken at speed and at the edges of control are the most unlikely to come off and so when they do are the most dramatic. Personally I'm happy if Spain succeed as the trade off of dynamism and drama for highly skilled technical play is OK by me, but I quite understand people like Harry who feel this trade-off is not one he enjoys teams making.

The more cerebral approach as opposed to the instinctive is often held up as more artistic. I'm not sure that claim holds water; art also has an interest in dynamism, especially areas of the arts like dance. The mockery of people who don't appreciate Spain's style as somehow lacking aesthetic sense is unfounded.

There is absolutely no way they are going to abandon it, though. Recall how Spain used to fare in international tournaments before the last six years; they are wedded to this particular style of football for years, if not decades to come. Whether it continues to be as effective is another matter and depends on whether they keep producing players with better technique than everyone else, as they currently have.

Aside from sheer contrariness by the haters, I can see a lot of the considered criticism. I think that the key is this



Spain are dull when teams sit back against leaving Spain to try and pick a lock which they will patiently. Portugal showed that you can take the game and not neccesarily get punished and, as a result, it makes it a more exciting game aesthetically if that is your criteria. I hope that Italy take note of Portugal's approach.



As I have been saying, Spain's approach isn't necessarily about tactics. It's about development of players' technical ability and this, as you know, is something that is inculcated from an early age and nationwide. OK, the 4-6-, if you like, may be ditched if they don't win this Euro but the close passing possession football won't.

There is no need. With the coaching structure, it is an easily repeatable model that doesn't rely on supreme athletes that are fast, strong and tall. Look at how little Spain have missed one of the best defenders in the world in Puyol. It doesn't rely even rely on players like Xavi and Iniesta. The coaching will produce players like that constantly.

As you say, someone will come up with tactics to nullify their play. Germany got close two years ago. Portugal came close the other night but ran themselves into the ground doing it. If Portugal has been slightly better in keeping possession, bearing in mind they already knocked down Spain's possession stats like no-one else, they would have not run out of steam so quickly.

However, it is a question of what tactics, aside from playing Spain at their own game, will work against possession football repeatedly. The case of Barca last season is interesting in that they were beaten tactically by Chelsea and by one of the great tacticians in Mourinho. I am not sure that Chelsea's approach is repeatable but it will be interesting to see whether Mourinho can repeat it next season. Personally, I would prefer to see a slightly defter version of Portugal's approach, however.

Spain have raised the retaining of possession to an entirely new level, but retaining possession is only one aspect of football. There are a wide range of tactical considerations that spain completely choose to ignore, and they choose to build a team around a very narrow one dimensional tactical framework. That framework might well be incredibly intricate, but it's still very narrow.

Now spain have this defending in knock out games down to a fine art. 9 clean sheets in 9 knockout games over the last 3 tournaments. However they make a number of key decisions that have nothing to do with retaining the ball.

Barcelona play a three man central midfield with busquets sitting, xavi passing, and iniesta running. Instead of iniesta running forwards, Spain have alonso sitting deep alongside busquets. Capacity to spray the ball around aside, that is a very defensive midfield line up. This has nothing to do with tika-taka and everything to do with spain being an ultra-cautious defensive team.

Spain choose not to play with width. They have the players in their squad to do this, but they instead choose to play narrow. This doesn't necessarily involve lumping the ball into the centre, but using their superior passing skills to force more situations like the one leading to alonso's first goal against France.

Always being narrow makes them easy to defend against. If anything, picking wide players would enable spain to wear down the opposition much quicker by moving them from side to side much more convincingly.

Spain increasingly choose not to pick a penalty area specialist. or someone with any real experience of playing as a forward. This is a tactical decision that is entirely separate from their capacity to hang onto the ball, because they were well able to hang onto the ball when they played with 2 strikers in the past, and the best barcelona team was able to get by with henry, eto'o and messi up front.

Spain also seem to ignore the importance of speed in their forwards, only thinking it worthwhile to bring on navas, pedro or torres when the opposition are getting tired. Spain also have some players who are good at heading the ball, but they almost entirely ignore this aspect of the game.

Once you take out their ability to keep the ball, and look at what they do with it, you'll see that they are a very conservative, cautious team, who are limited only by their own unusual choices.

Barcelona may have learned a lot from the Ajax approach and van gaal, but they weren't paying full attention to all of the lessons.

That Ajax team between 94-96 were also brilliant at holding onto the ball, but you had no idea how they were going to score against you next because they were such a multi-dimensional team. They could very easily score after a 10 pass move, or they might kill you on the counter attack, or get to the byline, and swing the ball into a crowded box, have a razor sharp one two between kluivert and litmanen, or hit kluivert with a long pass and build from there or nail a header from a set piece or.... Van gaal made sure that ajax were good at everything, which is how they were able to plaster basically every major club in europe over a two year period.

Ultimately the arguments on this board about spain come down to the following. Some people see that while spain are brilliant at holding onto the ball, they follow a very narrow one dimensional path, that frequently strays into the realms of being rather boring.

Then the other side is that their ability to hang onto the ball justifies everything else, and their ability to win games makes this the best possible approach.

Ultinately some people see their ability to hold onto the ball and what they choose to do with it are two seperate issues, they are the ones that get bored. Other people see them as the same thing.

The issue is this, no-one denies that this approach is very successful. The argument is over whether or not this is the best approach. It's very similar to the arguments that we had here a long time ago about jose mourinho's methods. For his first two years an argument raged that his methods were over restrictive and didn't get the most out of his unprecedented collection of top european signings.

The argument was that because his very defensive style churned out 1-0 after 1-0 win and ran up a big points total, it was the best possible way to play. But then man utd came back with a team playing a more attacking version of mourinho's tactics, and they simply couldn't keep up with the pace.

I suppose on the one hand you are supposed to judge football teams and systems on results, but sometimes teams have such a phenomenal wealth of resources that the details of how they play aren't going to stop them from winning stuff. Chelsea were going to win the league in 2004-5 and 2005-6 regardless of what formation they used, but by 2006-7 when a similar sized rival had learned their tricks, and tweaked them a bit it turns out that there was a slightly better way of doing the same thing.

Fortunately for Spain, there is no country out there with the enormous wealth of talent that they have currently. They really have an unprecedented set of players in terms of class, and sheer numbers. I'd like them to do something more interesting with them.

I am quite surprised actually. Talking about how much longer this Spanish team could keep going, I checked the ages and it is much younger than I thought. Iniesta's only bloody 28! Even Alonso and, possibly, Xavi have got another WC in them.

I'm not really a very sophisticated fan, but I'm working on it.


I need to read through all of this carefully, because I don't really understand it all and I haven't seen all of Spain's matches. I guess I haven't seen enough high quality football live and when I played, lumping it up field to the biggest kid was regarded as the height of tactical genius.

My general feeling is that I prefer teams that try to score goals and can do it while not getting scored on. It's that simple. If a team could consistently win at the international level lumping it up field to the big guy, I'd prefer that to a team that just passes it around hoping to win 1-0. And a team that cannot defend Route 1 doesn't deserve to win.

But my general feeling is that the team that can pass and run will be able to adapt and have a chance to beat any defense it is presented with, whereas one-dimensional offenses will only go so far. So over the long haul, the passing team will be more entertaining.

The trouble is that the World Cup and Euros are not "the long haul." Because any of these sides that we're talking about could play any formation imaginable and still qualify, so we're really just talking about what works in the World Cup and Euro 2012 proper, and, increasingly maybe really just talking about what happens in the knock-out stages. So it's not much of a sample to draw from.

Of course, a team can't be blamed for the excitement of a game if the other side just packs it in and hopes for penalties or a stroke of luck. It takes two sides to make a good match.

This is one reason I hate the PK shoot-outs, but that's an argument for another time.



Incidentally, that 14 year old kid I know who plays on traveling sides around here says that Spain and Barcelona are his favorite sides, so insofar as he's typical of the upcoming generation (he may be, kids tend to favor winners), that bodes well for American soccer, I suppose. Perhaps this isn't the thread to mention that.


Also, and this might be the wrong thread, I'm not sure who to hope for in the final. My normal mode is to support Italy because they're the underdog, but I'm torn on how to think of Super Mario. As Liquidator and Spangly Princess have discussed on their blogs, he's subject to a lot of horrible racism in his own country and it bothers me that those bigotted twats will now get to celebrate his achievements as if they were for him all along. On the other hand, I want to support him because he puts up with that and still plays well and he looks like a many to be reckoned with, and I like that in a footballer (Messi and Ronaldo do not. Messi looks like a guy who works at the local outdoor equipment shop). On the other hand, racism or not, my understanding is that he's a bit of a twat. Or is he really a twat or just a bit mental and misunderstood, like Metta World Peace or in basketball or Eric Cantona? He's certainly got remarkable shoulders for a man playing a game that involves no throwing or lifting of any kind.

Great posts all round. I agree with Berbaslug (not a phrase I've ever written before) that Spain play a sort of Total Football Lite. You feel like you should admire it, but just as you are about to express that admiration, you find yourself too slack-jawed to articulate yourself, and then you wake up and it's the second half already (this happened to me at least twice so far this tournament).

So yes to all the neat passing, but boo to playing without a striker. I would love to see Torres and Llorente start on Sunday. As it is, Italy look far more positive going forward. They are playing much better football than Spain, while playing a very similar game. They pressurized England and Germany brilliantly and relentlessly every time their opponents had the ball, and then not only held the ball well but looked like they wanted to do something creative with it. Spain looks like they just want to keep it for the sake of keeping it, like the kid at the playing field with the only leather ball who hugs it to his chest and threatens to go home until everyone lets him be captain and have the first four picks.

I also agree that Spain look tired, and I didn't expect them to get this far again. If Italy continues to play this well, they'll be worthy champions. If Spain engineers another 1-0 win while I'm catnapping, I'll probably wind down afterwards by watching some old Wimbledon videos.

Just see it with a group of people, or in one of those squares with thousands of people, and it's really fucking cool.

Sitting by yourself, it probably sucks.

I do wonder whether Spain are working their way to achieving a Total Football that actually, you know, wins things but winning things first and then developing the Total Football along the way. In a sense, we may be seeing a work in progress. Don't forget that we are only 6 years into the Spanish reinvention. Iniesta, Xavi etc were well into their 20s when this all started. There are going to be kids who grow up with this from when they were 5,6,7.

Renowned Route One merchant has his say on Spain.

Well, that was apposite

Makes you wonder what they were playing at for the rest of the tournament.

Rope-a-dope.

They were knackered and only had one game in them that they could play at full pelt, which they appropriately saved for the final (because they thought they'd be meeting a very strong and athletic Germany rather than a slower, punching-above-their-weight Italy?)

Yes, as I said mid-way through the Final thread the theory that tiredness meant they only had one 100% game in them was given some credence tonight.

I don't think the supposedly unexpected opponent mattered much though, simply that they didn't have to worry about recovery time after it. If they really were holding something in reserve then they rode their luck in the semi, mind.