Barca’s defense is actually excellent, a.k.a. “What we all know, far more eloquently stated.”

By: Kevin | June 23rd, 2009

Hey, who knew that these two were a pair of our essential defenders? Except for us, that is.

Aside from the pieces that Sid Lowe does, this has been one of the most excellent pieces of footy writing I have come across in quite a while. It appeared on the site of The Guardian a couple of weeks ago, and of all the articles I have read that try to sum up what happened this season, this one does it best of all.

It is part of a series called The Question. It just knocks me out. I’ll grab little bits of it to comment on here, but it is worth reading in its entirety. It’s posted over at Pep’s Place, so some of you might have already read it there. It should, in my estimation, be posted on every Barca footy Web site on the planet, such is its beauty. Good comments, as well.

Amid all the praise for the way Barcelona maintained possession against Manchester United in the Champions League final, one comment from their manager, Pep Guardiola, tended to be overlooked. “Without the ball,” he said, “we are a horrible team. We need the ball, so we pressed high up the pitch to win the ball back early.”

It explains everything now, doesn’t it? We have all been saying that our defense really begins in an advanced position, and that is the midfielders and forwards are doing their job, all the defenders have to do is intercept long balls, and re-start the attack.

What Barcelona achieved, in other words, was to find a way of pursuing the classic tenets of Total Football – short passing, intermovement of players, winning the ball high up the field – under the modern interpretation of the laws. Their solution, in truth, is not especially complex. Certainly it does not require the intellectual leap of faith Marinho found he needed to accept the efficacy of aggressive offside.

If defenders cannot move forward to defend high up the field because the weakened offside law makes them reluctant to leave space behind them, then logically forwards, when they do not have the ball, act as defenders….what is surprising is the extent to which Barcelona’s forwards are deployed as ball-winners.

To them, maybe, who weren’t watching us all season. But the contextual explanation of our system as it pertains to the modern rules of the game just fascinates me.

For Barcelona Dani Alves stands alone, having committed twice as many fouls as anybody else in the back four last season, but Opta stats show that Thierry Henry committed more fouls than any other member of the back four, with Gerard Piqué only one ahead of Samuel Eto’o, and Leo Messi and the other regular defenders within one foul of each other.

Wow. What this means is obvious, but worth noting: The forwards are attacking the ball, and aggressively winning it back.

Would Xavi or Andrés Iniesta be quite so effective without three forwards who tackle in front of them?

Good question. Probably not, right? I’ll leave the rest for everyone to read, but note the triangle comments, and recall the attacking and defending triangles that we set up from the midfield forward, so that when we had the ball, there was always a passing option, and when the opponent had the ball, he was bracketed by three players.

Some of us commented, during the Fiorentina pre-season match, how our attackers simply weren’t letting Fiorentina play the ball out of the back, aggressively jumping them as soon as they cleared their box, making keepers resort to just booting the ball up the pitch. It all makes sense. As Guardiola said in effect to Henry, “If you want to stay, you will have to defend and run your ass off, and create constant ball pressure.” Henry responded, and Messi responded.

Man, am I excited about this coming season.