Jonathan Wilson Risk in modern football
When he was coach of Ajax, Louis van Gaal had a slogan on his office wall. It read: “Quality is the exclusion of coincidence.” For him, football is about control. That lay at the heart of his approach. It’s why he was so focused on the retention of possession, why he would tell wingers never to attempt to beat more than one defender with a run, why he would encourage strikers not to take chances first time. Increasingly, it feels an approach that was very much of its time. Risk now most definitely lies at the heart of modern football.
Quite what a fault line that is was clear in the differing views expressed by Roy Keane, working as a television pundit, and Jurgen Klopp after Liverpool’s 3-1 victory over Arsenal at the end of September. In the tedious way of much of the modern media, the disagreement was framed as a spat with the focus on the personalities involved. But the nature of the disagreement was fascinating and it’s a shame the nature of the exchange – with an animated Klopp offering post-match comments via a video link – didn’t allow a fuller discussion.
Keane had suggested Liverpool had been “sloppy”. Klopp retorted that, “Nothing was sloppy, absolutely nothing. From the first second we were dominant against a team in form, 100 per cent in form, and you have to be careful for the counterattacks. Alisson had to make one save, they had two balls in behind that we cannot avoid and you need a goalkeeper for that, but the football we played tonight was exceptional.”
What is key here is the phrase “that we cannot avoid”. In Klopp’s system there is an acceptance of risk. If you play a high line, you will be vulnerable to balls played in behind you. It’s inevitable, but Klopp is prepared to tolerate that because of the benefits he believes the high line offers.
At Barcelona in the early 1990s, when Johan Cruyff paired Pep Guardiola with Ronald Koeman as the two notional central defenders (although in practice Guardiola tended to play a little higher), he was performing a similar calculation: neither was an outstanding defender and Guardiola was clearly vulnerable in the air, meaning that when the opposition had the ball, their chances of hurting Barca were greater. But by playing two such gifted passers in that area, Cruyff could ensure the opposition had the ball less often.
Van Gaal, although coming from similar traditions, was instinctively more cautious, which is why Frank Rijkaard – a very fine defender who could also pass, and genuinely both a central defender and a central midfielder – was so vital to his great Ajax of 1994-95, playing alongside Danny Blind at the back. It’s why die-hard Cruyffians had always regarded Van Gaal as an apostate, and also why Van Gaal remains a sceptic on Guardiola. Manchester City, he told me in April 2018,
In Jurgen Klopp’s system there is an acceptance of risk. If you play a high line, you will be vulnerable to balls played in behind you
were taking “a big risk because when the opponent overcomes the pressure of City, Guardiola starts at once that pressure with the full-backs a line higher. Until this moment Premier League clubs have not found a solution, but in the Champions League I have seen this.” In that he was prescient: City’s nine league defeats last season all stemmed from teams getting in behind their defensive line.
Klopp’s approach is even riskier because there is less intention of retaining possession – although the signing of Thiago Alcantara may represent a change in that direction. The German school of which he is an obvious leader prioritises regaining possession over retaining it: the high line is there to facilitate an aggressive press. But as Aston Villa proved in their 7-2 win over the champions in October, when the press isn’t quite right, it can leave Liverpool badly exposed at the back.
And that, more generally, perhaps explains the wildness of some of the results at the beginning of the 2020-21 campaign, the reason why the Premier League was averaging 3.25 goals per game at the start of November, more than in any season since the 1960s. The nature of this campaign, with a truncated pre-season and a compressed calendar, means there is less time for preparation, for organising the press, and so defensive structures have disintegrated.
By contrast, in the Championship at the same point, average goals per game stood at a startlingly low 2.14. Given defences there tend to sit a lot deeper, which requires less sophisticated planning, it may be that the lack of preparation time is having a greater impact on coordinated structures of attacking.
Which perhaps highlights precisely that Klopp-Keane divide. Keane was at Manchester United as Alex Ferguson evolved from a cavalier approach to something much more risk-averse and seems to have absorbed its logic. Klopp represents a far different approach, tolerating the possibility of a hammering for the greater benefits his gamble can bring.