The dynamic game
Hansi Flick's explosive start to the season at FC Barcelona has significantly changed the perception of football in La Liga. Europe's leading goalscorers have attacked Spanish teams of all styles with waves upon waves of direct, quick attacks, suffocating them as they gained momentum and scored goals at will. In order to crack the Flick code, a new challenge for the league must be solved. a very stereotypical German game with high tempo and high scores is guaranteed; with little time on the ball and a relentless barrage of pressure.
Johnny Cardoso against Atletico Madrid a few weeks ago was perhaps my favorite midfield performance of the season
— La Liga Systems (@janufooty)
Leading La Liga with this style of football essentially means a green light for the work of many of the most tactically aggressive La Liga teams of recent times – the Athletic Clubs, the Gironas, the Rayos and the Celta Vigos. Symbolically, it represents a rapid change in attitude that is on the horizon on the Iberian Peninsula; a tendency to deviate from scoreline equilibrium. The urge to “protect” a tied or narrowly leading score is now in a direct tug of war with the new urge to “attack” it. The former is the tendency towards equilibrium, while the latter is the tendency towards dynamism; and both attitudes are crucially defined in relation to the outcome.
Equilibrium and Dynamics – Attitudes to the Result Line
This is what Pep Guardiola had to say about the challenge of facing Simone Inzaghi's Inter ahead of the 2023 Champions League final.
“The most important thing in this type of game is not to think that if we are 0-0 we are losing, because we are not losing. And Italian teams think they are winning when the score is 0-0.”
What I want to emphasize is this on both teams Settings to the drawn score. The most important thing for him in this game is that his city does think in a way with regards to the 0-0 scoreline. Teams that strive for balance not only strive for tight score lines, they also gain strength and momentum the longer they stay there. There is an admission from Pep that the state of equilibrium is relatively weak, and another admission that it is precisely this state of affairs from which his Italian colleagues will draw strength. Both managers pay attention not only to tactics, but also to the result.
-11 – Atlético de Madrid attempted three shots and conceded 14 shots in the first 45 minutes against Real Betis (-11); In no other first half of a LaLiga game have they had a worse ratio of shot attempts to shots conceded since at least 2003/04. Neutralized.
– OptaJose (@OptaJose)
We can therefore define balance-seeking teams as having an attitude aimed at maintaining or protecting close scores. The focus is on reducing variation in overall tactics and reducing the game to predictable and controllable low-energy encounters. On the other hand, dynamic teams gain strength from continually increasing the energy of a game by showing an intention to replace goals with more goals. The prevailing attitude is to increase the strength of the attack in large quantities over the playing time and to add endless positive impulses if possible. Both attitudes are closely and inseparably linked to the desire to either maintain or expand the objective.
Let's dive into the analysis of two recent La Liga games by looking at them solely from the perspective of dynamics and balance to understand them better. First, a deep dive into Manuel Pellegrini's dynamic lightning attack 's defense in the last week of October.
Dynamics vs. Balance (Real Betis 1 – 0 Atletico Madrid)
“It was not only the best first half of the season, but also the best game I have seen from the team since I arrived,” said Manuel Pellegrini after the 1-0 home win.
High praise from an experienced manager who has been at the club since 2020 and deserves praise too as Betis were impressive on the night, embodying a strong performance with a dynamic attitude. In keeping with Atlético's 4-4-2 on paper, Johnny Cardoso and Sergi Altimira's spinners turned the ball quickly and with ease, guided passes through wide spaces and often caught Atletico's block narrow and out of shape.
How does game status affect ball possession percentage in LaLiga?
📌 Barcelona dominate the ball just as much when they are in the lead
📌 Girona and Real Sociedad take the initiative in equalizing; more reactive when they are on top
📌 Alavés, Valencia, Leganés and Espanyol take the lead when they take the lead– La Pausa (@lapausa_pod)
A formidable back four of Vitor Roque, Chimy Avila, Ez Abde and Pablo Fornals stayed high and wide and tried to link up in quick attacks to penetrate spaces around Atletico's defense. They also led a spirited, aggressive counter-pressing effort to ensure Atlético never got too comfortable with the ball. It was the persistently high tension that Simeone was unable to counteract, tactically or otherwise.
Unable to cope with the highly dynamic conditions created by Pellegrini, the slow equilibrium in which Atletico usually thrives never occurred. However, the question remains: How much energy does it “cost” to reach the excitement level of new dynamic teams? How can a team hope to maintain balance when Real Betis or, worse yet, Barcelona are knocking on the door with the promise of an intense, high-tempo game?
Imanol Alguacil would be the man to ask now.
Overcoming momentum (1 Real Sociedad – 0 FC Barcelona)
Real Sociedad coach Alguacil described his team's effort as “brutal” to secure a 1-0 win over Barcelona on November 11. Her job was no joke. Not only are Barcelona the highest-scoring team in Europe, but they also came into this clash with a lot of momentum, having scored 24 goals in their previous six games. Imanol was able to win thanks to the preparation; He was able to predict the attack, ramp it up appropriately, and then lead an aggressive defensive action to counter the repeated waves of pressure 's outfit.
Imanol's goal in preparation was balance, but having already calculated in advance that a ridiculous amount of energy and intensity would have to be expended to achieve it. The most important part was keeping the score secret, because Barcelona under Flick benefit exponentially from the momentum; It's almost impossible to stop them once the goals are scored, as Bayern Munich and Real Madrid recently discovered.
This Barcelona fan in the middle of Real Sociedad's celebrations… 🤣🇪🇸
— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom)
over time, however, the momentum of the game at Anoeta began to collapse. The machine began to stumble and make mistakes as it found its way forward. In the end, Barcelona had 70% possession but only managed less than 1xG and at the end of the day there were no shots on target or goals; An unusual statistic for Flick's Barcelona. Alguacil played for balance by playing with higher stakes than Diego Simeone against Pellegrini, securing the right to call the shots on the day and securing a courageous 1-0 win for his team. But crucially, Flick's Barcelona ended up just as caught up in the maelstrom of their own approach, just as Simeone had been in his game before.
A note on intangible assets
An intangible concept is, by definition, difficult to identify, harder to pursue a second time, and even harder to discuss on an equal footing with statistical tables and paraphrased summaries of the game. The game of football is fundamentally unpredictable, but it is also a living, breathing entity beyond dots on a board and numbers on a page. So the goal in considering dynamic and static settings is not to figure out who “wins” between the two, but rather to reduce it to another tool for producing an empirical conclusion; but to casually highlight which real game scenarios these settings produce.
A lot is invested in maintaining game balance, and a lot is invested in the project of destroying it. And there's no better time to watch the change than now, with the conflict between styles still in limbo.
