What makes Barcelona so good?

[Damocles]

It's called tiki-taka and it is literally the hardest form of football in the world to play. It requires a whole team of people who have excellent close control and passing abilities.

The basic premise, is based around short passing, fluid movement in the linking players and extreme pressing, but I'm pretty sure anyone who has watched Barca knows this. The real secret is in transitional play or lack of it, due to their huge possession advantage.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/spain/7883131/World-Cup-final-Johan-Cruyff-sowed-seeds-for-revolution-in-Spains-fortunes.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... tunes.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article3739825.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 739825.ece</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifaworldcup/blog/2010/07/why-spain-were-anything-but-boring.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifawor ... oring.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/archive/jonathan-pearce/2008/06/29/if-spain-can-reign-it-will-be-so-good-for-the-old-game-115875-20625290/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/archive/j ... -20625290/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/soccer/world-cup-2010/writers/sid_lowe/07/09/spain.final/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/s ... index.html</a>

Links above explain the system in good detail

 

[Matt the Giant]

Thank you for contributing everyone, I appreciate it.

So, yes they have a very good academy, they have extraordinary senior players, beautiful football philosophy and of course talent, work rate etc.

A few things which I particularly find significant:

- Their ability to play as a unit. Barcelona, in spite all of their world class players, is a team who attack and defend together. This shouldn't be too hard for other teams to emulate.
But the thing is they seem to really really love their club, they play passionately for the name on the front of the shirt, not the one at the back, and consider themselves to be a part of a family. This cannot be forced or emulated.

- All of the players speak the same language by heart, at least I think so. Is there a non Spanish-speaking squad member? Thus communication on and off-field does not create gaps between players and staff.

- As mentioned above: they do not give up the ball, and if they do they make sure to win it back asap. Look at how their goalkeeper starts the play, or how they handle free-kicks, even those who are quite close to the opponents goal. They pass it to someone close and builds on that. This is possible as there always seems to be a passing alternative around if under pressure. Their movement is amazing, and I think this is also something which ought to be be able to emulate. To always make yourself playable. Hell, this I learned as an eight year old player.
It is very interesting to watch Barca players who are not in possession, how the move and make themselves an option or cover for someone else who makes himself a passing option. The movement in triangles become very evident then.

- And even if Barcelona is an extraordinary team with tons of potential, they are heavily reliable on their two fullbacks. Without them doing their job, offensively and defensively, the system fails immediately.

Have you noticed with what an ease they place one of their players in possession at the edge of the opponents penalty area? With seemingly little effort, they are just there, bang!
We in City for example pass the ball around sometimes for minutes side to side without getting close to the penalty area, often loosing possesion du to a poorly executed pass. What do they do to make this happen? Can we learn from them, or do we need players of their calibre in order to do it?

Finally a few more words on work rate: How can this be increased? What would make our City players up their work rate? We pay them twice as much as most of the Barca players don't we? They are all international high profile players. So why don't they put more heart in the game? Probably mostly because the club really doesn't mean more to them than being their employer, right?

Low work-rate unfortunately is such a vicious virus. It spreads within the squad as fast as fire and should not be tolerated at all. Look at YaYa, coming from Barcelona, he was first very vocal and pissed off at team mates for not giving their all, but now his passion seems to have stagnated, becasue "everyone else is accepting it, so why shouldn't I ?"
Milner was a powerhouse at Villa, but not seem like a beaten player before kick off. AJ was a fresh breath of air when he first joined us, but now... well I think you know what I mean.
We have a lot of Diva's in our team, players who wouldn't even make the Barcelona C team. Yet Barcelona have no divas. Interesting.

Lastly, I am sorry for making my posts longer than necessary, but English is NOT my native language and it's hard for me to be more precise and getting to my point in fewer words.<br /><br />-- Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:51 pm --<br /><br />

It's called tiki-taka and it is literally the hardest form of football in the world to play. It requires a whole team of people who have excellent close control and passing abilities.

The basic premise, is based around short passing, fluid movement in the linking players and extreme pressing, but I'm pretty sure anyone who has watched Barca knows this. The real secret is in transitional play or lack of it, due to their huge possession advantage.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/spain/7883131/World-Cup-final-Johan-Cruyff-sowed-seeds-for-revolution-in-Spains-fortunes.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... tunes.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article3739825.ece" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 739825.ece</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifaworldcup/blog/2010/07/why-spain-were-anything-but-boring.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifawor ... oring.html</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/archive/jonathan-pearce/2008/06/29/if-spain-can-reign-it-will-be-so-good-for-the-old-game-115875-20625290/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/archive/j ... -20625290/</a>
<a class="postlink" href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/soccer/world-cup-2010/writers/sid_lowe/07/09/spain.final/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/s ... index.html</a>

Links above explain the system in good detail

Many thanks for those links Damocles. Very interesting read that is.

 

[stockportblue]

bollocks

they have 3 out the 4 world best players.

and ALL their other players anyway are top world players in their roles.

Mancio, it's not bollocks. I watched a documentary with the late Sir Bobby Robson, and the Barca players who played under him, had said it was cruyff and then sir bobby who introduced the ____ second rule. I can't remember how many seconds it was now, but pep guardiola was in that team and has reintroduced, some of cruyff's and robson's tactics, which when combined with his own, is proving a winning combination.

The pressing system is 7 seconds-revert to team shape if the ball isnt won.Then a second 7 second press is undertaken.watching Barcelona the first 7 second press seems to have a very high success rate.

The original ideas were from Michels who brought Cruyff and Neeskens from Ajax.When Cruyff became Manager he introduced the playing system.This week Dutch journalistd were at La Massia investigating how Barcelonas youth academy system has overtaken the ajax system.

 

[Mancio]

you can train every team to do the famigerate 7's pressing. the problem is that none player can do it for 90 minutes. barca often can , yes , but just thanks to their technical ability . and just becouse during a full season 70% of their games are win before to start , a sort of walk in the park , thanks to their technical absolute superiority.

infact they usually keep the ball 70 minutes , walking and letting the football doing the most of movements passing from a player to the other , so they have to do the pressing hard work just for a few minutes for game.

if you have a less technical group of player they will lose the ball too often and in no way they will have the phisical resource required for pressing all the game.

 

[blueju]

Most players actually want to play for Barcelona wheras the rest go where the best deal is

 

[Dax777]

work rate coupled with that makes them as good as they are though

i know a lot of team with a better work rate than barca

without class they can put their workrate into their ass

While I don't deny that it is more than just workrate. I sincerely doubt you know a lot of teams with a better work rate. Frankly there are none.

-- Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:38 pm --

Sounds like a stupid question I know, but hang on for a second.

I watched the game against Arsenal, and like everyone (with exception for the occasional blind Arsenal fan) was blown away by just how good of a football team that is. Their game against Real Madrid was of the same quality.

Arsenal is a very very good team, one of the best in Europe, and they could not keep the ball for more than a few passes.

My question to all of you is: how do they do it?
And I'm not looking for answers such as "becasue they have this and that player", but more of an analytical take on it if you could. If your answer still is "because they have Xavi and Iniesta", well then exactly what is it they do?

If it is possible to narrow it down to a system or pattern, could it not then be successfully used by another team?


I'm not a Barca fan, but they do play the most beautiful game I have ever seen, in almost 40 years of watching European football. Yet the manage to not only play with style, they score a lot of goals and concede very few.

I'm not good at analysing teams like this, but for me the most significant aspect of their play is that they very rarely give the ball away, which makes it very frustrating for opponents, breaking them down mentally. So, what do they do in order to keep the ball?

All their players want to play for the team and give their all for it.

That is not it either. There players don't want to play anymore for the club than Arsenal players for theirs. So why are they so much better?

-- Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:39 pm --

Their pressing is stunning. They spend as much time working on that in training as they do anything else. It's something they learn from the outset. If you're in training and you give the ball away to Xavi, you better fuckin work your bollocks off or you'll never have it back.

They press in 2's and 3's. It's not just headless chickens running at the ball like Darren Fletcher, there's an art to it.

Finally!! Someone is getting close :)<br /><br />-- Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:41 pm --<br /><br />

Most have covered what makes them so good in this thread, for me it is
1st world class players
2nd a work ethic that see's them try to win the ball back high up the pitch, and they hunt in packs
3rd there academy and philosophy, and what they look for in a player when bringing players into the academy so scouting too
4th there training methods, play in triangles, play quick 1&2 touch, they also do a drill where they lose the ball they are timed to see how quickly they can win it back (work ethic), also when they are in possession try to time how long each player has the ball less than 5seconds another example of playing quick

WE HAVE A WINNER :)

 

[Danamy]

Mancio, it's not bollocks. I watched a documentary with the late Sir Bobby Robson, and the Barca players who played under him, had said it was cruyff and then sir bobby who introduced the ____ second rule. I can't remember how many seconds it was now, but pep guardiola was in that team and has reintroduced, some of cruyff's and robson's tactics, which when combined with his own, is proving a winning combination.

The pressing system is 7 seconds-revert to team shape if the ball isnt won.Then a second 7 second press is undertaken.watching Barcelona the first 7 second press seems to have a very high success rate.

The original ideas were from Michels who brought Cruyff and Neeskens from Ajax.When Cruyff became Manager he introduced the playing system.This week Dutch journalistd were at La Massia investigating how Barcelonas youth academy system has overtaken the ajax system.

Here's someone that knows his onions

The system originated from Ajax, back in the day when they dominated Europe.

They also played the same formation from first team through the ranks down to youth level.
Doing this made it easier for players to naturally progress through the ranks without having to adjust...........brainwash if you like.

 

[Dax777]

I think their players ability to create space where there seemingly is none is a joy to watch.

Also, you cant underestimate the outlet they have in Dani Alves, the amount of times they found him in acres of space down the right on Wednesday was amazing, and what was even more amazing was that Wenger didnt try to do anything about it.

There are some things you can't do anything about. If you spend your defensive resources trying to shutdown a full back, then you must take away from the resources you need to defend, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Silva and Pedro.

Really, it is often a choice of what evil do you leave free. COz you can't cover them all. Especially with how they move and pass. Teams that play Barca once or 2ice a year just can't phatom how disruptive of a team they are. And how hard it is to play them.

Wrapping ones head around the idea that a team is more dangerous when they don't have the ball, flies in the face of conventional wisdom. And on top of all that, they have about 6 of the top 2-3 at some positions.

 

[Freestyler]

A reply i made taken from a thread after the Barca Arsenal game tuesday. i don't claim to be Jose, but this:

Having watched barca so many times, it's all becoming quite clear to how and where they play. every single time i've watched them 80% of their football is played down the ring wing/right hand side of the pitch.

Either that or it's get one midfielder forward, to use to play one-two passes around the 18-25 yard mark, Alves tonight bombed forward more times tonight than Kolarov has in the last 5 games.

Barca use the wing backs, but it's ALWAYS the right hand side when they do it. teams get dragged into holding a high line, the midfield of iniesta and messi drag the defence high, then the wing back (alves) or extra midfielder (xavi) charge forward for the through-balls.

their passing is on another level, but when you take into context of Barca's game, it's so easy to see where and how they play their football, but even still it's literally too hard to defend against.

 

[Matt the Giant]

Could our owners create a winning monster in Manchester city with an English manager? With a squad primarily made up of English players?

Do an English version of what Barcelona is doing in Spain? Buy every young English prospect there is out there, develop the best academy in the world, establish a philosophy for how the team plays, based on an offensive, attractive and efficient style of football, and so on.

That would be something, wouldn't it. And I for one wouldn't mind the wait for success, as long as the team, no matter the names on the team sheet, always played with a 100% commitment and love for the shirt they are wearing.

The fantasy fails immediately though, as there are no young English managers who have the capacity to do this. Or is there?