Dag allemaal!

Ein herzliches Willkommen zu einem Extra in der Blogpokalwoche der Taktikecke!

Der niederländische Fußball hat seit den 60er Jahren große Spieler, große Trainer und große Mannschaften hervorgebracht.
Der Taktik-Blogger und Eredivisie-Kenner von 11 tegen 11 stand uns für ein kurzes Interview zur Verfügung und hat Fragen u. a. über den Fußball im Nachbarland und über Taktik beantwortet.
Das Interview ist in Englisch, wird in ein paar Tagen aber von Fabian noch auf Deutsch erscheinen.

The tactics blogger and Eredivisie expert from 11 tegen 11 gave us an interview and answered a few questions about Dutch football and tactics.


Q: "Dutch football generates a lot of players and coaches, appreciated all over the world. And when people in Germany talk about clubs like Ajax or PSV, they praise the attacking style of Dutch football. At the same time the Eredivisie is only about 10th place in the UEFA national league ranking. What are the reasons of this discrepancy between the reputation and the outcome of the Eredivisie?"

11tegen11: "Looking at the UEFA national league ranking it's easy to note that England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France are the top-5 competitions in Europe. Among the next five nations, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine represent the influx of money in their club teams in recent years, having spent 39-93 millions euro's in the past transfer window. This leaves Portugal and The Netherlands (besides France the only two nations in the UEFA top-ten with a net influx of transfer money) in a difficult position. In order to compete with the big money competitions, clubs from Portugal and The Netherlands will have to ensure a well-organised youth system in order to remain competitive. Once these youth talents mature, they, in turn, will be transferred to the big money competitions and the cycle goes on and on.

As for your questions on the attacking style of Dutch football I'm happy to refer to the excellent analysis by David Winner in his book called 'Brilliant Orange'. The nation that gave birth to the concept of 'Total Football' with Michels and Cruijff in the seventies (credits where they belong, also to Kiev's Valery Lobanovsky) is still ruled by a generation who grew up with this style of play. However the successes that were obtained with this attacking concept date back over fifteen years now (including Van Gaal's mid-nineties period at Ajax here). Perhaps it's the recent disappointing fifteen years of Dutch club football that brought about the more pragmatic and realistic approach that was so evident in Holland's most recent World Cup. We may well be on the verge of seeing Holland break with the true attack-first philosophy of playing football, although it will take years for development to take place."


Q: "You mentioned David Winner. What about his thesis that Dutch football culture is enrooted in mastering the geography (dyke construction, canals, etc.). Is the manipulation of space in the blood of Dutch football because of the fight against the tides? How important is space in today's football?"

11tegen11: "David Winner's work on the origin of the Dutch football style deserves a lot of praise. He has connected a lot of observations on the Dutch society with basic principles of the Dutch attacking football philosophy in a way that only a truly informed non-native Dutchman could do.
However, I wouldn't go as far as saying that the manipulation of space could be related to a tendency of mastering the geography in general. I'd be inclined to speak of a parallel or symmetry rather than suggesting any correlation between the two.
The general notion of Dutch football is that it is attacking by nature and that by dominating possession it control the space on a football pitch, at least that is the style that we've seen in the past thirty years. I'm not speaking of the present day performances like the recent World Cup now. But this way of controlling spaces does not make Dutch football unique. Take for example the development of catenaccio at the great Inter side of Helenio Herrera in the sixties. This style, in my opinion, represents the ultimate control of space, obstructing space for the attacking opponent and opening up space for pacy attackers.
So, in short, no I don't think that there's anything more than a co-existence between the Dutch manipulating geography and the Dutch manipulating space on a football pitch."


Q: "When we talk about space and possession, it is not far to talk about formations. Over the last years we have seen a broad spectrum of formations, from 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 over the famous 4-2-3-1 to 4-1-4-1. The borders between these formations became fluent and often two teams interpret the same formation different. What do you think are the next trends in football tactics?"

11tegen11: "Well, this certainly is a very interesting topic to me, since, on my website, I try to discuss the matches with a focus on the different formations and playing styles of the teams involved. As you state in your question, there certainly is a trend towards more fluidity and variety in formations, which was aided by the introduction of the fourth band, allowing formations to be described in more detail. Regarding Dutch teams, 4-2-3-1's certainly dominate at the moment with about half of the teams playing that formation. As opposed to it you have the 4-1-4-1, which I've termed the poor club's answer to the better club's 4-2-3-1's. As future developments we'll have to think along that line, as a lot of teams find 4-1-4-1's hard to break down. Their narrow 4-2-3-1's tend to lead to a congested central area, limiting the working space of one of the key players of the 4-2-3-1, namely the man-in-the-hole behind the striker. As one of the future directions, the 4-2-1-3 has been pointed out, amongst others by Jonathan Wilson in an excellent article on the Guardian website. (link)
This development stresses the search for working space for the creating players. Another very interesting development along that line is the withdrawal of the strikers into the so called 'false-nine' role, even leading to strikerless formations. From a tactical viewpoint this is a unique development, as for the first time one of the bands is completely vacated. While these strikerless formations can be extremely hard to play against due to their unpredictability, at the same time they require very good communication and hours of training to find a good balance.
So, I think both the withdrawal of the playmaker and of the striker are the things to look out for in the coming years of the 4-2-3-1."


Thanks so far, read in part 2 about how to analyse a game and what the Dutch think about German football.