The cold continues to grip England, and our training session Wednesday was cancelled. Today we are indoors (and not at our usual venue) to prepare for this weekend's fixture with league leading Manchester City. Thus, due to the weather, no new insights to differences between coaching in England and the States. Rather, I have had several discussions over the last week (well, over the past year) about what we share in common: how we all want to play.
Barcelona has not necessarily redefined football, but their current play, club philosophy, and player development philosophy are the fruition of Rinus Michels' total football of forty-five years ago. Indeed, the youth system at Barça is modelled on the Ajax system, and while the result of many brilliant minds, Johan Cruyff was certainly at the forefront of the creation of La Masia. Coaches throughout the world now watch Barcelona, and we all pretty much agree, that's the way we want to play: technical precision, incisive passing, fluid team organization, relentless defensive pressure. It is tremendously simple, but simple is not the same as easy. In a lot of ways, coaching, from the youth level up through senior teams, can be defined as the series of compromises we must make between how our squad will actually perform and our ideal vision of Barça.
However, are any of those compromises inevitable? The problem Barcelona gives us is to see that if perfection isn't attainable, it very nearly is. How do we get there from here? It's easy to say that any team can play like that: all you need is Xavi Hernandez, Sergio Busquets, and Andres Iniesta in your midfield. Therein though lies a salient point: Xavi, Busquets, and Iniesta didn't fall out of the sky; they all played their youth ball for Barcelona, and though in Busquets case, he didn't join Barcelona until he was sixteen, he is second generation, as his father Carles is a product of the Barcelona youth system as well.
This week in the Champions League, the Barcelona team that dominated Rubin Kazan was largely a youth squad, and without Xavi or Iniesta, they controlled 79% of the possession -- nearly 4:1. Without the stars, they played exactly the same way, with tight control of the ball, constant circulation of players off the ball, and always, always, always, looking for the penetrating pass. I've never seen any of the youth teams of Barça play, but I am told that the U12s are exactly the same.
So, how do we teach that? That is the $1billion question (Forbes' valuation of FCBarcelona as of this year.) In the US, and especially on the women's side, we oftimes have very skilled teams that possess the ball just for possession's sake. One keeps looking for the incisive pass to break the defense down, but it never comes -- the ball just keeps going around and around. The contrast is a squad like I had last year at Greensburg. While we were not technically good enough to retain possession, we would fly at you on the counter attack. EVERY pass we attempted was the killer pass.
In some ways, Barcelona are more like the team always on the counter -- they are always looking for the killer ball, but they have the patience and technical skill to recycle (and can do so very nearly indefinitely) if the killer ball isn't available. Then, of course, once they lose possession, all eleven players are actively seeking to get it back, oftimes before the opposition even realizes they have gained possession. The anticipation and work rate of the squad is so great they see when a pass will be intercepted and are getting into defensive shape before the opponent even touches the ball.
At the senior level, I think we can influence players to play quicker, move off the ball, get work done early. But to have the confidence to do those things at the speed and precision of Barcelona, it has to begin early, and I think we have to have that picture in our heads when we are teaching the kids. Too often, we give up as coaches and tell kids to hit it long to the fast kid. It works, but you'd never see that at La Masia. In order to develop players, we must focus on development of players (again, very simple, but not necessarily easy.) That means that while we do play to their strengths, so they have success (and FUN!) in the game, we have to improve their shortcomings as well -- and that means we have to get kids away from the comfort and safety of kick and chase. They have to gain comfort on and vision with the ball, and above all the confidence to play with all of the skill they can muster at whatever point they are in their development.
It's a tightrope of instilling the confidence in the players to play with the poise exemplified by Xavi, but at the same time be very clear about shortcomings. I think it's just as damaging to tell a kid "great ball!" when he misses the forwards run by 20 yards as to tell him he's an idiot. The idea behind the missed ball might be good: but the goal in the execution must always be perfection. Each player must be accountable for his or her actions, as each player is responsible (and has the capability) for his or her own improvement. A player isn't going to get better if he is constantly told he's great, even though his balls are missing the forward by 20 yards. He will just continue hitting those balls and assuming there must be something wrong with the forward for being 20 yards away from those passes the coach keeps telling him are great.
Ultimately, I think the lesson of Barcelona is they are always seeking perfection. If we aim to be pretty good, we will be pretty good on our best days. But most of the time, we'll fall short and on bad days we'll be rotten. Barcelona aims for perfection every match, every training session. On their best days, they just might have a taste of it. But even on a poor night with the third string in, they are pretty good, tearing up the Russian champions.
