The Long Ramble - Tactics Don't Exist
- Gabriel Heidler
- Nov 1, 2024
- 23 min read
Updated: Nov 4, 2024
“Tactics don’t exist.” In the era of modern football, of positional play and tacticos and Monday Night Football, it seems an inflammatory statement to make. Some would even think that you couldn’t make it to a high level in the professional game with this mindset since tactics are so engrained in the sport that they’re inescapable.
But these aren’t my words, they’re those of René Marić who has seen his career go from strength to strength, from his native Salzburg in Austria, through Mönchengladbach, Dortmund, Leeds and now as assistant to Vincent Kompany at Bayern Munich. So there must be some credence to it. I warn you now: The Long Ramble isn't just a title, I probably will take so many tangents you'll probably wonder where I'm going. But let's go anyway.
In April this year (2024) Real Madrid travelled to the Etihad to face Man City in a Champions League quarter final, a tie which could have been a spectacular final on paper. The Madrid side emerged victorious (which they would continue to do as they were crowned eventual champions), but it was a pitch-side interview with Jude Bellingham that summed up the real battle that occurred that night.
"Some teams are a bit more structured in terms of the passing styles and the patterns of play, and it’s really interesting to watch, and it’s definitely difficult to play against, but I think one of our biggest strengths is that we’re so off the cuff." Jude Bellingham on Real Madrid’s style
Perhaps it was a little poetic that it was the minutely detailed precision of Pep vs the quiet, intuitive trust of Carlo, but in its essence it encapsulated the mind of René Marić.
"We need different positions, different attributes - players who can dribble, players who can go into depth, players who can defend - but, in the end, it doesn't matter if you are not able to accurately perceive and decide." René Marić
This belief, that players have to be perceptive to the game, is often summed up (for want of a better phrase) as “game intelligence/IQ”. But I feel that the phrase has lost a lot of meaning. It’s now merely a tool of football podcast aficionados and amateur analysts to describe something which they perhaps don’t have the actual words to describe. It’s a catch-all synonym for a good player; “her game IQ to pick that pass”, “his intelligence to turn that defender”. A simple phrase to praise the outwardly technical in a way that sounds intellectual but doesn’t give any detail as to why.
I remember during a discussion I had with a fellow grassroots coach about observing new players, I made a point to have a list of observation points that we could assess. Above all I wanted to focus on player awareness, to see how a player was involved in the games. This coach however disagreed, replying “good technique might solve poor positioning; good movement may solve poor technique”. It was a fair point, but it just made me think:
So what are we actually observing?
Yes, good technique might solve poor positioning but what causes the poor positioning, and most importantly is the fix for it coachable? Without understanding intent don't we simply boil down every action a player takes to solving a single, isolated problem? Whilst we may develop players who can have success in duels is this not merely focused in the now - the immediate action they're making - rather than assessing the state of the game within which the action is occurring? It might sound like we're saying the same thing in different words but I just couldn't help but think that without a framework we were focusing purely on the outcome rather than intention. We were just documenting what happened, the how rather than understanding the why.
We've all seen players who physically develop quicker than others and utilise that, but when their cohort inevitably catch up the game drifts from them a bit. We've seen the pacy striker suddenly come up against a defender who can match them and their productivity wanes. Very recently in the Premier League Adama Traore had people saying the "aura" of Kyle Walker had fallen. All because they were observing individual moments and not appreciating each players' understanding of the game.
As René Marić says above, players need to make effective decisions above all else. I'm not knocking problem solving either, it is a vital skill to have. But whilst all footballers solve problems in a variety of ways none of them can be effective in the long-term without understanding their situation and instead focusing solely on their technicals to win battles. If Aitana Bonmatí unlocks a defence coaches may focus on the pass and teach their players the technique, but I can almost guarantee all will become frustrated when their players can't replicate it without understanding and visualising the game as it unfolds. So in that way my conversation with the grassroots coach rings a little true but with one important tweak: "good understanding of why will almost always solve poorer skills".
"Speed is often confused with insight. When I start running earlier than the others, I appear faster." Johan Cruyff
In England the default core of player development I would argue is a technical one, despite the England DNA that was launched a decade ago having clear areas focusing on “decisions” and “recognition of the game situation”. It has transformed into a victim of the quantifiable success metric that everything inevitably does. Johan Cruyff believed that he wouldn't have made it in the modern game, not because of his talent but because of how it is assessed.
Based on the criteria at Ajax now I would have been rejected. When I was 15, I couldn’t kick a ball 15 metres with my left and maybe 20 with my right. My qualities technique and vision, are not detectable by a computer." Johan Cruyff
Quantifying ability is difficult and so will always revert to absolute outcomes: we will generally believe a player understands the game if she scores; we will believe a team is in control if they win. But this is a false, or at least faulty, syllogism:
“To win we need to understand the game. Team XYZ won. Therefore Team XYZ understand the game”.
Yeah, not quite. It also oversimplifies the idea of understanding the game to something that has to come from the collective doing a certain job, everyone fullfilling their role just as they're told - in other words we're back to “tactics win games”.
I get why this sort of thinking has begun to dominate. Last year I came across a video from Standing Room Only, a BBC football show in the early 90s, in which fans talked about the future of the game and what it would look like in 20 years time. Whilst most of the chat surrounded the power of TV broadcasters and “Super Leagues”, it was a simple line that really struck me:
“The new style of fan will see losing as a sign of failure”.
On the face of it a simple enough statement that you think would ring true but then ask yourself, as a fan have I ever seen my team lose? Of course you have, and you’re still there. Because losing isn’t failure, it’s just part of the game.
But there are reactionaries, and narratives, and ideas at the highest levels of the game that if you don't win then something is wrong. It is a results-driven industry, and to an extent it needs to be. But we need to remember that we have been fans for numbers of years. Twenty, thirty, fifty, maybe even seventy years if we're lucky enough. Missing out on a title one year doesn’t mean that’s the case the next. It’s the way the sport has been since it began; only one team can win it, but we also start all over again next year.
However this increasing prevalence of “result over process” is heightened by “opportunity”, or lack of it. It’s no surprise that England desperately wants to win another major men’s tournament to go with their solitary World Cup in 1966, but four years is an incredibly long time to wait and thus the result becomes the focus and the process is moulded around it. Thinking changes from "if we do all this right we can win a World Cup" to "in order to win a World Cup we need this, this and this". You may not think there's a difference but integrity always slips when result takes precedent and the process becomes forced. Couple that with the data revolution in sports (not just football I’ll add) and the need to quantify success in an environment that is messy and confusing is inevitable.
It’s the reason why pundits during Euro 2024 said Luciano Spalletti would be under pressure following an early exit, even though he isn’t - Italy currently top their Nations League group which includes both France and Belgium without yet losing a game, so… shrugs shoulders. And it’s also the reason why Tottenham and Ange Postecoglou seem to get so much unnecessary hate.
As the data world says, without fail year on year, interpretation is everything. No stat tells the whole story and, depending on how you look at it, they can tell multiple different stories. Point: I love the move of Dom Solanke to Tottenham. It took me a while to get on board with him but last season data brought me onside. In a real breakout season Solanke scored 19 Premier League goals for Bournemouth but it was his xG (expected goals) that really caught my eye. It was 19.6. Since Solanke began making regular starts for Bournemouth they were within 1.9 goals of their xG every season.
This is something that Spurs seem to be focusing on. In Harry Kane’s final season at the club they outscored their xG. By a lot. Which makes sense with one of the best finishers in world football, he is likely to score from chances deemed more difficult or "lower quality". Spurs scored 13 goals more than they “should have” that year. Last season without him that dropped to just over 5 extra goals. This season (so far), they have scored 18 from 17.69 xG and importantly conceded 10 from an xGA (expected goals against) of 9.69 - both pretty much bang on. But what exactly am I getting at, outside of my praise for Ange-ball?
What I’m getting at is the idea of defining success in the modern game. The media narrative, on TV or podcasts or “social media experts”, all suggest that Postecoglou needs to change his approach but Spurs and Solanke appear to me to be in a mindset where the aim is to improve their chances and limit good chances against. The numbers speak for themselves - after GW9 they have conceded the same amount as Arsenal, who have been dubbed the best defensive team in the league.
For so much talk of “you can’t play this way in the Premier League/he needs to change/they can’t defend corners/etc” their xG of 17.69 this season (at the time of writing using post-GW9 stats) is 2nd best in the league behind City (who only overtook them this game week), whilst they are 3rd top scorers just behind City and Chelsea . Their xGA is 5th best and actual GA is 6th. Whilst granted some teams score more and others concede fewer, my real question would be “how long can you outrun the numbers?”
As a Brentford fan we get called Moneyball more than we’d like, but the idea behind it all is one of luck - if you’re “supposed” to score 10 goals but you score 11, fine. However if you score 17, how lucky have you been? Both Liverpool and Man City are a great example of this right now. Haaland already has multiple multi-goal games, but he still gets criticism when he doesn’t score. However he is outscoring his xG by over 2 goals already and a couple of scoreless games have balanced it from a high of a 4 goal difference just two weeks ago - in other words the games he doesn't score in are probably correct representations, and maybe he's getting a little lucky elsewhere.
Similarly Liverpool are outperforming their xGA, conceding a ridiculous 5 goals from an xGA of 7.08 (admittedly still ridiculously low). So are they getting a bit lucky, or relying on defending heroics/wayward shooting to keep the score down? As Brentford owner Matthew Benham has stated ever since he took over, if the numbers say you’re doing the right thing then don’t let anyone else tell you it needs to change. Teams can’t outrun them forever.
These of course are just numbers that I am using to further my own points in a very simple way, but I would argue that by using this as a core basis for how you play is precisely the idea behind the statement “tactics don’t exist”.
It’s sounds like a silly statement to make, because every team would do this: score more, concede less. But we don’t just score more and concede less in one single way. We also can’t, because it would kill the game. Just imagine your team trying to score in exactly the same way, every attack, and having no success, the proverbial “they’re trying to walk it in”. Yawn. NB: A quick edit after publishing to highlight this, by showing Arsenal's GW10 loss to Newcastle this afternoon. When you only have a limited outlet, as their passmap shows, you can't expect much success.
Tottenham for example appear to not only reduce opposition touches in the box (4th best) and counter attacks (joint 4th best, yet to actually concede from one) but also play an effective offside trap despite constant vocal criticism from prominent people about their high line (joint 4th most offsides). They also, probably to be expected, want to exploit these situations themselves, having the second most touches in the opposition box and third most counter attacks, leading the league by some way in actual counter attack goals. They're also not afraid to mix it up, also leading the league in crosses.
Teams will have structures and systems but you can't train them to attack against every possible defence, or defend against every possible attack. You can only teach adaptability, the capacity to change using the skills we have, so when I see teams creating great chances like Spurs or limiting chances like Liverpool for me it proves that understanding the rapidly changing game in front of them - not to mention week to week with different opponents and personnel - is the fundamental key to success.
It's understandable why there are narratives in the media and on social media because more obvious, rigid patterns of play and formations are palatable to the masses, they are easier to understand and visualise. An adaptable and free-flowing fluid game is messy, it's difficult to pinpoint why teams or players who play this way have success or fail to win, so focusing on things like set pieces - generally a much more structured and isolated moment in a game - become easier to analyse. For coaches - and I'm very much included in this - it's a scary prospect as we don't like the uncertainty of chaos.
But for me adaptability, fluidity, chaos are all king. Jes Buster Madsen is a fairly unique case in football. Initially appointed as Head of Research and Development at FC København, a title that’s pretty unique in itself, he is now Director of Football & Data Science for the Saudi Pro League who are looking to close the gap on the world stage. For Madsen it’s not even a debate about what makes you successful.
"It is an undeniable fact that it is the brain that is playing football. We know a lot about the physiology, we know everything about the calves and the thighs, we know a lot about the tactics, but we are not so knowledgeable about the brain processes that underly these things." Jes Buster Madsen
Basically, brains win matches not feet. As with the previous discussion with the grassroots coach this is where the importance of problem solving comes in and importantly how we as coaches understand that process. Of course tactics require a level of cognitive involvement but we need to remember that what we plan on the whiteboard or training pitch, what we see from the touchline, is not the same as what the players experience in the fire of battle. It's a transmission chain of information, being passed down a line of people, its meaning and context altering with every relay. What we may intend to tell one player may be received in a way that has no context to the situation she is in. For this reason the problems we solve tactically and the problems they solve immediately may be wildly different.
As I’ve mentioned in other posts my philosophy has never really changed and I believe it’s as universal as it gets: score goals. If we get one, we get two; if we get two, we get four. For me that's how it should be. But perhaps unlike some other coaches I really don’t care how we get there. We have systems and structures that we have fun with, and a lot is based on the characteristics of our players, but often these structures change so there is variety. It hasn't always been this way though, it has been an evolution. Well, part evolution, part revolution.
"Fluidity over fixed positions isn’t just a tactical shift, it’s a revolution. It challenges the very fundamentals of football, urging players, coaches and fans to rethink what they know about the game. It’s a bold, brash declaration of war against tradition, a relentless march towards the future" Mick Southerland, "Football Relationism"
Circling back around to how the England DNA has changed over time, it’s quite difficult to find much online outside of that presentation 10 years ago. The England Learning website now talks about a player’s six core capabilities, something they feel every player should develop to make it as a future Lion or Lioness. But where the initial “decision making” of the old DNA gave some basis for cognitive development, five of these six capabilities are physical/technical in nature. And I would even argue that the only cognitive capability, Number 1: Scanning, has been reduced to a mere physical process. Because it’s easier that way.
“This is all about looking around.” I don’t know why but that phrase alone just makes me feel a little angry. Because I think it’s dangerous for a national association to reduce an integral part of playing the game to simply “looking around”. Even in further resources that I’ve found so much of “scanning” is limited to generic Q&A with no coachability in reality = rather than the basic “what are they looking at?” why aren’t there real tactical ideas being shared and developed?
If you ask a player "Why did you make that pass?" they might reply that they saw a teammate in space, and by some definition that would count as "looking around". But was it the best option? Did it allow futher progression up the pitch or did it just solve your immediate problem? Was it even necessary at all if you could have held the ball for longer? There is a major difference between visualising the pitch and understanding it; there's a difference between what is happening and what happens next. And as for throwaway talk about the frequency with which players like Frank Lampard checked his shoulders, well it’s useless unless you know his cognitive process in those moments.
Madsen knows this issue all too well, lamenting the fact that you can't put two-tonne medical imaging machines on Cristiano Ronaldo during a game, or as he puts it, "in neuroscience when we understand a phenomenon, we either go into some kind of genetic manipulation of a rat or fruit fly, kill the rat and then look at the brain. We cannot kill Academy players and do that research!" Indeed not, and that is why we must be careful with what we mean by awareness.
Awareness is not just knowing where the ball is, or where our opponents are or our teammates or open space. It is the fundamental underpinning of understanding how the game works. Sergio Busquets wasn't a world class midfielder because he looked around more than others, but because he understood the game and how to play in the moment. Even just calling it “awareness”, for me, takes it to a level that is more effective than “scanning”. It suggests a progression from merely looking to active cognition of the state of the game.
We generally see everything that is happening in the game, but our attention is often captured by a sinlge event; tracking the ball, watching the run of a striker, seeing a gap between fullback and centre back. Madsen uses the analogy of having a conversation in a crowded room. We can hear everything, the hubbub and noise around us, but we are still able to talk because our attention is on the person in front of us. But have someone across the room call your name or shout "FIRE!" and suddenly our attention is broken. This is the foundation of awareness; the understanding of relevant detail within the noise.
"If you want to make a player’s scanning behaviour better… you shouldn’t train the mechanical movement of the head, you should train the relevance and point of making that movement and you may as well start with that." Jes Buster Madsen
After the appointment of Thomas Tuchel as the new England manager, a Guardian article crossed my path after making the rounds again on social media (first published in 2021) written by an English coach who moved to Spain to undertake his UEFA B qualification because he couldn’t get on it in England.
Outside of comparisons in the vastly different numbers for both the cost of the course and the number of qualified coaches, it is the difference in approach that is the most striking; incredibly detailed on all facets of the game - technical, psychological, biological and importantly pedagogical - and with a personal yet collaborative basis perhaps unlike the English approach of focusing on ever changing Principles of Play.
“Coaches were free to develop their own approach and concepts, providing they could defend their methods to the group and persuade fellow students and tutors of their beliefs, both in the classroom and on the pitch.”
Music. I can’t imagine a more inspiring and challenging environment and I found my UEFA B challenging in itself. But it wasn’t necessarily because of the content, more the collating. It felt like there were things that I had to include and boxes to tick rather than really learning and pushing my knowledge as a coach. I always took pride in my session plans, layering on detail, contingencies and context for what I thought success looked like, but I feel like if I delivered a session without half of that I would still have been okay.
At times I think I was so focused on getting my session out there, delivering it in a way that was expected of me, that I never felt like I actually coached the game with all that detail, it didn't quite feel "natural". With such a focus on what needed to be included I feel like I lost the idea of my "own approach and concepts" as this article put it. On more that one occassion I had tutors ask me "why haven't you coached this yet?" or tell me "you haven't got X because you never did Y", and whilst there were some real learning points to take from these it still just felt like something that wasn't as personal to me as it could have been.
This focus on Principles of Play (which incidently since doing my FA Level 2 and UEFA B have changed - when I was on my B License the new UEFA C was already teaching something different) seemed like a bit of a red herring. If all of these principles combined to create the game as a whole then why don't we just teach the game? During one session I even had a coach ask me why I had chosen numerous principles to focus on; well because if I'm focusing on attacking Zone 14 then Movement, Penetration and Creativity are all vital. It was after this that I realised I could write down all five In Possession principles because I'd teach them all, but just chose one to get the box ticked and then taught the whole game as much as possible.
Like a lot of coaches out there (unfortunately I don’t think I can say “all coaches”) learning, improving and progressing is what drives me. I want to be thinking at the very top of the game and feel like a backdrop of experimentation with my knowledge is where that development can flourish. Because the game isn’t played in one way, and it isn’t coached in one either. It’s messy. It’s chaotic. It requires, often demands, adaptation. And at the end of the day we're terrified of adopting an approach that isn't successful so we use tried and tested approaches, despite learning an incredible amount by trying something and failing.
“Three whistles blew to the tune of the full-time whistle and one of the two tutors asked the relieved looking young coach: “Did this look like what you had on your session plan?” Following a shake of the head and an apprehensive smile, the assessor said: “Good. That’s football. That’s coaching. That’s life. Fantastic work, young man.” He is one of thousands of young coaches in Spain who will hold a Uefa coaching qualification before he turns 20.”
Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jan/28/why-i-left-england-and-moved-to-spain-to-become-a-football-coach?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
This isn’t a criticism of any of my tutors. One of the joys is that in a group of coach educators you get variety in both style and challenge, things you can pick apart and use in your own approach. They were all great and I still keep in touch with them. My issue is that the system in England right now doesn’t feel like it sets you up for the game. I was often asked why I was doing something or how I could change it but looking back now, a few years later, perhaps my knowledge wasn't tested as much as I'd have liked. Where it is all linked to a Principle of Play you're essentially questioned on if your session fits that principle. Perhaps you should be asked why you want to play a certain way. Some may think that the “14 written exams, 12 assignments and 10 practical assessments” this young coach in Spain went through is overkill; personally I think that’s what UEFA B level should be.
"When many coaches say that the game has become disorganized, has broken, as if they cannot do anything anymore… that is the moment when most of the information flows." Juanma Lillo
I see lots of sessions based in one of two camps: they're either a Phase of Play that is set and structured, or they are rondo-based that are technical and frenetic. But whilst both have some game realism to them, just how realistic are they? What does the game ask of us on a Saturday or Sunday and are we effectively preparing for that? If we are spending our two hours a week on how to play out from a goal kick, please let's first ask ourselves “how many goal kicks do we get a game?” Because if it’s not many is there a better use of our time?
In the game this season between AFC Bournemouth and Arsenal, David Raya took a total of 4 goal kicks. Now as a professional who trains 4-5 days a week chances are he and his teammates have plenty of time during which they can perfect routines for these relatively rare occasions (Raya averages between 5-6 goal kicks a game this season). For comparison, my U18s this weekend had 10. Our previous game we had 7. So even at grassroots level you can still ask how useful it is, especially given the reduced amount of training time (for context the league high in the Premier League is West Ham with just over 8 per game - Brighton and Man City average just 2).
I say this because the fashionable approach now is to “play out/play through the thirds” and to have a routine for these things. This player moves here so this player can drop in and bounce out and stretch the width here and the length there and all of it has to work perfectly otherwise we either go nowhere or we’re very possibly 1-0 down from our own possession. For me there’s no real learning, there’s no decision making but instead an incredible focus on a fragment of the game which is rare and has a high level of difficulty to execute. Even as coaches we need to understand the game better, because if we don’t then our players don’t. Again, how often are we asked "why are you doing that?"
What does “playing out/playing through the thirds” even mean here? Is a standard, old school goal kick which lumps straight from 6 yard box onto the head of the striker not “playing out”? Does it not travel through all the thirds? Do these concepts not naturally and somewhat inevitably include every permutation of the game? So why don’t we train our players to recognise just what the game entails and help them to recognise when to do X and when to do Y?
A few seasons ago I began to use my editing skills to make short videos which analysed some key moments in games where I noticed little details on why teams were successful or unsuccessful and the above example reminded me of the video below. As mentioned, when you’re relying on perfect execution for a fairly rare event, stricter routine will likely lead to more mistakes than adapting with active assessment of the situation.
When I see these type of incidents I can’t help but think it’s all because of a wrong check over the shoulder at a specific time and suddenly the whole sequence is destined for failure. That’s it. Something as simple as “looking around”. From memory it was a game that Arsenal struggled in but gained a result through sheer brute force, individual quality shining through when needed. Whilst I get the argument that they have since continued to improve, I think it’s worth appreciating that’s actually because they have massively increased the individual quality within the squad in the two years since - Raya for Ramsdale, Saliba for Holding, Rice in at 6, Timber for Zinchenko just to name some that would be involved here; the idea hasn’t improved, just the personnel. For most teams, this simply isn’t possible but the underlying thought of trying to perfect the process that has such a tiny margin for error still pervades.
In the past I have similarly talked about this sort of issue with Roberto De Zerbi, to the point where a pre-season video of his Marseille team (admittedly very early in his tenure and effectively a training game) showed his CBs trying the same patterns over and over within the space of about one minute with no success as they were nullified by the opposition’s compactness. Whilst it makes sense to keep repeating the patterns in a real game with little risk, this dogmatic approach is surely not preparing the players for what any game can throw at them. For what it’s worth they lost the game 2-0, but in pre-season I’m not sure it’s entirely relevant - they also had more new signings in their most recent Ligue 1 XI (six) than they had players from this pre-season match (the solitary Amine Harit). As I said, the idea hasn’t necessarily improved, just the personnel.
By contrast, this sequence from Tiago Motta’s Bologna is calmer, it allows their players time to read the game and assess the best option rather than waiting to strike a pre-arranged target and hoping it comes off. But it isn’t unstructured, it’s merely based in a very simple concept and then allowed to grow and develop as the game does.
Motta became famous when coaching in the youth ranks at PSG and then subsequently at Bologna for his idea of the “2-7-2” - a formation of width across the pitch rather than length up and down it - that seeks to overload one side in order to isolate the other; 2 wide players, 7 central/midfield (including the keeper!), 2 opposite flank wide players. But support, adaptability and choice is always at the forefront.
Attending courses and events you always hear mantras that supposedly ring true as universal fact in the game, most prevalent of these picks up a quote by Johan Cruyff and runs with it to the exclusion of all else: “If you have the ball you make the pitch as big as possible, and if you don’t have the ball you make it as small as possible.” I’ve even heard coaches say “you think that in order to help a teammate you have to get closer to them, but really you have to get away”.
But the brilliant Jamie Hamilton highlights how effective the opposite can be true. What I love about his assessment here - and his real life example from Racing de Santander - is that it cuts through to the real core of the game: invasion.
We hear so often when we begin coaching about transferable skills, multi-sport and links to other invasion games but I believe we then shy away from training that very point in most of what we do. Invasion becomes the realm of foundation phase training sessions as encouragement of multi-sport takes a back seat to specialisation and structure as players get older. Tactics become a Sun Tzu-esque style of intricate warfare but there is an inescapable fact that at some point the war must descend into combat. For all the posturing and positioning in order to win, the invasion must commence.
I have said previously in my Philosophy section I firmly believe that the modern game has done everything to eliminate the 1v1 as much as possible, with tactics becoming weighted more to overloads in attack and mid/low blocks in defence; numerical superiority in certain positions in the belief that this above all else will lead to victory. How often do we hear of a team “unlocking the defence” like a safecracker painstakingly listening out for minute clicks of a combination lock, whilst the bandits of a Sergio Leone western bulldoze through with quick, efficient and effective use of dynamite to blow the hinges. The ruthless smash and grab that leaves their adversaries no chance of defence.
For the specialist cracker, precision is key but options are incredibly limited, waiting for unforgiving, specific arrangements of tumblers and dials to fall before you get the chance, quite often requiring specific roles by specific people all in the right place to pull it off; no one can do his job and everyone else needs to do theirs or the game is up.
For the bandits it’s fluid, a plan is in place; they know the floorpan and the movement of the guards, but everyone is skilled in the same ruthless efficiency of the gunslinger, adaptable amidst the chaos that is certain to ensue. Any one of them can blow the safe if needs be; the plan doesn’t need to go off without a hitch and success isn’t dependent on select people doing select jobs. It may need selflessness and sacrifice to ensure the ultimate objective, but every member of the team is willing when the ultimate prize is high.
Perhaps somewhat poetically I didn’t intend for this piece to turn out like it did. Much like the football of Thiago Motta or Ange Postecoglou it veered and took what seemed like the most natural direction in order to reach its conclusion, and I've even left out some important parts and opened myself up to criticism. But that's the whole point. It's a warning about over-coaching structure with our teams to the point that we lose meaning, where we try to play EAFC25 from the dugout rather than letting our players play the game they’re in. In other words…
"Tactics don't exist. You have decisions of players." René Marić
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