Few, coaches and players alike, would harbour any doubts and question the credibility of Pep Guardiola as a football genius and supreme tactician.
Under his helmsmanship and guidance, Manchester City have gone from strength to strength under the former Bayern Munich and Barcelona boss.
Pep has won no less than eight league titles in three different countries, five major domestic cups, and two Champions Leagues, creating three iconic teams in the process.
His Barcelona side could arguably be the greatest club team ever seen in football history, while his more recent successes at Manchester City – winning back-to-back titles with 198 points – is an astonishing achievement par excellence that will long be remembered.
That he is a brilliant tactical guru second to none and a most deserving successor to his mentor, Cruyff, with his exemplary use of Cruyff-inspired possession football with high pressing that re-popularised the style in world football are open knowledge to all and sundry cognisant of the complexities and intricacies of football strategies and tactics.
But what is it exactly that uniquely singles out the Catalan from his contemporaries?
Creating positional perfection using a grid system
Guardiola’s tactics are exceptionally unique and remarkably complex to say the least, with each player given highly detailed positional instructions and specifically tasked to ensure the team’s shape is perfect at every moment.
The basic concept behind playing possession football rather than counter-attacking at speed is to maintain an evenly-distributed shape, gradually working up into the final third to suffocate and overwhelm the opposition.
Guardiola does this almost to perfection by effectively splitting the pitch into 24 zones, with the caveat that no two players are ever occupying the same space. For example, if the winger is on the outside, the full-back must dip infield, while every single player needs to be alert to shifts in the overall pattern at any time.
The idea is to be vertically and horizontally spread out at all times, offering multiple 45-degree passing angles to whoever has the ball; this way, constant triangles are created by this ultra-diligent grid system.
Maximising the use of half-spaces better than anybody else
The most important players within this carefullu constructed tactical grid are the playmakers occupying the channels between centre-back and full-back, also known as the half-spaces.
This is where the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva operate synergistically in tandem at City. Not that other coaches do not increasingly exploit this area of the pitch but inadvertently nobody has been able to exploit the immense fertility of this zone quite like Guardiola has.
In fond recall, Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta used to mesmerise the world when they danced intricately through the half-spaces at Barcelona, creating a new tactical template for others to follow.
The maestro Guardiola believes these areas are infinitely more productive than the central number ten zone, simply because from a wider starting position playmakers can see more of the pitch and can open their body out for a defence-splitting pass.
There’s infinitely very much more to the Catalan’s mind-boggling genius and ‘madness’ than meets the eye.
(Wait for the concluding Part tomorrow …)