Why is Defense So Reviled in Football?

This is the kind of space Xavi thinks he deserves.

The the­ory is that because of the low amount of scor­ing in foot­ball, using par­tic­u­larly pro­tec­tive and cyn­i­cal tac­tics ruins the sport whose nature inhibits a high amount of goals per match.  Football’s com­mon nick­name is “The Beau­ti­ful Game,” but from where did that phrase ini­tially orig­i­nate?  Credit is usu­ally given to 50’s and 60’s Brazil­ian star Waldyr Pereira, uni­ver­sally known as Didi, and those Seleção teams spoiled the world with their slick pass­ing, their show­man­ship, and their cre­ativ­ity.  In today’s foot­ball, FC Barcelona would be the team that most resem­bles this vision of Joga Bonito.  Barcelona sur­vived a 1–0 vic­tory over feisty Almería on Sat­ur­day to main­tain their per­fect start and their posi­tion at the top of the table.  While the game itself was not that inter­est­ing, the post­script after­ward brought atten­tion to a long-standing feud between defen­sive tac­tics and foot­ball.  Xavi Hernán­dez, the main orches­tra­tor of the Barça attack, had some bold state­ments regard­ing Almería man­ager Hugo Sánchez’s strat­egy to sti­fle Barcelona’s flow:

“We will have to get used to it.  It’s a shame that they come here to pack the defense.  I’ve never been marked like that.  It was mad­ness, obses­sive.  Even when they had the ball or when I was going to take the cor­ner they marked me.  (Coach) Pep (Guardi­ola) told me to use the wings to cre­ate space so that Busi (Ser­gio Bus­quets) and (Lionel) Messi could get the upper hand in the mid­dle.  I prac­ti­cally had to leave the game.  It was very bor­ing for me.”

Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic, who played in the Ital­ian Serie A for the last five years, was far less incensed with Almería’s style of play:

“It’s dif­fi­cult to play against five defend­ers.  We didn’t play well, but we’ve won.  This is also impor­tant.  I’ve not scored, but I’ve made another.  This is impor­tant.”

The tight mark­ing of Almería was some­thing Ibrahi­movic faced in Italy weekly, so he was not as frus­trated as Xavi.  Ibrahi­movic also keyed on a point that Xavi failed to address: Barcelona did not play that well.  Xavi deflected the crit­i­cism of their play by point­ing out how Almería did not let them play their foot­ball.  Does Xavi make legit­i­mate claims con­cern­ing the oppo­si­tion?  Last year, Almería lost both meet­ings to Barcelona, 5–0 at the Camp Nou and 0–2 at home.  Almería wants to win just as much as Barcelona, and there is no doubt Hugo Sánchez remem­bered those matches and was wary of what Barcelona could do to his team.  In terms of pure tech­ni­cal abil­ity, there is no argu­ment that Barcelona has the most tech­ni­cal abil­ity in Europe and uses it to the fullest extent, so a team like Almería, who does not have the resources or the play­ers like Barcelona, has to be much more prag­matic with their approach.  Every team wants to enter­tain and pro­vide a spec­ta­cle for their sup­port­ers, but results are most impor­tant, and some­times, they have to make sac­ri­fices in order to get the out­come they want.

Even Euro­pean pow­ers like Chelsea and Man­ches­ter United knew that try­ing to fight fire with fire would only lead to their demise.  They swal­lowed their pride and played with nine to ten men behind the ball for the major­ity of the time, not wor­ry­ing about the chas­tise­ment they would receive from the fans and the media.  Man­ches­ter United pulled off a 1–0 aggre­gate vic­tory over Barcelona in the 2008  UEFA Cham­pi­ons League semi­fi­nal, and Chelsea was a cou­ple of min­utes from com­plet­ing the same task as Man­ches­ter United in the 2009 Cham­pi­ons League semi­fi­nal before Andrés Ini­esta banged home the equal­izer and the 1–1 vic­tory on away goals.

So how is defense treated in other sports?  In base­ball, while a home run fest excites many fans, a pitcher’s duel with great defen­sive plays is equally appre­ci­ated.  Two of the most sto­ried teams in Amer­i­can pro foot­ball his­tory are the 1985 Chicago Bears and the 2000 Bal­ti­more Ravens, who each had tena­cious defenses and held their oppo­nents to less than thir­teen points per game.  Hard tack­les and tough defense are para­mount in suc­ceed­ing in rugby union.  The clos­est sport that would iden­tify with asso­ci­a­tion football’s loathing of ultra-defensive tac­tics is hockey.  The New Jer­sey Dev­ils won a few Stan­ley Cups with their employ­ment of the neu­tral zone trap, but many crit­i­cized the Dev­ils for this scheme because it dras­ti­cally reduced scor­ing and made their games bor­ing in the eyes of fans.  The NHL took action dur­ing the 2004–2005 lock­out by imple­ment­ing changes in the rule­book to penal­ize teams who employ such methods.

Unfor­tu­nately, for Xavi, unless FIFA changes its rules, Barcelona will most likely face oppo­nents that employ Almería’s tac­tics to limit Barcelona’s goal-scoring machine.  What Xavi fails to rec­og­nize is that there is more than one way to play foot­ball.  The sexy foot­ball that Barcelona plays is an ideal that almost no teams can accom­plish.  If teams want to play like Bolton Wan­der­ers or Stoke City and use their phys­i­cal­ity and direct style to stymie Barcelona, then it is up to Pep Guardi­ola and the team to fig­ure out how to unlock the defense.  If clubs like Vil­lar­real and Valen­cia want to com­pete with their pass­ing foot­ball, it will likely be a bet­ter dis­play for the fans, but the task is still the same: to unlock the defense.  Barcelona has a very good chance to retain all three crowns from last year as well as adding other tro­phies to outdo last season’s treble-winning sea­son.  Wor­ry­ing less about their oppo­nents’ tac­tics and focus­ing on their own game will greatly ben­e­fit Barcelona in the long run.

Tagged as: Almería, andres iniesta, barcelona, Brazil, chelsea, FC Barcelona, Hugo Sanchez, La Liga, manchester united, Pep Guardiola, Serie A, UEFA Champions League, valencia, villarreal, Xavi Hernandez, Zlatan Ibrahimovic