How Pep Guardiola has changed defending forever transcript

this video is sponsored by Squarespace it was Pep guardiola's Barcelona that made me fall in love with football it felt like what I was watching transcended the game it felt like [Music] magic but like all magic you're never really seeing the full picture of course the talent was beyond Supernatural but behind the curtain was one of the most logical meticulously designed systems of football the world had ever seen from the moment Guardiola was appointed Barcelona's first team coach he got to work Reinventing Johan C's Total Football that he had learned as a player it was a system of five horizontal lines with approximately equal distance between each line if everyone is in position there should be roughly equal triangles between any three adjacent players so that the player on the ball always has a passing option and a third man by adopting this structure Barcelona could continuously circulate the ball looking for the free man that unmarked player with time and space who could then turn that space into threat but C's Vision was not just about creating space in order to attack the system had a second purpose which was equally if not even more important because by remaining disciplined to the structure you can ensure that no one is ever more than as C said 10 m from a teammate meaning when you lose the ball there is always one if not two or more players close enough to quickly apply pressure nowadays we tend to call this rest defense the idea of having enough players behind the board to defend when you lose it but a similar concept was built into C's original ideas and it was essential in guardiola's Barcelona at their Peak plenty of analysts commented on how quickly that team recovered the ball often citing how hard they worked but for Cy and Guardiola it was the opposite good positioning meant you had to run fewer meters to recover the ball not more and this idea has formed the basis of every great Guardiola team from Bayern Munich to Manchester City but over the years Guardiola has taken the defensive side of the game even further than C ever did today pep not only focuses on the structure in possession but the movement and Rhythm of the ball as a way to defend but before we talk about that many of you will know this channel started out as a passion project of mine that grew into something more and for those who'd like to do something similar I recommend checking out the sponsor of this video Squarespace Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform which is essentially designed to help you one build your online presence through a website but then two actively grow an audience and make money doing what you love and I think Squarespace does both of those things really well the website builder is super easy I hopped on and it only took a couple of hours to build something that looked professional their fluid engine design system make everything intuitive it's drag and drop rather than any kind of coding so really anyone can do it uh but there's also tools to help you build email campaigns to diversify your income with merch or other products and having that all in one place can be gamechanging so check out squarespace.com for a free trial and if you like it you can go to squarespace.com theep purus football for 10% off your first website or domain good luck so how has pep taking the defensive side of the game to another level well according to opta Pep's Manchester city are the Premier League team with the longest possessions and take the longest time getting from the defensive third to the attacking third and that statistic gives us a clue as to how City are such defensive Monsters the best person to explain why that is is Pep Guardiola himself who after a Champions League Victory against earling Harland Dortmund was house say he were so dangerous while remaining defensively solid what make the team's good balance compact is what we do with the ball and extra passes helps everyone be in the position and when you lose the balls always you are organiz so extra passes helps everyone be in the right position and when you lose the ball always you are organized you can see this principle in action here against Real Madrid initially they're defending a goal kick and a setup to press almost manto man but after the ball is turned over that's when the extra passes begin it doesn't look like much is happening but C are playing these short passes for a reason because it gives time for everyone to get into position and ultimately they end up in their 325 structure which will allow them to counter press effectively if they lose it interestingly this idea of extra passes is one of the main reasons that Guardiola pioneered the inverted fallback most people assume that it's a purely positional reason to create a better structure to stop counterattacks but P puts more emphasis on the extra passes that it keeps the team in buildup additional low-risk passes from deep that allow the forwards to get into their position however there is one apparent issue with this strategy because at the same time you're getting into an attacking shape your opponent is getting into their defensive shape retreating closer to the goal and becoming more compact for Guardiola though this isn't really a problem in fact it's exactly what he wants and it's part of the reason his teams concede so few goals firstly the more compact the opponent becomes the harder it is for them to Counterattack often they'll have no Outlet in transition and one wave of attack simply leads to another but more interestingly for Guardiola by getting into your attacking shape and allowing your opponent to get into their defensive one you're essentially creating order within the game you create a scenario of attack versus defense and once you're there you can prepare your players for what happens next you can explain where the space is likely to be you can coach certain patterns in effect you can start fine-tuning detail such as the Angles and distances of your rest defense if you were less patient in possession and the game became one of many transitions you'd have no way to know what game States would emerge and as a coach you'd have very little control over what was happening your players would be on their own navigating that chaos and so we've arrived at a fundamental truth of guardiola's coaching he is a manager that as much as possible wants to reduce the number of variables within the vast and complicated game of football in doing so the game can be more knowable more controllable from here it becomes clear why Guardiola loves short lowrisk passes the reason why he hates long balls that result in 50/50s and why he gets upset with his players when they lose the ball cheaply because all of those things create chaos they produce situations of unknown conversely the structure and patterns that Guardiola talks about do the opposite we often see the switch to space and the underlapping run the cut back these are familiar they are repetitive and if you watch City play now it's incredible how few moments of transition there actually are they are exceptionally good at keeping the ball long enough to create these desired game States avoiding unpredictability altogether I think it's from here that guardiola's teams often earn the moniker of machines and some go even further assarting that Guardiola turns his players into obedient robots now given what we've talked about you can sort of see why that's been argued peps players do have strict positional constraints and they are coach to move the ball in specific ways that said though I think it would be extremely unfair to ignore the thousands of decisions they still have to make every single game the most significant being how they react to the movement and pressing of the opponent which will always be to a degree unpredictable regardless what's undeniable is that guardiola's methods have given his players individual and Collective success by creating a stable orderly game he's allowed his players quality to make the difference and despite his genius as a coach and tactician he'd be the first to tell you that his success is owed to his players quality I found a lot of incredible Talent managers in the championship or in the first premier league that they don't have success do you know why they don't have the good players that we have as simple as that I want to be crystal clear that none of this is to dilute the achievements of Pep Guardiola for me he is both the best technical coach and tactician in the world of football the amount of work and detail that goes into achieving this system is ridiculous and just because it looks easy doesn't mean that it is my question though is whether this game model is the best is reducing uncertainty and maximizing order the best way to coach a football team is there a way to succeed while embracing the natural chaos of the game I'll be doing my best to answer that question in this week's patreon podcast so check that out if you're interested but I'd honestly love to know what you guys think has Guardiola created perfect footballing balance or has he actually become too pragmatic do let me know in the comments regardless I hope you found this video interesting I'm getting back up and running after a sort of lengthy winter break so I appreciate you showing up again so thanks so much for watching in your continued support and I hope to see you in the next one see you then