The best example of this is the Liverpool CL tie, where to this day, people still pretend like Gundogan playing on the right lost us the game.
Did Gundgoan being on the right make Fernandinho fall over in the box and gift them an opener? No.
Did Gundogan being on the right stop the defence and midfield from closing down Oxlade-Chamberlain as he ran 20 yards through the middle of the pitch winding up for a shot? No.
But we've had to hear about how that selection cost us the match for 5 years.
Football doesn’t work like that.
You can’t just say that if a goal didn’t come as a direct irrefutable result of the team shape / lineup then you can’t say the lineup was wrong.
Football is a game of confidence.
Half the battle is getting the players to believe that the way you’ve set them up is giving you the edge, making you better than the opponent.
A lot of the time that confidence comes from each player knowing his role and his team mates roles inside out. They can pass without looking. Track a run without even thinking about it.
Sometimes the team can have that confidence because the manager has seen an angle that no one else has and the whole team buy into his genius. Pep’s done this countless times, many players have hailed his genius.
Even Pep said it in All or Nothing. Knowing all the answers isn’t the most important thing. Convincing the players you know all the answers is what gives you the edge.
Mourinho’s a great example. Look at his counter attacking tactics at Inter and Chelsea first time around. Players bought into it 100% and they were unstoppable.
Trying the same tactics at United, Chelsea the second time and Tottenham didn’t work. The tactics remained the same. It was the players belief in them that changed.
Pep against Monaco, Tottenham, Liverpool, Lyon and Chelsea in the CL, he made the same fundamental mistake each time.
He changed the shape, the approach and the personnel from what had been working. Even if the tactical ideas were sound, the effect it had on the confidence of the team completely overshadowed that.
Players looked lost, couldn’t pass with their eyes closed, couldn’t track runs without thinking about it. They were visibly uncomfortable and many of them have publicly questioned the decisions afterwards, which tells you they were certainly questioning the decisions during the game too.
Pep’s arguably the best coach ever, I wouldn’t swap him for anyone. He’s a tactical genius. But footballers are not chess pieces. In the biggest games in the CL he has a tendency to put too much emphasis on tactics and not enough on confidence.
