A nice video explaining Barcelona's style of play.

[Europe]

[video=youtube;lGuaQ1khn2k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGuaQ1khn2k&feature=related[/video]

 

[frederic38]

the last goal was so beautiful
it all went so fast that i didn't notice the last pass before seeing the replays
barcelona really had a huge influence, every team now try to play at least a little bit like that

 

[frederic38]

data showing that ball possession is important:

Opta statistics, produced in conjunction with Castrol, show that over the past two seasons in the Premier League in only around a third of games did one side have 60% of possession or more, and when they did they won 52% of the time, and lost 25%. If a side had 70% possession or over (which happened in 4.7% of games), they won 67% of the time and lost 17%. Only once in the past two seasons did one side have over 80 per cent possession – Liverpool, in their 3-2 win at Bolton last August.

In the closer games, having 50-59.9% possession meant a side won 43% of the time and lost 31%. So there is a clear correlation between dominating possession and winning matches.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/may/12/the-question-important-possession

but there is also a stat that show that 90% of the goals are scored less than 7 seconds after you won possession

so the 2 way of play seem to work (the english way and the barcelona way, to make it simple)

the best thing would be to be able to do both with the same team, or a mix of the two

here is an article that seems to indicate that hodgson will not change the way england plays - very direct :

"We are quite close in our philosophies and I believe it is time England adapted a more direct approach. That's my opinion. I am a more direct manager.
"If you have strengths, you should play to them. In Norway it is a big difference between me and other coaches. They don't agree with me.''

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/s...y-hodgson-is-a-football-revolutionary?cc=5739


it's great, but i hope that it won't hurt skilled players like wilshere

 

[Europe]

data showing that ball possession is important:



http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/may/12/the-question-important-possession

but there is also a stat that show that 90% of the goals are scored less than 7 seconds after you won possession

so the 2 way of play seem to work (the english way and the barcelona way, to make it simple)

the best thing would be to be able to do both with the same team, or a mix of the two

here is an article that seems to indicate that hodgson will not change the way england plays - very direct :


http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/s...y-hodgson-is-a-football-revolutionary?cc=5739


it's great, but i hope that it won't hurt skilled players like wilshere

I hope they don't waste Wilshere. He can play a direct game I assume. He can bring the ball up and make great passes. They don't have to play keep away like Barca or Spain do.

90% of goals are scored less than 7 seconds after possession. That's an eye opener.

 

[frederic38]

in my opinion england and english teams should be inspired by the way athletic bilbao has played under marcelo bielsa

they have a fine passing game like barcelona, except that they are more direct (which should work in premier league) and they play with a powerfull player up front, llorente

[video=youtube_share;gV5xrCj2Jdc]http://youtu.be/gV5xrCj2Jdc[/video]

it's not hard to imagine that they could play the same way, with llorente being replaced by carroll for liverpool and england, and by giroud for arsenal

spain should also play this way i think because in the spanish national team they don't have messi, which is barcelona's most dangerous player, but they have llorente
like egil olsen said, you have to play to your strenghts

in the future muniain and llorente need to become important players in the spanish national team