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Phil V 72, on 27 March 2025 - 11:15 AM, said:
Also worth saying that most of the England players are coached to play this way from an early age, so focussing on possession and ball retention is second nature to them. It’s a bit of a trend in current football to keep hold of the ball for long periods.
I was struck by this watching City play Real Madrid - City were slow, ponderous, took dozens of passes to reach a crossing position, whereas Real were fast, incisive and got into the same attacking positions as city within 1 or 2 passes. However, Real don’t play long balls, they just move the ball quicker with skilful players.
As a result of this trend (could it be called Pep-ball?) your old fashioned No9’s are quite rare so as mentioned earlier, I don’t know if you could switch styles to that extent. It would be good to see a Real-style England team but Bellingham & Saka aside, do we have the players to move the ball like this?
On the whole, perfectly satisfied with the first 2 games. These Qualifiers are basically a 15 month trial for players to earn a squad place for next summer. I expect we’ll see a lot of players in the qualifying games as Tuchel runs the rule over them - who’s good enough, and who isn’t
I was struck by this watching City play Real Madrid - City were slow, ponderous, took dozens of passes to reach a crossing position, whereas Real were fast, incisive and got into the same attacking positions as city within 1 or 2 passes. However, Real don’t play long balls, they just move the ball quicker with skilful players.
As a result of this trend (could it be called Pep-ball?) your old fashioned No9’s are quite rare so as mentioned earlier, I don’t know if you could switch styles to that extent. It would be good to see a Real-style England team but Bellingham & Saka aside, do we have the players to move the ball like this?
On the whole, perfectly satisfied with the first 2 games. These Qualifiers are basically a 15 month trial for players to earn a squad place for next summer. I expect we’ll see a lot of players in the qualifying games as Tuchel runs the rule over them - who’s good enough, and who isn’t
This was covered in a BBC article after Citys defeat above.
https://www.bbc.co.u...es/c20l7lw3ypzo
Quote:
It poses a question bigger than this one article: is this the beginning of the end for the 'Pepification' of modern football?
Attacking quickly after a transition - when possession changes hands - is arguably overtaking Guardiola's philosophy at elite level, with emphasis increasingly placed on direct football that runs deliberately in contrast to possession and territory.
