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For a long time, the received wisdom of football tactics was as follows: attack big spaces, defend small spaces.
An analysis of Roberto De Zerbi's football tactics, contrasting his approach with Pep Guardiola's and exploring the challenges of his style.
Key Takeaways
- De Zerbi's football is built around baiting the press to create attacking space.
- His style contrasts with Guardiola's by provoking opponents rather than forcing them back.
- Success depends on opponents engaging with the bait; refusal limits effectiveness.
- Teams built for vertical play struggle against well-structured low blocks.
- Resource limitations can hinder the full potential of De Zerbi's tactical system.
What the video covers
- Traditional football tactics emphasize attacking big spaces and defending small spaces.
- Pep Guardiola revolutionized this by compacting attacking space and leaving space behind to defend while maintaining possession.
- Guardiola's style requires highly technical and physical players, making it difficult to replicate.
- Roberto De Zerbi developed a contrasting approach inspired by futsal principles and the concept of 'press baiting'.
- Press baiting involves provoking the opposition to press, creating space to attack large areas without losing possession.
- De Zerbi's teams use quick tempo changes and assess numerical superiority to decide between slow build-up or vertical attacks.
- His approach shares similarities with Guardiola's but relies on provoking voluntary opponent actions rather than imposing control.
- A key weakness is that if opponents refuse to engage with the bait, De Zerbi's system struggles, especially against low blocks.
- De Zerbi's Brighton faced difficulties against teams using low blocks and fast counterattacks, leading to fluctuating league finishes.
- Without elite resources, De Zerbi's tactical philosophy risks becoming less effective as opponents adapt.
Chapters
- 00:00Traditional Football Tactics and Guardiola's Innovation
- 00:32Guardiola's Tactical Foundations and Challenges
- 00:56Introduction to Roberto De Zerbi's Tactical Philosophy
- 01:26Origin of De Zerbi's Approach and Press Baiting Concept
- 02:02Press Baiting Explained with Player Example
- 03:02Numerical Superiority and Tempo Changes in De Zerbi's Play
- 04:46Comparing De Zerbi's and Guardiola's Defensive Strategies
- 05:17Limitations and Challenges of De Zerbi's System
- 06:40De Zerbi's Struggles Against Low Blocks and Tactical Adaptations
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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This makes sense. You defend small spaces and attack open spaces because it makes the task of attacking and defending easier.
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Pep Guardiola's football, however, turned this logic on its head. Citing the inspiration of Marcel Bielsa, Guardiola's football sought instead to compact the space that you attacked and leave space behind you open to defend all through possessing the ball.
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Now, the downsides are obvious. You leave a lot of space behind you to defend. But the upsides are that you get more players in attacking positions and that if you lose the ball, you're actually quite far away from your own goal. Plus, you prepare a rest defense to deal with these situations.
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Now, it might not sound that radical now, but this was the foundation for Guardiola's domination of the game. The problem is that you need an incredibly high level of technical and physical players in your squad in order to play this way.
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So, after years of attempting to imitate Guardiola's style, inevitably, other coaches started to look back to the old received wisdom to interrogate it for new ideas. One of these coaches was the young Italian Roberto De Zerbi. What follows is a story
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from the new book, The Spectre of Pep. How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football by John McKenzie. This was adapted for video, so is much shorter than the original, which contains far more detail and is worth reading. You can find a link to buy the book in the
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description. The origin story of De Zerbi's tactical approach is told by one of the players he coached at Foggia right at the outset of his coaching career. Antonio Vacca had grown up a keen futsal player in Naples, the town where he was
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from. On the Neapolitan futsal courts, he developed a habit of controlling the ball with the sole of his foot, something that irked his coach at Foggia.
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At times, De Zerbi would stop a training session to lecture Vacca about his habit, telling him that it was fine to use his sole from time to time, but only when it was absolutely necessary. If he didn't need to, then he shouldn't. And for the
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most part, Vacca took the criticism on board and got on with practice. But on one occasion, he didn't. And Vacca himself recounts the story. My teammates on the opposing side weren't stepping out to press me. So, the coach kept
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telling me, "Pass it. Move it." So I replied, "Coach, if our opponents on Sunday come here and play for a point and I move it without getting one of them to jump and press the ball, it's no use." I argued that if I put the sole of
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my foot on the ball and lured the opponent out, I've invited him to press me. As he does that, we can break the line with a pass. Calling out a coach like that in the middle of a practice
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session could have backfired. But eight years later, De Zerbi would credit Vacca with having provided him with the tool through which to implement one of the fundamental principles of his tactical philosophy, baiting the press.
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The concept of press baiting is the in-possession counterpart to the out-of-possession concept of low blocking.
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Where the low block drags the opposition forward in their attempt to score a goal, the press bait drags the opposition forward in their attempt to win possession of the ball back. The result can be the same in both
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scenarios, though, creating the conditions to attack large spaces. Like the old logic says, De Zerbi had found a way to get the same benefits of low blocking counter football, but without having to give up the ball to
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do so. When it comes to playing through the press, De Zerbi's teams use quick changes of tempo to aid them. He teaches his players to quickly calculate if they have a territorial overload or not by counting the number of defenders the
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opposition have in their back line. If Brighton, for example, have three attackers in their front line, but the opposition have four defenders in their back line plus a goalkeeper, obviously, the Brighton players should instantly
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know that they have an extra player as well as a goalkeeper deeper in the field. In these instances, De Zerbi tells his team to develop the play slowly. If, however, the opposition only have three defenders in their back line, taking your goalkeeper out of the equation, you now know that you have a
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situation of numerical equality with their opposition. In these conditions, De Zerbi encourages his team to play vertically, essentially faster, longer balls to try and take advantage of an improved balance up front where your attackers are now one versus one with their
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defenders. So, baiting the press opens out the possibility of a return to the old logics: defend small spaces, attack big ones. But there are similarities to Guardiola's football. While Guardiola's teams have to break down a low block deep in the opponent's half, De Zerbi's
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teams have to break a high press deep in their own half. For Guardiola, the opponent must be forced backwards into their own penalty area to elicit a form of control. For De Zerbi, they must be pulled forwards to create space that
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could be exploited. However, there is a problem here.
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In Guardiola's case, the opponents are forced backwards. This is about imposing a state of affairs on the opposition. They must drop deeper. On the other hand, De Zerbi's approach provokes. In other words, success requires a voluntary action on the part of the opponent. The reality is the success of De Zerbi's approach contains within itself the conditions of its own failure. What happens if the opposition stops accepting the bait in the first place?
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In these instances, without the opponent jumping up and looking to generate numerical equality against De Zerbi's buildup unit, the players are encouraged to build
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up less vertically, essentially adopting an approach to ball progression that you might expect to see a Guardiola team using. But De Zerbi's teams tend to be structured around the fundamentals of the vertical game, both in terms of tactical instruction and squad building. As a result, a team who are built to generate space through enticement will struggle when coming up
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against a low block. For example, when De Zerbi was at Brighton, both David Moyes's West Ham and Sean Dyche's Everton caused him problems with a well-structured lower block, which could quickly decompress into dangerous fast attacks running through the
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wide channels. In the end, then, De Zerbi finds himself caught between these two modes. The better
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his team has become at creating and exploiting space through baiting, the more likely his opponents will be to refuse to allow them any
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space, and the effectiveness of his approach gradually reduces. At Brighton, a sixth-place finish in his first season was followed up by an 11th-place finish in his second as more and more teams refused to
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acquiesce to the provocation. If De Zerbi, at an elite club, had access to the kinds of resources needed to overcome the tactical problems his system produces, it could be different. Until then, though, he will continue to remain the victim of his own
Topics:Roberto De Zerbifootball tacticspress baitingPep Guardiolapossession footballfutsal influencelow blockvertical playBrightonfootball analysis
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