Catenaccio
Catenaccio describes a tactical system in football with an emphasis on defence and tactical fouls. In Italian catenaccio means "door-bolt" and it means a highly organized and effective backline defense which is intended to prevent goals. It was made famous by Argentinean trainer Helenio Herrera of Inter Milan in the 1960s who used it to grind out 1-0 wins over opponents in their league games.
The system remained popular until the European Cup final in 1967 when it backfired on Inter who had gone 1-0 up from an 8th minute Mazzola penalty kick. They came under constant pressure from Celtic F.C, a team admired for their style of attack. Celtic won the game 2-1 with over 40 attempts on goal in the process. The game exposed the serious weaknesses of the catenaccio system. After the game Helenio Herrera was forced to admit: 'Celtic deserved to win and their win was a victory for the sport'.
The Catenaccio was influenced by the verrou or "chain" system invented by Austrian coach Karl Rappan. As coach of Switzerland, Rappan played a defensive sweeper just ahead of his goalkeeper in the 1930s and 1940s. Nereo Rocco's Padova, in the 1950s, pioneered the system in Italy where it would be used again by the AC Milan team of the early 1960s.
Rappan's "verrou" system, proposed in 1932 when coach of Servette, was implemented with 4 fixed defenders, playing a strict man-to-man marking system, plus a playmaker in the middle of the field who plays the ball together with two midfield wings.
Rocco's tactic, often referred to as the "real" catenaccio, was shown first in 1947 with Triestina: the most common mode of operation was a 1-3-3-3 formation with a strictly defensive team approach. With catenaccio, Triestina finished the Serie A tournament in a surprising second place. Some variations include 1-4-4-1 and 1-4-3-2 formations.
The key innovation of catenaccio was the introduction of the role of libero or sweeper, a player positioned behind the line of three defenders. The sweeper's role was to recover loose balls, nullify the opponent's striker and double mark when necessary. Another important innovation was the counter-attack, mainly based on long passes from the defence.
In Herrera's version in the 1960s, four man-marking defenders are tightly assigned to each opposing attacker while an extra sweeper would pick up any loose ball that escaped the coverage of the defenders.
With the years, the original catenaccio has been slowly abandoned for other, more balanced tactical approaches; in particular, the increasing popularity gained by an attacking-based approach like Total Football has contributed to make catenaccio just yet another football tactic.
Catennacio Today
Real catennacio is no longer used in the modern football world. Two major characteristics of this style; man-to-man marking and the libero position are no longer in use, rendering pure catennacio unavailable. What many consider catennacio is rather a very hyper-defensive or retreat style defending from teams, with rare forward movement. This hyper defensive style is still commonly referred to as catennacio. Nowadays, catenaccio is used mainly by weaker teams, in order to reduce any technical gap against stronger ones by showing a more physical approach to football. The slow disappearance of the role of sweepers in modern football has also contributed to the decline in its use.
The catenaccio system is often criticized for reducing the quality of football games as a spectacle. In certain parts of Europe it became synonymous with negative football since the attacking aspect of the game is neglected.
One frequent mistake is to define catenaccio as any defensive tactical system used by a football team. This is actually untrue, because catenaccio is just one of the possible defensive tactics to be used. Nowadays catenaccio is used less and less by top teams, and often limited solely to particular circumstances, such as numerical inferiority following a sending off, or needing to defend a marginal scoreline until the end of the match. Thus, today catenaccio is also frequently referred to as any extremely defensive mental approach to a football match by a team.
Catenaccio is often thought to be commonplace in Italian football, however, it is actually used infrequently by Italian Serie A teams, which instead prefer to apply some other, more modern, tactical systems, like 4-4-2 and others. This does not apply to the Italian national football team, however. Italy's previous coaches, Cesare Maldini and Giovanni Trapattoni, used the catenaccio at international heights, and have all failed to reach the top.
This is a list of teams who gained some triumphs by playing catenaccio:
* AC Milan, under coach Nereo Rocco, in the 1960s;
* Inter Milan, under coach Helenio Herrera, in the 1960s;
* Italy, reached final in Euro 2000 after having defeated Holland in the previous round;
* England against Paraguay in the 2006 World Cup group stage. England went one nil up within 10 minutes from a Paraguay own goal and proceeded to defend the lead till the end of the game.
* The Greece team successfully employed defensive tactics to win the Euro 2004, beating on paper superior teams - Portugal(twice), Czech Republic and France.
Total Football
In soccer, Total Football is a system where a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining their intended organizational structure. In this fluid system no footballer is fixed in his or her intended outfield role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender.
Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed. It consists of footballers being extremely tactically aware, allowing them to change positions at high speed - in its simplest terms, every player is comfortable in any other position. It also puts high technical and physical demands on the players.
The foundations for Total Football were laid by Jack Reynolds, who was the manager of Ajax Amsterdam for 33 years in the early 20th century. Rinus Michels, who played under Reynolds, later went on to become manager of Ajax himself and refined the concept into what is known today as "Total Football" (Totaalvoetbal, in Dutch), using it in his training for the Ajax squad and the Netherlands national team in the 1970s. It was further refined by Stefan Kovacs after Michels left for FC Barcelona. The Dutch forward Johan Cruyff was the system's most famous exponent.
Although Cruyff was fielded as centre forward, he wandered all over the pitch, popping up wherever he could do most damage to the opposing team. This resulted in a need for such a dynamic system like Total Football. His teammates adapted themselves flexibly around his movements regularly switching positions, so that the tactical roles in the team were always filled, although not always by the same person.
Space and the creation of it were vital for the tactic of Total Football to be played into fruition, Ajax defender Barry Hulshoff explained how the team that won the European Cup in 1971, 1972 and 1973 worked it to their advantage. 'We discussed space the whole time. Johan Cruyff always talked about where people should run and where they should stand, and when they should not move.'
The constant switching of positions that became known as Total Football only came about because of this spatial awareness. 'It was about making space, coming into space, and organising space -like architecture on the football pitch,' said Hulshoff. The system developed organically and collaboratively: it was not down to coach Rinus Michels, his successor Stefan Kovacs or Cruyff alone. Cruyff summed up his (Total Football) philosophy: 'Simple football is the most beautiful. But playing simple football is the hardest thing.' [1]
The 1972 European Cup final proved to be Total Football's finest hour and which placed it on the map. After Ajax's 2:0 victory over Internazionale, newspapers around Europe reported the "death of Catenaccio and triumph of Total Football". The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad declared: 'The Inter system undermined. Defensive football is destroyed.’[2]
Michels was appointed for the 1974 FIFA World Cup campaign by the KNVB. Most of the 1974 team were made up of players from Ajax and Feyenoord. However, Rob Rensenbrink was an outsider, having played for clubs in neighboring Belgium, and was unfamiliar with Total Football, although he was selected and adapted well. During the tournament, the Netherlands coasted through their first and second round matches, defeating Argentina (4-0), East Germany(2-0) and Brazil (2-0) to setup a meeting with hosts West Germany.[3]
The 1974 Finals, which was often touted as Total Football versus Total Discipline. Cruyff kicked off and the ball was passed around the Oranje thirteen times before returning to Cruyff, who then went on a rush that eluded Berti Vogts and ended when he was fouled by Uli Hoeness inside the box. Teammate Johan Neeskens scored from the spot kick to give the Netherlands a 1-0 lead with 80 seconds of play elapsed, and the Germans had not even touched the ball. Cruyff's playmaking influence was stifled in the second half of the match by the effective marking of Berti Vogts, while Franz Beckenbauer, Uli Hoeness and Wolfgang Overath dominated midfield, enabling West Germany to win 2-1.[4]
The ill-fated Austrian "Wunderteam" of the 1930s is also credited in some circles as being the first national team to play Total Football. It is no coincidence that Ernst Happel, a talented Austrian player in the 1940's and 50's, was coach in the Netherlands in the late 1960's and early 70's. He introduced a kind of toughness at ADO and Feyenoord that was lacking before in the Dutch way of playing. Happel managed the Netherlands national team in the 1978 World Cup, where they again finished as runners-up.
The term Total Football is also used to describe the effective, dominating play of West German football in the 1970s.
Teams to have used the tactic:
* Austria (debatably)
* Ajax
* Barcelona
* Galatasaray SK
* Holland
* Arsenal FC
Rappan's "verrou" system (Catenaccio)
Catenaccio describes a tactical system in football with an emphasis on defence and tactical fouls. In Italian catenaccio means "door-bolt" and it means a highly organized and effective backline defense which is intended to prevent goals. It was made famous by Argentinean trainer Helenio Herrera of Inter Milan in the 1960s who used it to grind out 1-0 wins over opponents in their league games.
The system remained popular until the European Cup final in 1967 when it backfired on Inter who had gone 1-0 up from an 8th minute Mazzola penalty kick. They came under constant pressure from Celtic F.C, a team admired for their style of attack. Celtic won the game 2-1 with over 40 attempts on goal in the process. The game exposed the serious weaknesses of the catenaccio system. After the game Helenio Herrera was forced to admit: 'Celtic deserved to win and their win was a victory for the sport'.
The Catenaccio was influenced by the verrou or "chain" system invented by Austrian coach Karl Rappan. As coach of Switzerland, Rappan played a defensive sweeper just ahead of his goalkeeper in the 1930s and 1940s. Nereo Rocco's Padova, in the 1950s, pioneered the system in Italy where it would be used again by the AC Milan team of the early 1960s.
Rappan's "verrou" system, proposed in 1932 when coach of Servette, was implemented with 4 fixed defenders, playing a strict man-to-man marking system, plus a playmaker in the middle of the field who plays the ball together with two midfield wings.
Rocco's tactic, often referred to as the "real" catenaccio, was shown first in 1947 with Triestina: the most common mode of operation was a 1-3-3-3 formation with a strictly defensive team approach. With catenaccio, Triestina finished the Serie A tournament in a surprising second place. Some variations include 1-4-4-1 and 1-4-3-2 formations.
The key innovation of catenaccio was the introduction of the role of libero or sweeper, a player positioned behind the line of three defenders. The sweeper's role was to recover loose balls, nullify the opponent's striker and double mark when necessary. Another important innovation was the counter-attack, mainly based on long passes from the defence.
In Herrera's version in the 1960s, four man-marking defenders are tightly assigned to each opposing attacker while an extra sweeper would pick up any loose ball that escaped the coverage of the defenders.
With the years, the original catenaccio has been slowly abandoned for other, more balanced tactical approaches; in particular, the increasing popularity gained by an attacking-based approach like Total Football has contributed to make catenaccio just yet another football tactic.
Catennacio Today
Real catennacio is no longer used in the modern football world. Two major characteristics of this style; man-to-man marking and the libero position are no longer in use, rendering pure catennacio unavailable. What many consider catennacio is rather a very hyper-defensive or retreat style defending from teams, with rare forward movement. This hyper defensive style is still commonly referred to as catennacio. Nowadays, catenaccio is used mainly by weaker teams, in order to reduce any technical gap against stronger ones by showing a more physical approach to football. The slow disappearance of the role of sweepers in modern football has also contributed to the decline in its use.
The catenaccio system is often criticized for reducing the quality of football games as a spectacle. In certain parts of Europe it became synonymous with negative football since the attacking aspect of the game is neglected.
One frequent mistake is to define catenaccio as any defensive tactical system used by a football team. This is actually untrue, because catenaccio is just one of the possible defensive tactics to be used. Nowadays catenaccio is used less and less by top teams, and often limited solely to particular circumstances, such as numerical inferiority following a sending off, or needing to defend a marginal scoreline until the end of the match. Thus, today catenaccio is also frequently referred to as any extremely defensive mental approach to a football match by a team.
Catenaccio is often thought to be commonplace in Italian football, however, it is actually used infrequently by Italian Serie A teams, which instead prefer to apply some other, more modern, tactical systems, like 4-4-2 and others. This does not apply to the Italian national football team, however. Italy's previous coaches, Cesare Maldini and Giovanni Trapattoni, used the catenaccio at international heights, and have all failed to reach the top.
This is a list of teams who gained some triumphs by playing catenaccio:
* AC Milan, under coach Nereo Rocco, in the 1960s;
* Inter Milan, under coach Helenio Herrera, in the 1960s;
* Italy, reached final in Euro 2000 after having defeated Holland in the previous round;
* England against Paraguay in the 2006 World Cup group stage. England went one nil up within 10 minutes from a Paraguay own goal and proceeded to defend the lead till the end of the game.
* The Greece team successfully employed defensive tactics to win the Euro 2004, beating on paper superior teams - Portugal(twice), Czech Republic and France.
Total Football
In soccer, Total Football is a system where a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining their intended organizational structure. In this fluid system no footballer is fixed in his or her intended outfield role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender.
Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed. It consists of footballers being extremely tactically aware, allowing them to change positions at high speed - in its simplest terms, every player is comfortable in any other position. It also puts high technical and physical demands on the players.
The foundations for Total Football were laid by Jack Reynolds, who was the manager of Ajax Amsterdam for 33 years in the early 20th century. Rinus Michels, who played under Reynolds, later went on to become manager of Ajax himself and refined the concept into what is known today as "Total Football" (Totaalvoetbal, in Dutch), using it in his training for the Ajax squad and the Netherlands national team in the 1970s. It was further refined by Stefan Kovacs after Michels left for FC Barcelona. The Dutch forward Johan Cruyff was the system's most famous exponent.
Although Cruyff was fielded as centre forward, he wandered all over the pitch, popping up wherever he could do most damage to the opposing team. This resulted in a need for such a dynamic system like Total Football. His teammates adapted themselves flexibly around his movements regularly switching positions, so that the tactical roles in the team were always filled, although not always by the same person.
Space and the creation of it were vital for the tactic of Total Football to be played into fruition, Ajax defender Barry Hulshoff explained how the team that won the European Cup in 1971, 1972 and 1973 worked it to their advantage. 'We discussed space the whole time. Johan Cruyff always talked about where people should run and where they should stand, and when they should not move.'
The constant switching of positions that became known as Total Football only came about because of this spatial awareness. 'It was about making space, coming into space, and organising space -like architecture on the football pitch,' said Hulshoff. The system developed organically and collaboratively: it was not down to coach Rinus Michels, his successor Stefan Kovacs or Cruyff alone. Cruyff summed up his (Total Football) philosophy: 'Simple football is the most beautiful. But playing simple football is the hardest thing.' [1]
The 1972 European Cup final proved to be Total Football's finest hour and which placed it on the map. After Ajax's 2:0 victory over Internazionale, newspapers around Europe reported the "death of Catenaccio and triumph of Total Football". The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad declared: 'The Inter system undermined. Defensive football is destroyed.’[2]
Michels was appointed for the 1974 FIFA World Cup campaign by the KNVB. Most of the 1974 team were made up of players from Ajax and Feyenoord. However, Rob Rensenbrink was an outsider, having played for clubs in neighboring Belgium, and was unfamiliar with Total Football, although he was selected and adapted well. During the tournament, the Netherlands coasted through their first and second round matches, defeating Argentina (4-0), East Germany(2-0) and Brazil (2-0) to setup a meeting with hosts West Germany.[3]
The 1974 Finals, which was often touted as Total Football versus Total Discipline. Cruyff kicked off and the ball was passed around the Oranje thirteen times before returning to Cruyff, who then went on a rush that eluded Berti Vogts and ended when he was fouled by Uli Hoeness inside the box. Teammate Johan Neeskens scored from the spot kick to give the Netherlands a 1-0 lead with 80 seconds of play elapsed, and the Germans had not even touched the ball. Cruyff's playmaking influence was stifled in the second half of the match by the effective marking of Berti Vogts, while Franz Beckenbauer, Uli Hoeness and Wolfgang Overath dominated midfield, enabling West Germany to win 2-1.[4]
The ill-fated Austrian "Wunderteam" of the 1930s is also credited in some circles as being the first national team to play Total Football. It is no coincidence that Ernst Happel, a talented Austrian player in the 1940's and 50's, was coach in the Netherlands in the late 1960's and early 70's. He introduced a kind of toughness at ADO and Feyenoord that was lacking before in the Dutch way of playing. Happel managed the Netherlands national team in the 1978 World Cup, where they again finished as runners-up.
The term Total Football is also used to describe the effective, dominating play of West German football in the 1970s.
Teams to have used the tactic:
* Austria (debatably)
* Ajax
* Barcelona
* Galatasaray SK
* Holland
* Arsenal FC
Rappan's "verrou" system (Catenaccio)
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