What's so wrong with negative fields anyway?

When England set cautious fields they are called tactically naïve; but they win

Ed Smith

July 4, 2012

A month ago, I had one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had about sport. It was in a tiny restaurant in Paris with the brilliant football writer Simon Kuper. The subject was how Spain became the world's dominant football culture.

Spain have now won Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. They are also currently world champions at Under-19 and U-17 levels. The Spanish way - high skill, brilliant passing, and little focus on physical size or brutality - has mastered the world. Not only are Spain serial winners, they have also set football's philosophical agenda.

Our conversation in Paris began with football, but I realised afterwards that the question applied to all sports. How do games evolve? Can original thinkers change their sports forever? Is intelligence - or better still, insight - the most underused resource in sport? Can you think your way to success?

Kuper explained to me that the origins of modern football began with a single inspired insight by the superb Dutch player and coach Johan Cruyff. Like many great ideas it sounds obvious but it is actually profound. The pass, that is what really matters in football. The precision, the perfection of the pass. Everything else - the arm-waving, the brave running around, the passionate sweat and tears - is peripheral. Being better at passing is what wins football matches.

Prompted by Cruyff, Barcelona set up La Masia academy to educate players about the pass. When you watch Spain mesmerise opponents, you are watching an idea brought to life. There is a bloodline that runs from Cruyff - via Pep Guardiola - to Xavi, Iniesta and Fàbregas, the champions of Europe, champions of the world. One idea changed the game forever. Spanish dominance is not just based on skill. It is founded on brains.

Yet the most interesting part of the story is the resistance to Spain's success, the refusal to follow the logic that has created it. Throughout Euro 2012, English pundits continued to accuse Spain of being "boring". The English old guard even condemned Spain's selection and tactics. How risk-averse, how stupid of Spain not to play a centre forward at all? Well, Spain won the final 4-0, without playing a centre forward for much of the game. Their first goal was brilliantly set up by Fàbregas, a midfielder picked instead of a regular centre forward. Stupid Spain, boring Spain? Behind the insult, observe the anger. When a pack of conventional thinkers are confused, they lash out at what they don't understand.

We see the same criticisms thrown around in cricket, the same reluctance to accept that new thinking might lead to better results. Here is an example. Pundits often ridicule captains for setting "negative" fields. The assumption is that it is always a "positive" move (i.e. that it will lead to more wickets) to have more slips and fewer fielders saving the single.

But what is positive, what is negative?

When I was a player, I often liked batting against very "positive" fields. Because I liked to bat at a reasonable tempo, feeling that the scoreboard was ticking along. Many players have a natural tempo, a pace of scoring that makes them feel they are in control. In a perfect world, of course, batsmen should be able to defend for hours without worrying about the scoring rate. But most batsmen are human beings.

	I would much rather bat against an egotistical captain trying to impress the crowd than an unobtrusive captain trying to stop me batting in the way that suited me

That's why I often found it easier to score runs against flashy, "positive" captains, who were always trying to set eye-catching "aggressive" fields. While they were arranging catchers in apparently original groupings, runs flowed from the bat. I would much rather bat against an egotistical captain trying to impress the crowd than an unobtrusive captain trying to stop me batting in the way that suited me.

Now I've retired, I can reveal an effective and underused tactic: stop people scoring (whatever the type of match) and you'll probably get them out. This has become even more relevant to Test cricket during the era of T20 cricket. Batsmen have become increasingly used to hitting boundaries in Test cricket because T20 has changed the way people feel about their natural scoring rate. That's why Andrew Strauss is unafraid to have more fielders saving one and fewer catchers in Test cricket.

When England set cautious fields, they too are called "tactically naïve". And they win. When Spain don't play a centre forward, they are called boring and tactically naïve. And they win.

It is time to revisit some definitions. What are tactics but tools for winning sports matches? And since when was it naïve to play to your strengths?

A case study of thinking and winning is the story of the Oakland Athletics in baseball. Thanks to the book, and now film, Moneyball, it is has become one of the famous stories in sport. As with Cruyff's insight about the pass, the over-performance of the Oakland A's began with a single insight. The best way to approach winning a baseball match is not thinking about scoring runs. It is to focus on getting on base. A run is usually the by-product of getting on base. Runs are hard to predict; getting on base is much easier to assess and calculate. So the Athletics focused on the tractable, controllable parts of the match, ignoring the headline-grabbing end-product.

In 2002 the Athletics unveiled their new strategy. Guess what: the pack of baseball pundits and insiders didn't like it. They accused the Athletics of wrong-headedness, hubris and over-intellectualism. Undeterred, Oakland won a record 103 matches out of 162.

Conventional wisdom moves at a glacial pace because people become attached to ideas that are no longer relevant. Military historians say that generals are always preparing to fight the war that has just ended. So it is in sport.

Boring Spain, naïve England, wrong-headed Oakland? I prefer the idea that sport is always evolving, with new ideas driving the pace of change.

Former England, Kent and Middlesex batsman Ed Smith's new book, Luck - What It Means and Why It Matters, is out now. His Twitter feed is here

Total Football - Barcelona style

Be it the 2-3-5, the 4-3-3, the 4-2-4, or the 4-4-2, Barcelona have consigned mathematical rigidity in football to irrelevance. They have done the same with the ancient and venerable notion that centre halves, or centre forwards, should be tall and strapping. Also torn to shreds is the article of faith that dictates all teams need a “stopper”, a specialist in defensive destruction, in midfield.

What’s more, Barcelona have signalled a democratic revolution in the sport. They have shown, through their success, that the qualities a football player requires to prosper are technical skill and intelligence on the ball. Size doesn’t matter; neither does the position of each player on the pitch.

The seed of it all was the “total football” of Ajax Amsterdam, patented by one of the sport’s philosophers, Rinus Michels. His favourite disciple, Johan Cruyff, brought it to Barcelona, first as a player and then as manager. From there the Barcelona “Dream Team” of the early Nineties emerged.

What we are witnessing today is the perfected version of that model, a purified distillation of the ideology of Michels. What the “Pep Team” delivers is more than total football; it is absolute football.

Michels led the great revolution of modern football. He bequeathed a legacy that included three consecutive European Cup triumphs for Ajax, from 1971 to 1973, and that took Holland’s “clockwork orange” team, with Johan Cruyff as standard-bearer, to the World Cup final in 1974 and 1978.

The system was based not on the manner players were distributed on the field – by a clear division between defenders, midfielders and forwards – but by a change in attitude that led the entire team to perform, and think, in a different way. The defender was no longer a mere stopper, he had to be capable of distributing the ball as adeptly as a midfielder. Possession was the indispensable prerequisite.

A player in a Michels team had to be comfortable with the ball at his feet, whatever his position. When he recovered possession, he would lift his head, find a team-mate and initiate another attack. The game was suddenly being played at an entirely different rhythm. Ajax and Holland appeared to play with more speed than any other team in history. They gave this impression because it was true.
Michels carried the orange torch to Barcelona, where he was coach for two spells in the 1970s, failing each time to make his model gel. He did, though, leave his mark, not least by his decision to sign Cruyff, even if they were unable to break the dominance of Real Madrid.

The turning point came when Cruyff took over the team’s reins in 1988. Suddenly the coach was king; his philosophy would now become the key to success. Cruyff’s first season at the helm was, however, a disaster. Had it not been for his legendary name, and if he had not believed so stubbornly in his own abilities, Barcelona would have sacked him. Cruyff convinced the president of the club, Josep Lluís Nuñez, to forget about the short term and think strategically, allowing time for the concept of total football that had captivated the world 15 years previously to permeate the club. This was the path to adhere to, this was the cause for which it was worth fighting.

In a private conversation back then, on a particular evening long on Heineken consumption, Cruyff confided to one of his drinking companions, “I am going to change the world of football.” How? “My defenders will be midfielders; I will play with two wingers and no centre forward.” Cruyff’s interlocutor wondered if that might have been the beers talking. It wasn’t.

Without a centre forward to preoccupy them rival centre halves would be left bewildered, unemployed; with two wingers the available space opened up enormously and from such a tactical platform a team whose players were all masters on the ball were free to play expansively.
Cruyff’s Barcelona never defined themselves in terms of European triumphs accumulated, like Real Madrid or Ajax, but his trophy haul was not inconsiderable: four consecutive Spanish Liga titles, a King’s Cup, a Cup-Winners’ Cup, European and Spanish Super Cups and that one, coveted first European Cup, at Wembley, courtesy of a goal from Ronald Koeman, total football made flesh. The Cruyff blueprint became emedded in the club’s DNA.

The seductiveness of the Cruyff playing style captivated the fans, the Catalan press and the youth players, none more so than the most intelligent and receptive of them all, Pep Guardiola, who rose to the first-team captaincy under Cruyff, where he remained after the Dutchman’s departure in 1996. Two Dutch coaches, Louis van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard, perpetuated the club ethos, with varying success but unwavering fidelity.

When Guardiola, Cruyff’s protégé, ascended to the first team bench, he coincided with the emergence of a group of players who had been immersed in the in-house philosophy from adolescence, among them Xavi Hernández, Víctor Valdés, Gerard Piqué, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi.
What they had been taught, as their chief article of faith, was that the ball was sovereign; possession the primary — practically the only — priority.

The striking thng about Guardiola’s team is that, while tactical discipline is strict, one is never sure exactly what position on the pitch at least three quarters of the players are supposed to occupy.
The images showing the nominal formation of the starting 11 flash up on the television screens at the start of each match but when the whistle is blown the Barca players pop up everywhere, defying the game’s ancient orthodoxies. Dani Alves is listed as a right back but he often plays more an attacking midfielder or a winger; it has never been made clear whether Andres Iniesta is a right or left winger, or whether his natural position is in the centre of midfield. Alexis Sánchez is a centre forward — the smallest target man in the history of the sport — but disguises himself as a winger. Messi is a “false nine”, occupying a deeper position than a traditional centre-forward, and much more.

As for Cesc Fàbregas, the former Arsenal captain defies all analysis of the position on the field he is supposed to occupy. It is his superior football brain, and his years in the Barcelona youth teams, that have allowed him to impose order, under Guardiola’s watchful guidance, on the apparent chaos of his role.

Xavi Hernández is, of course, the conductor of the midfield orchestra, but he tackles back. Messi also wins back possession; if it were ever necessary he could perform perfectly ably as a full-back. Valdés, the goalkeeper, passes the ball more often than he stops shots.

Guardiola requires his players to pass the ball, even in defensive extremis, because the cardinal sin is to play a random long ball, to reduce football to an anarchic game of chance.

It is the dream that Cruyff aspired to and Guardiola finally transformed into hard, trophy-winning reality. Possession is the sacred principle, as much in defence as in attack, because if the opposition is deprived of the ball, there is no need to defend.

The team’s forward movement operates on the principle of a wave in the sea, gathering momentum until it breaks on the shore of the opposition penalty area. Even if a goal is not the outcome, even if the ball is lost, the rival team recover control so deep in their own half that they have a long and winding road ahead before they can mount an effective threat on the Barca goal. The opposition are obliged not only to cover the entire length of the field to mount a threat, along the way they have to thread a way through a team under orders to chase the ball like a pack of rabid dogs. Barca are artisans, but workers too.

What Barcelona have done is to invent a new language, or what Fábregas, since his arrival from Arsenal this season, has described as the Guardiola “software”. It is hard to assimilate for those who have not been raised from an early age at the club’s La Masia academy.

Some, such as Eric Abidal and Javier Mascherano, have managed to pick it up. But it is a measure of how tough the challenge is that two such reputed superstars as Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic failed to adapt, each ending up as awkward misfits, only fitfully effective, in the Nou Camp ballet.
Barca have imprinted an instantly identifiable picture on football’s global consciousness. Physicality and athleticism have bowed to refinement and technique, the warrior spirit remains but has been leavened by intelligence and the killer grace of the champion swordsman, or the matador. It does not matter if a player is tall or short, wide or thin, so long as he knows how to caress the ball.

Will Barcelona’s triumphant run last? Who knows? Guardiola may leave the club; Messi might suffer a career-diminishing injury, or simply run out of steam; a rival coach might come up with the antidote. It is possible, if highly unlikely, that Barca won’t add to the 13 out of 16 trophies they have won in the past three seasons. But whatever the future may hold, they have left an indelible mark on the game and its history. Nothing will ever be the same again.

From The Telegraph