...the history of Premier League champions is the history of its most prolific goalscorers [f]rom Alan Shearer at Blackburn to Thierry Henry at Arsenal to Jamie Vardy at Leicester..
.This season, by contrast, City began with just two recognised strikers in Sergio Agüero and Gabriel Jesus. Both have missed large parts of the season through injury or Covid-19...Quietly, imperceptibly, Guardiola has moulded City into the Premier League’s first elite post-striker team.
This, perhaps, is the main point of contrast between City and their opponents on Saturday evening...the “Harry Kane team”...
...Saturday’s game brings together two contrasting visions of attacking play: one built around the talismanic qualities of one or two brilliant individuals, and one built around an organic, mutating collective.
...playing without a traditional No 9 [a striking centre-forward]...has often been a hallmark of Guardiola sides in the past. What does feel new here is the almost total absence of a defined focal point...Guardiola has deployed a revolving cast of players in the nominal No 9 role this season: Jesus, Mahrez, Foden, Gündogan, Ferran Torres and Kevin De Bruyne. Foden’s multifaceted role in the 4-1 demolition of Liverpool last weekend – part forward, part winger, part ball-winning midfielder – felt like the ultimate expression of this principle. “When we don’t play with a typical centre-forward, the people have to move a little bit more,” Guardiola has said.
"Part forward, part winger, part ball-winning midfielder" could be expressed in Spoelstra's system as "part two-guard, part point-guard, part defender."
...
...[I]n City’s post-striker formation can perhaps be glimpsed a broader truth: that at the top end of football, goals are scored not so much by players as by systems..One of the defining characteristics of this City squad is how many of its players – Foden, Gündogan, João Cancelo – are comfortable in multiple positions.
I'll be goddamned, positionless soccer is exactly what it is. Excellent piece of analysis by Jonathan Liew for The Guardian.
In my view, world club soccer is too insular. It does not borrow ideas even from within very well. Tackle football is to me the most intellectual sport. It has what science and the professions have: cumulative knowledge. Borrowing across sports is rarer but former Pitt coach Mike Gottfried experimented with the concept of whole unit substitutions that he saw in college basketball. When I, Noted Idiot Blogger, first saw tiki-taka I knew how to defeat it: PRESS! Play closer to your man. Don't let them set up in the tiki-taka formation. Be proactive, intrude the passing lanes, force them to pass before they're ready. It was elemental. That is what basketball does--constant pressure to force mistakes, get steals, score easy layups. Instead soccer clubs "parked the bus," setting up a wall around the goalkeeper. In tackle football and basketball that style of play is known as a "zone defense" So play man-to-man defense! Soccer hasn't gone that far yet but eventually teams started "pressing high," being disruptive and getting steals for breakaway goals.Thank you! Nobody ever abused Pep's City teams doing just that like Swine Vardy.
Eric Spoelstra's greatest coaching job was with positionless basketball last season. I marveled before the season got shut down that Spo had so many scoring options that I didn't see how the team could could be defeated consistently: Jimmy Butler penetrating, defending, passing, rebounding--playing four positions; focus on shutting down Butler and the offense "mutated" to a "3 and D"--Look out! Baranggg a guerrilla sniper like Duncan Robinson or an adept long-range threat like Tyler Herro or Kendrick Nunn--or 7'1"(!) Meyers Leonard would drill you in the head from the perimeter. It was breathtaking and, to me, unstoppable. That is what Pep Guardiola has done this season. I wish I could say he borrowed from Spoelstra but I am positive that is not the case. Soccer is just not a "cumulative science." For Butler, Herro, Nunn and Leonard substitute "Jesus, Mahrez, Foden, Gündogan,Torres and De Bruyne" and you have positionless soccer. When you can be beaten so many ways, you can't be beat.
