Yea man, that's the type of football you get with managers who like italian style rigid football, very position oriented, sort of stiff football you see at Inter for example, where there is also very very poor movement when in possession. We play like a form of Inter with better players. There's no difference between Spalletti for example and Valverde in terms of offensive expression, other than Spalletti being a slightly better manager arguably.
Idea is some managers just don't like players vacating their positions too much because it involves a degree of risk they're just unwilling to cope with, mainly due to not being brave and good enough to roll with that risk for the good of the team.
Mobile modern football basically involves loosening the meaning of position. It is basically allowed, especially in midfield - which is the motor of a team when in build-up - to slightly vacate your position (in a totally trained and non-chaotic way) and create numerical overload in important areas when the game asks it (usually when you have issues creating progression in the normal way). And this is how triangles, quick 1-2s (those sort of things which we normally associate with Barca football) are created.
It is called ball oriented approach. You modify the team's shape in relation to the ball, so that areas were the ball is unlikely to be played quickly are sacrificed in order to provide numerical advantage in the hot zones - i.e. areas where the ball is likely to be played first. City use this, Liverpool use this in their pressing setups, even PSG under Tuchel use this. Ajax use this, Dortmund use this, Napoli used it under Sarri a lot. Most teams who play entertaining football use it, with various degrees of success based on the level of the players you have.
We don't use it. We keep our positions almost with stubbornness, even when it is obvious that the opponent has it under control. We basically pass the ball in the channels we are allowed to pass, until the ball gets to a player who is trying to create danger on his own. This is obvious by the unusually high amount of passes from the center wide. We simply pass there because those are the areas that are left more open by any decent team who knows a thing or two about defending. There rarely is any vertical progress in possession. We usually have to get attacked to be able to find any way to create danger, which is basically the antithesis of Barcelona football, the type of reactionary stuff you see Atletico playing weekly.
Fearing Zidane is pointless.
good one
