Thread by @MartinRafelt

POSITIONAL PLAY AS A GROUP STRATEGY
The secret of Spain's dominance is not only structure and technical quality, but an amazing collective movement that allows them to apply their prefered solutions extremely often.
They want to find the free player and he's ALWAYS there.

What Spain does incredibly well is 1. to move as a team very quickly towards the ball to create options and 2. to coordinate the movement around the ball to end up in clear triangular structures of 3-5 players.
These are then easy to play for them & they execute super consistent.

The interesting thing here is that this is not exactly the same thing as the classical idea of positional play (which they do also use) to move the ball accross the pitch and find the free players where the opponent is not defending them.

Instead of using the opposition movement and get the ball to the gaps that emerge ("behind" the opponent), they are active themselves and overload "in front" of the opponent quite often.

Positional teams that are more simple and based on team-structure often need to find moments of controlled possession before they really can start to show their quality. Spain is great in GETTING INTO control from chaotic situations.

The situation from the start for example developed from a second ball. In the beginning, they basically had no positional structure, but during the flow of securing the ball in the center, they managed to find one organically and then adapt further as showed in the beginning.

I think that's the difference between grasping positional play on a deep, intuitive level with a passing- and possession-based identity and just understanding team structure and ball circulation. They will always play, play, play. If they lack structure, they make one.

While the team structure is fluid at times, on a group level you will ALWAYS see the core principles of positional play. Clean touches, open body position, find the free player.
It's a group strategy, a fundamental of their interactions, much more than their team organisation.

France completely played into their hands by doing a lot of half-pressing. Being cautious in going forward, keeping players at the back.
Ocassionally, they went full man-to-man and it worked very well. Stopped it probably because "under pressure you become your habits".

As dozens, hundreds of teams explored in the last decade, you can either play a hyper-passive game with a back-five against a team like that or you go full man-to-man to eat up their movement and force them into the duels they aim to dodge all the time.

I expect Argentina to be very clear in changing between these two modes, depending on the situation. And then of course, they want the ball themselves which Spain wants to prevent - who also like to hard-switch between high pressing and low(ish) block.

So we might not be seeing Spain shine as much as they did vs France. Pressing them A BIT is exactly where they're the best. Against low-blocks it's a lot of control and defensive stability. Against pressing, they're good in securing second balls and force the opponent back.

We will analyse the real thing in the Academy in 10 days (Wednesday, July 29): spielverlagerung.academy/#live