The Evolution of Barcelona
It’s over 150 years since Charles Darwin published “The Origin of Species”, and sparked an anthropological revolution, whilst in recent years, to hear some pundits tell it, Barcelona have sparked a similar revolution upon football.
Yet, just as Darwin built his theory of natural selection upon the ideas and influences of those who preceded him, so Barcelona’s “tiki-taka” style didn’t spring fully-formed from the mind of one tactical genius, but was the result of the very process that Darwin described in his 1859 masterpiece.
It evolved.
This season has oft seen Barça change the system that won them great honours, and legions of new fans, in recent years, and that shift hasn’t been entirely successful as the once seemingly impervious flagrant have stumbled in their hunt for a fourth successive league title.
Is it because this change breaks the fundamentals of natural selection as set down by Charles Darwin?
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
The early days of football were marked by, to modern sensibilities, a kind of tactical anarchy. The game then, in it’s infancy, was a much more fluid thing with differing rules and some versions of the game skewing closer to rugby than the game we would recognise today.
The application of our tactical understanding to those primordial matches is, largely, futile but to give a sense of how the game was played then the best way to think of those early formations would be as a 1-2-7 formation.
Rule changes and innovations in play saw this change over time to a 2-3-5 set-up that was widespread. The game was taken around the world by British emigrants, and so, in most cases, the various nations all had the same base starting point in a tactical sense.
When the organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues varying for many generations.
This is interesting in an evolutionary context as it follows the distribution of flora and fauna across the globe following the break-up of the super-continent which gave rise to the so-called “Mirror Continents” of Africa and South America where branches of the same species evolved in, at times, radically different ways.
Jonathan Wilson gave a far more in-depth analysis of the evolution in football tactics in his excellent “Inverting the Pyramid” than I ever could hope to here, but suffice to say the general trend in football was towards more defenders.
The relative isolation of nations in those early days – there was no internet, or widespread air travel – meant that, given their “common ancestor” , tactics around the world began to evolve on unique and particular paths.
In England, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman experimented by pulling another defender back, giving rise to what would be known as the “WM” formation – giving his team three defenders. On the European continent, the coffee houses of Vienna and Prague gave rise to the so-called “Danubian School”.
This variation in tactics was thrown into sharp focus when, on a Wednesday evening in late Novmeber, 1953, England, the inventors of the game, met Hungary – the so-called “Magnificent Magyars”.[/one_third_last]
… any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring…
Over the course of ninety magical minutes Hungary doled out a footballing lesson, the likes of which England had never been on the receiving end of before. The game ended 6-3, but the result is almost inconsequential
On the field the fluid and asymmetrical attacking style of the Magnificent Magyars simply blew their opponents away. Their system had grown out of the Danubian School, and took advantage of some extraordinary on-field talents such as Ferenc Puskás and Sándor Kocsis.
The Hungarians played a game that was almost entirely alien to England. The visitors could change in a moment from a 3-4-3 to a 3-3-4 and back again, with movement all over the pitch and players capable of taking on a number of different roles.
Though Hungary would never truly fulfill their potential – they won the Olympics of 1952, but lost in the World Cup final of 1954 – their style would go on to influence arguably the late 20th Century’s most radical tactical innovation – Total Football.
Total Football – totaalvoetbal – is largely credited to Rinus Michels, the manager of Dutch club, Ajax Amsterdam. It was a philosophy of football that eschewed dependence on defined roles on the pitch. Where once a centre-half was a centre-half, and a right-winger a right-winger, in Total Football all players were all things.
The movement and fluidity of the Hungarian team, as well as the River Plate side of the late 1940’s pre-figured much of this, but Michels and Ajax took it on to the next stage of evolution.
With Johan Cruyff as the figurehead of the team, Ajax enjoyed a golden age in the late 60’s and 70’s. The club success was somewhat mirrored by the national team, with the Dutch side of the 70’s held up as one of, if not the, greatest team to never win a World Cup.
It’s a nice kind of symmetry that their spiritual Hungarian ancestors are also given the same epithet.
When Michels left Holland to join Barcelona – he was later followed by Cruyff – he brought totaalvoetbal with him.
So the roots of the current Barcelona side were planted.
Cruyff himself would managed Barcelona, and it was he who further developed Total Football into the modern Barcelona style, “tiki-taka”. It’s a tactic built upon movement, pressing and possession and has become a fundamental pillar of the club and, through the exceptional talent produced by Barça, in the Spanish national team.
Though it owes much of it’s heritage to Hungary of the 1950’s and Ajax of the 70’s, the evolution of modern Barcelona over the intervening period has changed the style in significant ways, in much the same way that species with common ancestors can, over time, evolve into very different-looking creatures.
Yet they share that common DNA, as Barça does with it’s influences. Barça have also benefited from a cross-pollination with other innovative ideas.
We can see why throughout nature the same general end is gained by an almost infinite diversity of means, for every peculiarity when once acquired is long inherited, and structures already modified in many different ways have to be adapted for the same general purpose.
World football clearly didn’t stand still as Hungary and Michels were developing their ideas. Brazilian football is widely credited with the creation of the “back four” when a further midfielder dropped back into defence to provide extra cover.
Any peculiarity will almost certainly modify unintentionally other parts of the structure, owing to the mysterious laws of correlation.
This change had the side-effect of developing attacking full-backs who were given freedom to range forward by the extra body in defence. These full-backs, in time, became wing-backs and Brazil became, and still is to a degree, famous for the export of these attacking wide players with defensive responsibilities.
Dani Alves, one such product of a Brazilian football education, provides much of the width in Barcelona’s system. His lung-bursting attacking runs from right back are a feature of the Catalan giants game.
Brazil is still famous for it’s 1982 World Cup team which truly cemented the idea of Joga Bonito – the Beautiful Game – in the worldwide conscience. That side – another that failed to actually win the World Cup – is still held up as arguably the greatest Brazilian side ever. It’s after-effects are still felt to this day as Brazil are held up as the ambassadors of Joga Bonito despite the fact that for many years now Brazil’s play has been anything but “beautiful” at times.
In Italy, a defensive stratagem called Catenaccio gained presidence. It was designed to stop the opposition playing, with none of the freedom of movement afforded by Total Football and it was the Dutch style that, in many respects, brought about the demise of Catenaccio. Despite this, it’s effect still linger on in Italian football where, the popular opinion is, most teams still adopt many of it’s principles in their play.
The gulf between Total Football and Catenaccio is, on the surface, as vast as that between whales and hippopotami yet, in all both cases they share that common ancestor, the variance caused by nothing more that time and environment.
This disparity came about despite globalisation and “shrinking” of the world thanks to ease of travel and telecommunications. That such different styles could arise so near to each other speaks volumes to the complexity and variability of the beautiful game.
It has been found that a classification founded on any single character, however important that may be, has always failed; for no part of the organisation is invariably constant.
Though crowned Champions League winners in 2009 and 2011 Barcelona managed Pep Guardiola has sought to vary Barcelona’s approach this season. On one hand it is understandable that he wants to prevent other sides from figuring out a way to stop his side playing (as Inter Milan famously did in the 2010 Champions League), yet on the other hand one has to wonder whether trying to enforce a change on a fluid and evolving game is ever going to be truly successful.
The move away from the 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 that had served them so well to an, at times, 3-4-3 (often with no recognised centre-backs) has met with decidedly mixed success. Though there have been victories, it’s difficult to ascertain whether Barcelona won those matches thanks to their new system, or thanks to the extraordinary individual talents they possess.
The best adapted individuals, supposing that there is any variability in a favourable direction, will tend to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less well adapted.
Marcelo Bielsa is widely seen as a tactical innovator. His Chile team played a wonderful attacking 3-3-1-3 formation and when he appointed manager of Athletic Bilbao, he initially sought to bring that system to Spain.
It didn’t work. Athletic started poorly, the players looked unsure of their roles and it seemed like Bielsa was headed for disaster.
So Bielsa adapted.
A change to 4 at the back, while still retaining many of Bielsa’s footballing principles, brought about a positive change in results. Simply transplanting a whole new footballing philosophy on a group of players is as unlikely to be successful as grafting an extra thumb onto someone and expecting their children to be born with three opposing digits.
The game is littered with examples of managers or clubs who have failed to adapt. Gian Piero Gasperini’s time at the helm of Inter Milan was a brief as it was disastrous. Gasperini, a long time proponent of a back three, found his ideas unable to take root at Inter and in flailing around trying to find something that would work, he failed to do as Bielsa did and retain an essential core of “Gasperini-ness”, ending up with a chaotic mess.
Whether his failure at Inter is due to Gasperini’s failure to adapt, or the Inter board’s failure to see that they were trying to put a round peg in a square hole is a debate for another time.
Hodgson at Liverpool met similar resistance to his ideas and philosophy. At Chelsea, André Villas Boas is under pressure as his desire to play a high defensive line has caused problems with players unused to playing that way. Whether Villas Boas will have to adapt his philosophy to the players he has, or will adapt bring in players more “in tune” with his tactics, time will tell.
Back at Camp Nou, Barcelona find themselves trailing their great rivals, Real Madrid, by six points – a huge margin in what is effectively a two horse race.
Given time, perhaps Guardiola’s new way will take root, and set in motion the next stage in the evolution of Barcelona and, by extension, modern football. However, by trying to force change where no natural pressure exists, Pep may have found himself on a dead branch of the evolutionary tree.
While in nature, a species’ evolution can be measured by how suited it is to it’s environment – which is why the old cliché of “if we’re evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” is fallacious nonsense – in football a team’s evolution is measured by one thing – success.
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.
First time I stumble onto this blog. I find some highly interesting points. What a good writer. However, there is a couple of things which I would like to suggest. One: what is success in football? Just winning titles? Or would playing beautifully, entertaining crowds, making the game an appealing activity also count as success? We would have to solve that first, because if winning is what counts, possibly Italian football might be best, but it is so boring! If only the show counts, then the Globetrotters would be the best kind of basketball… only they’re not! Then we have the point about Pep Guardiola changing something that works. You see, species may change as a response to changes in environmental conditions (the evolution of goalies, who can nowadays pass the ball around is a response to a change in the rules) or as a response to improvements in their predators or preys. Pep faces matches in Spain every week, versus coaches that study his team extensively. So, that is big pressure for change. What he has done this year is not so much change to a 3-5-2, but provide a wider array of possibilities. In one match he often moves from one to another. In Bilbao he was losing with 4 defenders and switched to the back 3, created chances and equalized. In Valencia he started with 3 at the back, it didn’t work, he switched to 4 defenders. So the real change is not from 4 to 3 defenders, but to different lay-outs and changes of position within the same match.
Greetings.