Style. What does it even mean? Wearing the perfect clothes? Behaving a certain way? Buying things to accentuate yourself?
I am no expert at style. I wear a white t-shirt with a pair of green shorts, blue slip-on sandals and a black watch. Because I couldn’t care less as long as I am comfortable. But what does that have to do with football??
Well in recent times, we have heard a lot about the ‘style’ of football. A team these days, is supposed to not only win football matches, accolades and trophies but must do so in a particular ‘style’. What the frack does that imply, you ask? Well I will try to break it down, if I can into simpler terms.
A ‘style’ of football is pretty simple to someone who is a technical director at a football club. It exists as the blueprint upon which a club’s first team operates. A certain way of conducting themselves on the football pitch, a certain tactical set up, and most importantly and this is common across all styles – an insatiable desire and need to win.
Let us break down these styles into two basic ones – the first and the more aesthetically pleasing is ofcourse, an attacking and flamboyant style of football. This is where a team essentially has two, maybe three defenders and every other outfield player wants to make incisive passes, runs, dribble and get a goal. And I mean every single one of them. Then there is the other style, the defensive one. In this, a lone striker (and I mean REALLY lonely) sits up top waiting as the entire teams soaks up pressure behind the ball as an opposition looks for a way through. As they make a mistake, boom, one-two-three and ideally, it should be in the back of the net. The best style is a combination of these two and knowing when to use either. Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid (Liga winning) side had this exact quality. Against ‘lesser’ opponents, they dominated, smacked the ball about with swagger and won matches with plenty of goals scored as well as conceded. But against ‘bigger’ opposition, they waited, watched, and broke on the counter with the blistering pace of Cristiano Ronaldo to make their opponents pay and catching them out of position.