Bielsa’s Argentina
Matías Almeyda’s and Marcelo Bielsa’s paths crossed when Bielsa took charge of Argentina’s national team in 1998. El Pelado was a part of the Argentina team that set a FIFA record for points in a World Cup qualification cycle, amassing 43 points from 18 matches from 2000-2001. Bielsa’s Argentina became known for their tenacious pressure in defense and their creativity in attack. They scored 42 goals and conceded only 15 during that period, establishing themselves as one of the most complete and dominant squads in the world heading into the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Bielsa brought Almeyda to the 2002 World Cup, held in South Korea and Japan. Bielsa also brought 2000 football videos with him to the tournament to supplement his video analysis, a level of preparation that few, if any, practiced at the time. This attention to detail is a concept that Bielsa has passed on to all his successors, including Almeyda. Bringing 2000 videos halfway across the world in an era where video storage was limited to VHS tapes and DVDs is perhaps the best illustration of his meticulous approach to opposition analysis and his commitment to being a step ahead of the opponent at all times.
Argentina was placed in a “group of death” in 2002 alongside Sweden, England, and Nigeria. Despite their stellar form going into the tournament, La Albiceleste went out in the group stages winning just one match against Nigeria. They conceded two goals in three matches – a somewhat dubious penalty kick and a free kick from 30 yards out. The statistics and data we have from the tournament are pretty limited because of the technology of the era, but anecdotally and based on video analysis, Argentina maintained more possession than their opponents and generated a number of quality chances in each of their matches. Against England and Sweden, Argentina conceded the first goal and were forced to deal with defenses that sat compact for a good portion of both matches.
The team that generates more chances, or the team that plays the more “poetic” style of football, does not always win. These are themes we have seen throughout Marcelo Bielsa’s lengthy coaching career as well as Matías Almeyda’s relatively shorter coaching career. Matías Almeyda only played in one match during that World Cup and saw his last appearance for the national team just a year later, but the impact that Bielsa had on his football philosophy has lasted a lifetime.
“What is football?”
In the middle of the 2019 season, Almeyda described an encounter with an opposing team’s assistant coach. “There was an assistant coach of a team we played recently that told one of our players that, ‘[What the Earthquakes were playing] wasn’t football. I say, ‘What is football?’ Football is surprises, strategy. That is football, and we are all a part of it.” Despite the “shock” that the playing style has caused for some in MLS, there have been different variants of “man-marking” in football going back to the sport’s earliest days.
By the late 1930s, a majority of the clubs in England played in the W-M formation (also known as the 3-2-2-3), invented by Herbert Chapman in response to a change in the offside law. Since the formation itself is perfectly symmetrical, when two teams in a W-M played one another, the natural response would be for the teams to employ a rigid form of man-marking. In a 1953 match between Hungary and England, dubbed the “Match of the Century” by the British press, Hungary broke England’s man-marking scheme by using a false-9 that dropped into the midfield, leaving English centre-half Harry Johnston confused on whether or not he should follow him or stay in his position. This was a revolutionary moment in the development of football tactics and an early example of the tactical innovations we witness year in and year out thanks to the globalization of the sport.
Zonal marking is far more popular than variants of man-marking in today’s game, but we still see a lot of overlap. It is not uncommon for teams to man-mark a dangerous player, or to man-mark on throw-ins and set pieces. In the modern game, most teams have defensive systems that combine elements of both zonal and man marking, and the exchange of ideas between these two concepts will continue. Bielsa and Almeyda have undoubtedly sparked some new conversations about these ideas in locker rooms and training grounds all across the world, particularly in the UK and the US as of late. Tactics will always ebb and flow with a continuous injection of new strategies and surprises. There is no “right” way to play the game.
Measuring Press Intensity
In Major League Soccer, the Earthquakes are one of the teams introducing new ideas to the league with their defensive tactics. The most discussed tactical feature of Almeyda’s Earthquakes has been the way the team answers the question: How do we win the ball back from the opponent? Pundits on television and journalists on news websites describe it as “man-marking,” but this term does not quite capture all the details of the Quakes defensive approach. The Earthquakes apply intense pressure across the field to win the ball back, but it is not necessarily man for man in every area of the pitch. Their approach takes inspiration from Bielsa, and the overlap can be seen at his current club Leeds United. A good way of quantifying a team’s press is by looking at the PPDA metric, short for Passes Allowed Per Defensive Action. PPDA is a simple ratio that measures a team’s defensive intensity based on two main principles: teams with an intense press allow less completed passes, and teams with an intense press commit more successful defensive actions.
No matter how you divide up the pitch, the San Jose Earthquakes and Leeds United are at or near the top of their respective leagues in PPDA. The only exception to this is that in 2020 and 2021, the Earthquakes were 9th and 17th in attacking third PPDA in MLS. This implies that they have not been pressing as high up the pitch with the same intensity in the past two seasons.
While the intensity of San Jose’s 2019 team press resembled the intensity of Leeds’ press, they have been forced to make some adjustments since. This can be attributed to a number of things – tactical changes to prevent the burnout they experienced at the end of the 2019 season, an irregular and condensed season due to COVID, a transfer budget that doesn’t quite compare to most teams in the league, and MLS’s one-of-a-kind travel schedule. However, despite the discrepancy in the final third PPDA numbers, the similarities in the way that the Quakes and Leeds defend are still visibly present.
Man-Marking, and the Libero Parcial
Both Almeyda’s and Bielsa’s marking systems create a lot of one-versus-one “man-marking” situations, but there is always a spare man in defense. In turn, this also allows the opponent to have a spare man (plus the goalkeeper in certain situations) in their buildup play. “You could have generalized last year [2019] that San Jose played man-to-man, and I would sit down with that person and say we always had a spare man, so you have to study it and detect where he’s at,” Almeyda said discussing their tactics ahead of their 2020 season. During a filmed training session for Argentina in 1999, Bielsa called this spare man the “libero parcial” The role of this player is to be the “recovery option” in case someone loses track of their defensive assignment. The partial libero covers the central space to deal with loose balls and deals with situations where the opponent gains a numerical superiority.
When facing Manchester City, who play with four at the back and three in the midfield, Leeds’ 9 and 10 alternated between pressuring the center back and the 6. Leeds United striker Patrick Bamford is particularly good at leading the pressing line, cutting off passing angles, and even pressing the opponent from behind when the ball has progressed past him. Bamford’s tactical awareness makes him particularly good at limiting the space that the opponent has in build-up play and it makes it easier for his defenders behind him to anticipate where the ball will go next.
Against Sporting Kansas City, the 9 Andy Rios and the 10 Chofis López are pressing the center backs and the 6 in the same way that Leeds’ Patrick Bamford and Tyler Roberts pressed against Manchester City. Earthquakes CB Florian Jungwirth follows Sporting KC striker Alan Pulido all the way into the other half and makes a challenge for the ball, another feature of the Almeyda and Bielsa system that you don’t see in most defensive schemes today. The key difference between Leeds and San Jose in these two moments is that Leeds are pressing with a much higher line than San Jose are. There are certainly moments when San Jose have committed numbers to press high up the pitch in 2020 and 2021, but as the PPDA metrics suggest, the press isn’t as intense in the final third as Leeds in 2020/2021 and San Jose in 2019.
These two moments make for good comparison because both opponents (Manchester City and Sporting Kansas City) play in possession based 4-3-3 where they like to build from the back. These moments show that in certain areas of the pitch, the “man-marking” can be somewhat fluid, with players handing off their marking assignments depending on the situation.
When facing a team that plays three at the back, the defensive approach changes only slightly. The 9 and 10 position themselves between the three central defenders creating a 3v2, and they alternate as the ball is circulated from side to side. The marking assignments will differ a bit in the midfield and defense, but the general concept of man-for-man with a libero parcial still remains.
How do we win the ball back?
The marking assignments in the midfield and defense vary from opponent to opponent, but the main point of emphasis is that there should be constant pressure on all players, regardless of whether or not they are in proximity to the ball. The Earthquakes want to be as “annoying” as possible for the opponent, and within a step of striking distance at all times. Leeds and San Jose try to push the ball into the wide areas where the opponent has less forward passing options and less space to progress the ball. When they do choose to press, we see a winger or a central midfielder leave their man and step up in the opponent’s half to try and eliminate the opposition’s numerical superiority in build-up. Some of the triggers to press could include a poor pass, a backwards pass, a bad touch, a certain player receiving the ball, and more. These triggers can vary based on the personnel, the shape, and the tactics of the opponent. The pressing player can afford to take this risk in part because the partial libero can cover for him in the event that the press is unsuccessful.
If the opponent’s fullbacks don’t push high up the pitch in possession, it is easier for the wingers to press when the ball enters the wide areas, which is something we see Leeds do a lot in particular. When San Jose does press high up the pitch, it is more common for central midfielders Judson, Eric Remedi, and Jackson Yueill to join the press rather than the wingers. The ideal outcome for any high press is to win the ball back in a position where you can go to goal immediately. For Leeds and San Jose, the most common outcome is not necessarily to win the ball back high up the pitch, but rather to force a vertical pass that has a low probability of completion. With players that are “man-marking,” any pass played into the middle third or defensive third will be contested immediately. The press funnels the ball into areas where the team in possession has fewer options and therefore are more likely to turn the ball over.
This is an example of the 20-30 meter vertical pass that Bielsa tries to force when pressing, which he speaks about in his training session with the Argentina national team in 1999. Even when the center back is able to find a pass in the middle, the player that receives the pass is in a difficult situation when he receives the ball. The player has his back to goal, the defending team has a numerical superiority in the area, the defending team has a marker that will challenge the player for the ball, and the defending team has markers blocking off all backwards passing lanes. The “man-marking” creates this positional superiority because of the way that Bielsa’s player follow their marking assignments around the pitch.
These figures certainly don’t mean that Leeds and San Jose don’t defend with the same intensity as other heavy pressing teams do in their respective leagues. Rather, it shows that the way they win the ball is through forcing vertical passes into the midfield rather than interceptions high up the pitch.
There is more evidence of this when you take a deeper dive into the passing data. K-Means clustering is a machine learning algorithm that groups data points together based on certain similarities. Running K-Means clustering on incomplete passes gives us an idea of the types of passes that teams force with their defensive style. I used this article by Cheuk Hei Ho and Eliot McKinley as a basis for how I did my clustering.
In addition to the eye-test and the recoveries data, this analysis of incomplete passes also implies that both San Jose and Leeds force those direct, vertical balls that Bielsa describes more often than other teams do.
“Defending in Large Spaces”
With the introduction of tracking data to football, there have been new ways of analyzing events and movements that occur off the ball. One such innovation has been the introduction of “pitch control,” a way of quantifying and visualizing how a team controls space on the pitch during a match using voronoi tessellation. Like any analytics model, better pitch control does not always equate to better results. While this model is relatively new, the concept behind it isn’t anything unfamiliar to managers and analysts. For example, it is far simpler for a team to control a small area of the pitch than it is to control a large area of the pitch while defending.
These graphics were created using an interactive pitch control board with Javier Fernández’s model. In a zonal low/mid block, the defensive team chooses to be more compact to control a smaller space in front of the goal, and as a result they concede space in the opponent’s half. In the Bielsa and Almeyda systems, the defenders have to maintain control of a large space while also being at the mercy of the movements of their opponent. The risk of “defending in large spaces” is one that Bielsa and Almeyda welcome, but committing players forward to press and attack leaves a lot of space for the opponent to play in if they can find it. Leeds and San Jose have to deal with situations where defenders lose their marking assignments in every match.
In this clip, the San Jose Earthquakes are defending in transition in a “large space.” Jackson Yueill and Eric Remedi switch their marking assignments, an essential part of the Bielsa/Almeyda defensive system in transition. When this isn’t well practiced and doesn’t go smoothly, like in the first month of Almeyda’s tenure in San Jose, the defense can break down easily.
So why bother going through all the additional analysis and fitness preparation to take the risk of defending in large spaces? Why bother taking any such risks in football?
“If two teams face each other and neither takes risks, there is no football match. But if two teams face each other and both take risks there is a football match. Sometimes I say to myself the following: I prefer to get no points (to lose) but having played to win all three points rather than to get one point without playing for all three…I do this as a tribute to the spectator.”
Marcelo Bielsa at a conference in Italy in 2017
There is no “right” way to play football, but there are certainly positive styles and negative styles. Bielsa never sacrifices beautiful football for a result, because to play negative football is a failure to the spectator. Is sending all 10 men forward on a corner kick in the 37th minute down 1-0 the pragmatic thing to do defensively? No, but it is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, and it is even more fun when it works. For Bielsa and Almeyda, you will never accomplish anything worthwhile in football, and in life, without taking risks.
What does it mean to be a Bielsista team?
A Bielsista team is also special in the way that the manager diffuses knowledge to their players. Bielsa’s obsession with analyzing the game has been well documented, and the thoroughness of his preparation is unmatched. He does it with efficiency, regiment, and an obsession with data, but his playing style is everything but pragmatic. Bielsa is simultaneously the face of football romanticism and functionalism.
Marcelo Bielsa’s football philosophy is largely influenced by two of Argentina’s most storied managers – Carlos Bilardo and César Luis Menotti. Bilardo the pragmatic, and Menotti the romantic.
When Argentinian football had long been divided between bilardisme and menottisme — or between the Estudiantes of 69 and the Hurácan of 73, as Bielsa put it – he found a third way. “I spent sixteen years of my life listening to them: eight to Menotti who is a coach who prioritizes inspiration and eight to Bilardo who is a coach who prioritizes functionality,” he said after becoming [Argentina’s] national coach in 1998. “And I tried to take the best from each.”
Jonathan Wilson in Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics
Bielsa’s “third way” has worked wonders at Leeds United. West Yorkshire is many miles from Rosario, but the communal love for football is the same, and in turn Bielsa has found himself a new home in Leeds. In just three seasons, Bielsa has brought Leeds back to the first division with an EFL Championship title, and he has secured a 9th place finish in their first season in the Premier League since 2004. But beyond tactics and results, perhaps the most impressive part of Bielsa’s and Almeyda’s arrival into the English-speaking world is their ability to command respect despite not speaking a word of the language. In fact, it goes a step further than respect. When players in Leeds and San Jose speak about their respective managers, you can almost see a twinkle forming in their eyes.
“Matías would sit on a soccer ball and would just simply talk to us as human beings. He’d tell anecdotes of him as a player, then as a coach and how he navigated the professional soccer world, because he wanted us to remember it can be a difficult world sometimes, and for a manager to talk to me like this and me, in turn, to witness it first-hand was amazing. I mean he would talk to us for 30 to 40 minutes before training, and normally when a coach talks for that long, guys would check out. But when Matías talked, even through a translator, nobody checked out. Everyone was completely locked in, and that’s when it was obvious to me, he was going to do something different.”
Earthquakes defender Tommy Thompson on Matías Almeyda in an interview with SI.
Almeyda has adopted elements of Bielsa’s football philosophy and mixed it with his own personal experiences in life and in the game. He has had a very accomplished career as both a player and a manager, playing and winning in some of the biggest competitions in the world. In addition to his triumphs, he has also been very open with his struggles as a football player and as a human. In his biography Alma y Vida, written by Diego Borinsky, Almeyda speaks candidly about the depression he experienced after his first retirement. Almeyda’s communication of the highs and lows he has lived through in football and in life are what make him such an impactful manager.
Poetry in Motion
In Oliver Kay’s piece for the Athletic and Asher Kohn’s piece for Quakes Epicenter, Kay and Kohn each pull this quote from famed football pragmatist José Mourinho:
“The poets are the ones that win every match. They win every match. I think I’m going to try to have one of these jobs in a few years, because you win every match. And I never managed in my career to win every match. I always lose matches. Some guys win every time. I don’t. I don’t. But in a bad season, in a season where sometimes I felt my team was the worst team in the world, where I felt sometimes that I was the worst manager in the world, we managed to win three trophies.”
Jose Mourinho in the weeks after his 2017 Europa League championship with Manchester United.
This circles back to the idea that there is a “positive” and “negative” way of playing the game. The idea that there is a “protagonist” in football. To Mourinho, poets like Marcelo Bielsa and Matías Almeyda win every time they take the pitch because of the way their teams play, regardless of the outcome.
Matías Almeyda has certainly produced some poetic moments for spectators in San Jose. The MLS is Back Tournament magic-spray-flare comeback win, the league best 11-4-2 record from April to July of 2019, and a 2020 late-season push that ended in a playoff thriller against Sporting Kansas City. Almeyda is a special manager with an infectious charisma, and he has created a one-of-a-kind culture in San Jose. Earthquakes players don’t celebrate goals as individuals anymore, the go-to celebration is to run halfway across the pitch to the touchline to hug their manager and his staff.
It is impossible to predict whether or not Matías Almeyda will bring silverware back to San Jose, but if there is anyone that has the tools to revitalize the club, it is him. Almeyda has become somewhat of an expert at reviving clubs in difficult situations. He won promotion for River Plate after the worst season in club history, he won promotion for Banfield in a similar situation, and he “awoke the giant” at Chivas by winning five major titles.
When Matías Almeyda’s San Jose Earthquakes are in gear, they play some of the most “poetic” football in the world. With the influence of Marcelo Bielsa and his own wealth of experiences, Almeyda has created a playing style and built a club culture like no other in the United States. Just as Almeyda learned from Bielsa, there is a lot that Major League Soccer can learn from Almeyda. To consistently play with such bold tactics in a league where pragmatism reigns king is a challenge that very few are willing to take on. Bielsa’s influence on football has continued to spread to every corner of the world, and as football fans, we are all the better for it.
Notes: Special thank you to Asher Kohn, who wrote a brilliant piece a few months back that gave me a lot of inspiration for this piece. Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid: History of Soccer Tactics was also instrumental and a great read for anyone interested in soccer tactics. I also recommend Juani Jimena’s YouTube channel, which has several of Marcelo Bielsa’s press conferences, lectures, and even some training sessions translated into English. Lastly, I would also recommend Leeds United stats blog “All Stats Aren’t We,” who have some excellent analysis of Bielsa’s Leeds.
If you are interested in learning more about my background or want to discuss anything football related, feel free to reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn.
