World's Most Dangerous Football Tactic

A 17-year-old boy was seen crying alone in a corner. The kid just realized he will never become a footballer, after lacking the physique to compete professionally. But while grieving at home, a World Cup match was playing on his television. The Netherlands just defeated his home country Argentina. But while watching the match, that young boy noticed something unusual about the Dutch. He saw they only used two basic things to defeat his country, and it was passing and movements. And that one game changed the way he saw football, and later turned himself into Marcelo Bielsa. A manager whose tactics are considered the most dangerous in the world. Which is also known as murderball by many. A style where his own players are afraid to play in it. But if they survive, it has the ability to turn ordinary players into the elite. And as a result, his tactics later inspired managers like Pep and Deserbe to change the modern football that we see today. So how did a failed footballer become one of the most influential manager in football history? Why did Pep Guardiola call him the best coach in the world? And yet that same manager barely won a trophies. When we look around the recent football trend, we are seeing a growing dislike towards system-based football. Where players are expected to only follow the instructions given by the coaches. But interestingly, these systems were actually created to solve one of football's biggest problems in the 20th century. As when we go back in the mid-1900s, it was the time when tactics were mostly played by the elite teams, while rest relied on players' skills. And even the managers acted more like a mentor than a tactician, who focused on player relationships and keeping the squad positive throughout the season. And as a result, many teams simply focused on gathering these talents to increase their chance of winning. While this was happening, around that same time, one boy from Rosario had just left his home at the age of 15 with one big dream to become a top-class defender. He joined a nearby football academy, Newell's Old Boys, the same club where later Messi started his career. But as the time went, Marcelo slowly started doubting himself, and noticed there were players around him who were more quicker, stronger, and physically more gifted than him. And because of that, even the coaches those days couldn't really help Marcelo due to their obsession of recruiting these gifted players. So eventually, he was released from the academy and spent most of his young career playing in the lower leagues. But as time went on, luckily around that same period, Reines-Michels' Netherlands had just defeated Argentina at the World Cup. And it was total football, a style where there were fewer dribbles and more passing and movements all over the pitch. And this deeply inspired Bielsa, because for the first time, he saw the possibility of having a process where instead of dribblers and physical players, even basic things like passing and movements could become weapons. And that was the moment when young Marcelo decided to step into football coaching. The first thing he did as a coach was instead of taking his players to a training field, he took them into a quiet classroom, treating them almost like university students, where they were given homework, assignments and taught about the basics of football. And out of this ocean of knowledge, one of the most important things he taught them was the four phases of football. And according to Bielsa, most coaches focus mainly on the first two phases. But transitions between them is where football is truly decided. And to make those transitions fast and smooth, Bielsa makes his passing as vertical as possible. This means he is strictly against playing sideways or backward passes. But this creates another problem. When the opposition sits in a compact defensive shape, how can you apply these vertical passes constantly? To solve this, Bielsa then taught his players about this diagram. Just imagine you are one of the blue players surrounded by all these red ones. Now if your teammates simply stand still and wait for the ball, then all the pressure falls onto you, and there's a high chance that one of those red players intercepts the pass. But the moment one of your teammates starts moving away from the crowd, suddenly the risk on you becomes much lower. And just like that, according to Bielsa, you would find only rare talents who can get through all this pressure. But if you are coaching normal players, then both the passer and the receiver must constantly move to create that passing lane. There is a famous quote by Marcelo that says, someone who runs a lot never plays badly. But to make his players run constantly, you need a proper training program. And for Bielsa, he uses an extremely intense training method. One that even his own players were afraid to train in. When we think of football training, we usually imagine this. A small area with a limited sets of players divided into teams. But when you look at Bielsa's training, he often uses the entire pitch with all 11 players playing against each other. And the reason it's known as murder ball, is because there is no referee, no fouls, no offsides, and even if someone got injured, the game still continued. If the ball went out, another ball was immediately thrown back in. It almost felt like a cage match in wrestling, where players were constantly forced to run up and down without any breaks. And this went on for 30 minutes across five different segments. The purpose of all this was to make training so intense and chaotic, that the actual match would feel much easier for players to outplay their opponents. Does it make matches almost feel less intense than that? It is because it's basically what the high intensity and the sprint distance close to what you do in a game, but crammed in. But if the murder ball doesn't sound the most appealing for you, let me take you to a virtual training tool called Be Your Best, that lets you play in realistic match scenarios without even leaving your home. You can run, move, scan the pitch, and constantly search for the best passing options around you. It's almost like playing FIFA, but in first person. This helps you to improve your awareness and decision making, allowing you to make faster and more accurate decisions under pressure. As just like murder ball, you are constantly placed in game-like situations, making real matches feel slower and more comfortable when you step onto the pitch. And as a result, thousands of players and top clubs are already integrating Be Your Best in their training session. So just head to beyourbest.com and use my promo code DK20 to get a discount of 20% on your first month or first year subscription. But if you are watching during the World Cup, then use the code WC25 to get an exciting 25% on your subscription. So just go to Be Your Best to get started. The link is also in the description. Also a big thanks to Be Your Best for sponsoring this video. And within this murder ball, they are not just running randomly. According to Bielsa, there are 6 key spaces that naturally open up within an opposition. And to get the ball into these spaces, Bielsa explained in a presentation how he uses several different passing methods. Out of them, the most famous was his up, back, and through passing. Where instead of passing the ball directly to the intended player, you include one or two middlemen, whose presence attracts defenders and clears space around the targeted option within seconds. This later became one of the inspirations behind de Zerby's build-up variations. Another method of creating separation is through passive movements. Instead of using the middleman as a passing option, you use him to make a run that removes an obstacle, opening up a direct vertical pass. But all of this is designed to achieve perfection from defense to attack. To do the same in the opposite direction. As in football, there are two ways that you can defend. The first is zonal, where players stay close to each other and defend a particular zone of the pitch. While the other is man-to-man, where each player tightly stays close to oppositions like magnets. Now most managers usually combine both methods, as when they lose the ball, they initially press man-to-man up front. But once the opposition escapes the pressure, they quickly regroup into a zonal shape while dropping deep. However with Bielsa, he is one of the few managers who fully applies man-to-man in all phases. And one of the main advantages, especially for Bielsa, is that if they win the ball back due to all of his players staying close to their opponents, it naturally creates multiple pockets of space all over the pitch. So they can immediately create separation and run into those spaces, creating a fast vertical transition. However the reason why most managers avoid man-to-man in all phases, is that if one of your defenders is physically or technically weaker than the player he's marking, then the latter has a clear advantage of winning that 1v1 battle and breaking the defense. And Bielsa knew this. So to solve it, his man-to-man system has a unique plus one and minus one rule, where you will often notice they leave one player unmarked higher up the pitch, while keeping an extra man in defense as a plus one. This way the spare defender can step in and cover for a weaker teammate whenever a duel is lost. Of course it's better to defend not by marking 1v1 all over the pitch, but with one of the remaining players on the team. But even with one less marker up front, Bielsa conditioned his striker in such a way that he can fill that vacant spot using a curved pressing run. This way it pressurized the ball carrier while also shadow marking his teammate, forcing the play to go wide. And the moment the ball goes wide, Bielsa's men then begin their aggressive man-to-man press. Because of his unique way of pressing, even Pep had to reach him out before joining Barcelona as a manager. At that time, Pep was seeking more knowledge on how to organize his defense after losing the ball. And he knew both of them shared very similar philosophies, coming from the same roots of total football. But Bielsa's off-the-ball tactics felt even more refined and extreme. And many believe, those conversations later gave birth to Pep's famous 6-second rule, where the moment Barcelona lost the ball, they would immediately press aggressively for 6 straight seconds to win it back. And if they still couldn't recover it, they would quickly fall back into a zonal defensive shape. But despite influencing some of the greatest managers in football history, Bielsa's own trophy cabinet has always been surprisingly empty. One of the biggest reasons for that might actually be his own system itself. But before we get into that, let's first understand how Bielsa applies these four phases of football in real life using a simple simulation. When you look at Bielsa's formation, instead of using just one, he uses a collection of structures depending on the opposition's shape. As discussed earlier, he always wants to maintain a plus one advantage in defense and a minus one in attack. So for example, if the opposition uses a 4-triple-2 shape with two forwards, then his team will usually switch to a back 3. And if it's a front 3, then they switch to a back 4 instead. But within this collection, the most innovative shape from him is the 3-3-1-3. Taking inspiration from total football, Bielsa strongly believes in making the pitch as big as possible. So with this shape, you get three sets of players stretched both horizontally and vertically across the pitch. However, one drawback of this is that there is a huge gap in the center of the pitch. So to solve this, the upper fullbacks often drifts inside to fill that vacate spot and create an artificial diamond midfield. But when we look at their off-the-ball roles, almost all the players are given pressing and tracking duties. Except for that one defender, who performs the covering role to create that plus one. Now when we move into the actual team instructions to replicate the intensity of Bielsa, we will keep a much higher tempo and a more direct passing in order to move the ball forward as quickly as possible. But when it comes to progression, when you have six players across both sides, it's obvious the ball would move through that area. So we will keep the progression focus on both flanks. While out of possession, this is where Bielsa's system becomes truly extreme. Almost every pressing instruction is set to the maximum. And this is why you will understand why sometimes Bielsa's own system can become an obstacle to his success. When a system demands an incredible amount of energy and is even more extreme than German Gegenpressing, it can naturally lead to frequent injuries and physical exhaustion. And even if Bielsa tries to find replacements for his key players, his system is so complex that it requires a huge amount of time and commitment for new players to fully replicate the roles of the original ones. And this is one of the main reasons why managers like Pep never completely adopted Bielsa's style. Instead, they still use more traditional principles like sideways passing and zonal defending. However, even with all these problems, it's hard to ignore the impact his tactics had in modern football. Because that one rejection in his childhood ultimately gave him the courage to make football feel possible for everyone. While systems may feel boring or unpleasing while we watch, but it has greatly helped many ordinary players to achieve their dream to play like elites without being born with certain skills. And this is what Marcelo showed us. By how just doing the basic things again and again, you can actually achieve the things that would be impossible to think of. And this is what makes his influence last longer in people's life than just a trophy itself. We are judged about how many successes we have, how many titles we won. And that is less, less, but less important how he's influenced about the football, about his football players. That's why for me, he's the best player, the best coach in the world. But there was another manager who took Bielsa's ideas of vertical tiki-taka and evolved them into a completely new way of building up play. A system so influential that it was literally named after him and is now becoming one of the biggest tactical trends in modern football. So let's break down his tactics in this video. And before we finish, I want to thank my Patreon members for their incredible support. If you'd like access to all of my FM Tactics collections, early access to new videos, and behind-the-scenes insights into how each documentary is made, you can join my Patreon.