From Poet :Total Football with Specialists
I always thought your opinion that Arsenal uses the club he manages as a manifestation of his vision quite interesting.
It got me wondering if he’s trying to do something that has never been done before.
No, I’m not talking about fully developing a team in an era where money rules, because that experiment failed. No, I’m thinking about something that has never been done before, probably because it is a contradiction: is Wenger trying to produce total football with specialists?
Total Football, at it’s heart, in my humble opinion, is about combining total players. Specialist football is about combining specialists. Obviously, no team is made up of purely total players because this world isn’t Nirvana, and even specialist teams tend to have 1-2 total players who, although their roles remain clearly define, their unpredictability gives the team an edge. Both, obviously, attempt to create a whole that is larger than the sum of their parts. That’s what competitive football is. Who can create the better combination?
First of all, in any given football game, I personally don’t think total football is superior to specialist football. Just two different approaches.
Total Football, surely, requires total players. The Arsenal of 01-05 played total football because they had total players. Players who defied definition.
Quick exercise, ask people of the internet to define Henry, Bergkamp, Pires, Vieira or Ashley Cole. You’d get multiple different answers for each player.
Pires is more than just a winger or a wide playmaker or the modern inside forward. This guy can score goals, create chances, dribble. It’s not just his technical abilities, it was also his intelligence on how best to combine his abilities with others.
How do you define Bergkamp when he can drop deep, pull wide, create from anywhere, and also score goals? Ozil can also create from anywhere, but he doesn’t score goals. He also had edge and bottle.
Vieira is your favourite player (and mine as well, coincidentally) how would you define him?
I can’t because to me, he was the most complete central midfielder I’ve ever seen. At his prime, you could plug him into any team, and he’d automatically become one of the key players. Would Vieira look out of place in a Chelsea or Barcelona lineup? Nop, you could see him flourishing in two contrasting teams, simply because he was the total package.
Ashley Cole can be defined, and if you look up his name in a dictionary it would say “21st century complete fullback,” because England, for the first time in 21st century, saw what a left-back who can excel at every part of the game looks like.
Don’t bother trying to define TH14.
Total Football, with total players, will naturally mean players are not given definite roles.
They are expected to be heavily involved at every part of the game. That’s why there was no such thing as the primary creator in that Arsenal team. We had a primary scorer in Henry, but we also had 4 double digit goal-scorers. In 01-02, they were Pires, Ljungberg, Bergkamp, and Wiltord.
Contrast this with an equally good, if not better team of specialist football of Mourinho’s Chelsea. It is very easy to define any of their key player. Drogba, Makelele, Essien, Lampard, Robben, Terry, Gallas, Cavalho, these guys were specialists, and they were some of the best at what they do. Hell, one of them has a role named after him! You’d never have “the Vieira Role” because it’s a waste of time finding someone who can do all the things he did. You either luck out, or you don’t. In the case of Essien, Makelele, and Drogba, for example, they were probably the best at their job at the time. To be fair to Robben and Lampard, they later developed into much more complete players, but not in 04-06.
Mourinho’s Chelsea was a corporation with clear division of labour. While Arsenal was the startup of multi-tasking talents.
This is not to say that total football somehow isn’t strict or lack discipline, or that specialist football lacks freedom and artisty. Pep’s Guardiola was very disciplined with their pressing, for example. On the other hand, many classic romantic no.10s such as Riquelme was not restricted, and was free to roam, but they were extreme specialist whose only job was playmaking. Ridiculous, mind-blowing playmaking.
Even in the Arsenal of 01-05, there was a stark difference within the team. The total footballers lived on the left flank, including the central players like Vieira, Henry and Bergkamp. Our right flank was a combination of specialists.
Ljungberg was a specialist. Lauren was a specialist. They didn’t have the all-rounded footballing abilities of their peers on the other flank. It didn’t matter though. The football was played on the left, and it fit perfectly with one of the best “wide poacher” in the world at the time, and Lauren’s ultra-competitiveness served as a defensive counter-balance to the marauding Cole. Lauren wasn’t necessarily a good defender because he was technically good at it. He was good because he refused to be beaten.
Now back to the present. It feels like Wenger is trying to play total football with specialists.
Think about the players we have. How many of them can do more than one job very well? We are a team of specialists. We have some very good specialists as well. Ozil is one of the best at what he does: A playmaker in the final third. Coq is a defensive specialist, but he lacks ball ability. Giroud is a very good target man, but he can’t create moments on his own, and needs runners like Walcott and Ramsey to play with. Walcott is a pure speedy wide forward, but he’s not as useful in buildup and struggle against deep defense. Cazorla is a magical playmaker, but he needs a defensive partner to cover him, and doesn’t have the goal-scoring abilities of someone like Ramsey.
Ramsey and Sanchez are the closest we have to total footballers. However, Ramsey is still no where near as good with the ball at his feet, than without it. Otherwise, Ramsey/Coq would work. Sanchez has the technical abilities to be a total player, but his play isn’t varied enough. He still doesn’t use his pace as well as someone like Overmars, and his buildup play can still improve.
Wenger has this vision of total football, and he’s trying to recreate it. He’s also successfully sold us this vision, so we demand it. We crave it. Think about the type of football Arsenal fans want? We want total football played by total footballers!
Think about the type of players the fans are demanding, and that we need to make this vision to happen.
Ask the fans what kind of striker we want. “Oh, definitely someone faster than Giroud.” “But can still do the target man job he does for the team.” “Score 20+ goals each season” “But also create chances for the team” “Someone who can create game-winning goals on his own, when our team isn’t playing too well.” You aggregate the demands, and you basically get a complete world-class striker.
Unfortunately Henry is retired, we missed out on Suarez, and I don’t think Aguero is leaving City any time soon.
No one likes Ramsey on the right flank, and people are frustrated by the shortcomings of Walcott and Ox. Ask them what kind of wingers they want. “Oh, someone who can attack the defense with skills.” “Someone who can create chances for the strikers.” “Chip in 10-15 goals a season as well.” So what they want is another Pires.
Everyone now recognize the imbalance in central midfield. People used to think that what we lacked was a defensive specialist. That if only we had a tough no-nonsense ball-winner our midfield would be complete. Along came Coq, and the midfield is still imbalanced. Ask what they want from our DM “Oh, you know, someone who can shield the defense, and plug in gaps that appear when we storm forward” “But also dictate the tempo and spray passes.”
How many DMs do you know who can do these two jobs?
We need to recognize how rare these players are. Even if we have the money, we can’t have them. Think back to us in our golden days. Would we sell Vieira or Henry for 50M? Then don’t be surprised we can’t have Suarez or Alaba.
Of course we demand such players. We demand total players because it is total football we’re after. It’s true, if we sign these mythical players, Wenger can once again produce total football for us.
Even if Falcao was never injured and still scoring goals, we’d never consider him because fans would say “all he does is score goals.” Ruud van Nistelrooy would never play for Wenger in the old days. There are people today who doesn’t want Cavani (78 goals in 104 apps for Napoli!) because he’s only a poacher!
In a way, they’re correct. We need total players more than most because our manager is only trying to produce total football. Winning is not the main goal, total football is. Winning is a by product of total football for Wenger.
Wenger doesn’t know how to manage a team of specialists like Mourinho or Fergie can. A young Makelele would probably be loaned out by Wenger. On the other hand, Mourinho/Fergie could not have produced the total football Wenger did, even if they had access to the same type of talent.
Champions of specialists tend to have two things in common:
1. Tight actual defenee
2. They win games with moments, not attrition.
Wenger is pursuing the impossible.
He has a team of specialists but he wants to create total football. He wants cleansheets by having 60-70% possession but he doesn’t have the players to do that. He want to score goals by turning that 70% possession into wave after wave of unpredictable combination. He wants to do a Pep’s Barcelona.
If Mourinho had the same group of talent, he’d never pursue it. Partially because it’s not in his DNA, but partially because he’s far more pragmatic. He’d realize he doesn’t have a ball playing defender like Pique, or a deep playmaker who can defend. He’d probably start with his 4 best defenders, and have Ramsey and Coq, his two biggest engines shield them. The idea would be to stay compact, and get the ball to the likes of Ozil and Sanchez in the final third, as fast as possible. They won’t dominate games, but he’d bank on his front 4 getting a goal or two every game. He’d win with moments, not attrition.
I think we’ll keep on struggling if our manager continues to pursue total football with a squad of specialists. To succeed, we must somehow sign or develop total players, or our manager learn to produce specialist football.
Both are unlikely. We must now hope for a miracle.
Myles says:
Most coaches use the team as a vehicle for their ideas.
There’s nothing wrong, or unique, about that.
WHAT’S WRONG IS THAT SINCE DAVID DEIN WAS KICKED OUT, THERE IS NOBODY TO MANAGE THE MANAGER.
Luis Suarez would have been wasted at Arsenal unless he was playing with Alexis Sanchez (who is better than Neymar)
PS. Please make your next missive a bit less than 1800 words.