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Jackie WaltersIn your search in fathoming the secrets of how to coach or play ‘systems football’, you’ll need to not only question everything you read here but everything you already know about tactical approaches in football – never assume you know all there is to know. Forget formation, start from nothing and recreate the basic concepts in football to suit the qualities you have to work within, but understand that your concepts should still fit within a basic framework, a framework of systems football.
On a conveyor belt coaches turn up to Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper to watch Barcelona train; they come in their thousands with their notebooks, hoping to frantically scribble down hundreds of epiphany moments and come away with all of football’s answers. The formula for any successful systems approach will not be found in this way; it is a ‘whole-approach’ that needs to be experienced. Therefore, to simply mimic Barcelona’s approach entirely is in practice ext...remely difficult to do and in most cases impractical to do so.
The formula of successfully implementing systems football begins at ground zero; yes, you take the basic principles from the particular system you wish to mimic, but from there onwards, it’s a journey of self discovery – a journey of understanding not just yourself within the complexities of a system, but also those of your opponents and the field itself. The solutions and spatial relationships on a field are interminable and in a constant state of flux depending on who has the ball and where the opponents are positioned – in attack, in defence, unabridged.
The first element within the complex systems approach to football is technical possession: (By B. Rodgers)
“I like to control games. I like to be responsible for our own destiny. If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game” (Brendan Rodgers)