The final of the UEFA Champions League will take place in about one week, on Saturday, May 26. Liverpool and Real Madrid are the contestants. Neither came close to winning its respective domestic league this year.
How, then, did these teams manage to do so well against the cream of Europe?
This article by Simon Kuper explains a key tactical concept: “storming,” or relentlessly trying to steal the ball in the other team’s end of the field.
Storming is my preferred way of playing small-field soccer. Imagine playing a full-court press on a basketball court against opponents who aren’t allowed to use their hands. The odds of stealing the ball are good.
On a full-sized field, however, ball carriers have more space, and those who press must sprint farther. Storming is much harder to pull off.
Regular soccer is like stone/paper/scissors. Teams that specialize in keeping possession and passing out from the back are vulnerable against teams that specialize in storming. This is because storming creates turnovers near the goal. But teams that are good at storming suffer more against less skillful teams that settle for “parking the bus” in front of the goal with nine or ten defenders. This is because teams that storm are more vulnerable to counterattacks. They also thrive in chaos, which is what other teams avoid succumbing to when they park the bus.
This explains why F.C. Barcelona, the renowned master of keeping possession and inflicting “death by a thousand cuts,” continues to dominate in the Spanish league. Barcelona and the stormers at Atlético de Madrid both play against less skillful opponents who try to park the bus. Over the course of a lengthy round-robin tournament, this favors Barcelona over Atlético. (Real Madrid isn’t a pure representative of any of these styles. More on R.M. later.)
On the other hand, in the Champions League knockout stages, Barcelona must occasionally get past a storming team without relying on its superior record against other contestants. Barcelona faces much worse odds when it goes head-to-head against such foes. And so it has been knocked out by such stormers as Atlético, two years ago, and Roma, this year.
In its quarterfinal, Liverpool, a storming team, knocked out Manchester City, which likes to do some storming but is more of a possession outfit. Liverpool then outstormed like-minded Roma in the semifinal.
(In the English league standings, however, City left Liverpool in the dust.)
Of the three strategies, “death by a thousand cuts” and “storming” require the most specific personnel. (Just about any team can “park the bus” as long as it has one speedy forward who can retain possession long enough.) In particular, it’s hard for a team to acquire midfielders who are good possession-keepers
and good stormers. The mindset required for making sustained charges into the thick of things is the opposite of the mindset for drifting into space, receiving the ball, slowing things down, and making judicious passes.
This is where Real Madrid, with its great wealth, has the advantage over everyone else. It has enough good players to try either strategy. When an opposing team parks the bus, R.M. can inflict the thousand cuts. And when R.M. comes up against a storming team, it can bring in players to switch out of its usual possession mode. Thus, at each new knockout stage, it adapts itself to its opponent.
This ability to match up well against a variety of foes is what allows R.M. to get through knockout tie after knockout tie, year after year, even in a very bad year. Of course, all it takes to be eliminated is one bad matchup. Liverpool isn’t built to win a round-robin league against good possession teams, but it
is built to shred even the best opponent on a given night.
If I were coaching Real Madrid against Liverpool, I’d have my defenders simply kick the ball down the field and hope for my skilled attackers to retain possession. And if they couldn’t, I’d switch tactics and park the bus.
Whatever happens, I don’t think this game will offer much by way of midfield sophistication.
