Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics (30 page)

‘If I had to look for an explanation to explain such a bad performance, I would sum it up with one word: disorganisation,’ said the goalkeeper Amadeo Carrizo. ‘We travelled to Sweden on a flight that took something like forty hours. It was not the best way to start. Compare that to Brazil, who went in a private plane and after making a tour in which the team adapted their tactics. The football was disorganised as well. We didn’t know anything about our rivals. The Czechs scored four goals past me that were identical. They pulled a cross back and it was a goal. They pulled another cross back and it was another goal. They grew tired of scoring in that way. We stepped off the plane thinking it would all be easy for us. We came back having made it all easy for everybody else.’

The reaction was furious. Players were pelted with coins and vegetables at Buenos Aires airport, and the coach, Guillermo Stábile, who had been in charge since 1941, was dismissed. ‘He didn’t know about tactics,’ said the historian Juan Presta. ‘He just picked the best players and told them to play. He was a romantic.’

‘It was terrible,’ Ramos Delgado recalled. ‘In every stadium, we were abused by everyone; even those of us who had not played. The national team had to be modified. A different kind of player was looked for, players who were more about sacrifice than play. Football became less of an art after that.’

The reaction against
la nuestra
was brutal. There was a realisation that the
metodo
was outdated, but the backlash went far further than a simple switch to a 4-2-4. Crowds for league matches fell sharply, partly because of a sense of disillusionment, and partly because the growing middle-class began watching games on television rather than at the stadiums. Clubs, which had enjoyed state support under Perón, lost their subsidies. Many turned to foreign talent in an attempt to woo back spectators with exoticism, further diluting the culture of
la nuestra
, but, most crucially of all, the ethos changed. With the financial stakes raised, football became less about the spectacle than about winning, or at least, not losing. As in Italy in the late twenties, the result was that tactics became increasingly negative.

‘It was then that European discipline appeared,’ said the philosopher Tomás Abraham. ‘That was the way that modernity, which implies discipline, physical training, hygiene, health, professionalism, sacrifice, all the Fordism entered Argentinian football. There came these methods for physical preparation that gave importance to defence - and who had cared about defence before? It’s a strange thing that it should come then, in parallel with the Brazilian triumph, which really should be an argument for our own local football.’

Boca, at least, did try to repeat the Brazilian success, appointing Vicente Feola, although he lasted only a season before being replaced by José D’Amico. Feola brought with him two Peruvians and six Brazilians, the most significant of whom was probably Orlando, his World Cup-winning central defender from 1958. ‘It was Orlando who introduced us to the idea of a caged No. 6, sitting in defence rather than in midfield,’ said Rattín. ‘Feola was unlucky. Under him we kept hitting the post or missing penalties, and then D’Amico won the championship with the same team.’

The triumph of 1962, sealed with a 1-0 victory over River as Antonio Roma saved a late penalty, was achieved with a 4-3-3, but with Alberto González operating as a
ventilador-
wing (or
tornante
, as the Italians would have called him), tracking back to become a fourth midfielder to add solidity. That defensive resolve reached its apogee two years later as, under Pedernera, Boca won the title again, conceding just fifteen goals in thirty games - only six in their final twenty-five - and scoring a mere thirty-five. Pedernera may have been a member of
la Máquina
, but he was unapologetic about his side’s approach. ‘The Bohemian from before doesn’t exist anymore,’ he said. ‘Today the message is clear: if you win, you are useful, if you lose, you are not.’ Significantly, Boca proved just as useful overseas, going unbeaten through an eight-game tour of Europe in 1963.

The Independiente coach Manuel Giúdice, who led his side to the league title in 1960 and 1963, and then to successive Libertadores triumphs, was more of a traditionalist, but even his side were known for their
garra
- their ‘claw’, forcefulness or fighting spirit. ‘Independiente and Boca in the early sixties were very strong marking sides and played a lot on the counter-attack,’ said Ramos Delgado.

‘There’s a first modernity there,’ said Abraham. ‘For many years this would divide Argentinian football between those who want to keep the tradition and those who insist that we’ve been left behind.’ That would find its most famous manifestation in the disputes between Carlos Bilardo and César Luis Menotti, but it existed earlier, most notably in the tension between Labruna, who coached at River and Rosario Central, and Juan Carlos Lorenzo, who led the Spanish side Real Mallorca to successive promotions and then interspersed spells with San Lorenzo with several years in Italy. He was unequivocal about his methods. ‘How do you beat a team that has a great forward?’ Lorenzo asked. ‘Very simple. If you don’t want somebody to eat, you have to stop the food coming out of the kitchen. I don’t send somebody to mark the waiter; I have to worry about the chef.’

When Lorenzo was appointed as national coach ahead of the 1962 World Cup, the football federation was explicitly seeking a European approach. He tried to install a
catenaccio
system - even having the
libero
wear a different coloured shirt in training so the players could better see his role - but found he had too little time to implement something wholly alien and returned to a 4-2-4 for the tournament itself.

He was reappointed in 1966, and during the tournament instituted for the first time what would become the classic Argentinian formation: the 4-3-1-2, essentially a midfield diamond, with Rattín at its base, Jorge Solari and Alberto González, the
ventilador-
wing of Boca, shuttling up and down on either side of him as what were known as
carrileros
, and Ermindo Onega given the playmaking brief at the diamond’s point. Width was provided by forward surges from the two full-backs, Roberto Ferreiro and Silvio Marzolini. Once it became apparent that there was no need for out-and-out touchline-hugging wingers, the midfield four became far more flexible. England’s shape was essentially similar, the major difference being that where England had a designated defensive midfielder in Nobby Stiles, Argentina had a designated attacking midfielder in Onega. English and Argentinian sources agree on little about their quarter-final meeting in that tournament, but both accept that the major reasons for England’s victory - once the refereeing conspiracies and Fifa’s supposed financial need for the home team to reach the final in the days before satellite television are put to one side - were that Stiles silenced Onega, and that Alan Ball, attacking from the right side of midfield, prevented Marzolini getting forward.

The major change in the Argentinian game in the years following 1958, though, was less the system than the style. Their football became increasingly violent, as Celtic discovered against Racing Club in the Intercontinental Cup final of 1967. Celtic won the first tie in Glasgow 1-0, but then walked into a storm in Buenos Aires. As far as Argentinian football was concerned, there was a score to be settled after the national side’s controversial defeat to England in the World Cup quarter-final a year earlier, and distinctions between the component parts of Great Britain meant little.

Argentina 1966

Celtic took to the field amid a hail of missiles. Ronnie Simpson, their goalkeeper, was struck on the head by a stone during the warm-up and had to be replaced. An intimidated referee denied them a clear penalty before he finally did award one and, although that was converted by Tommy Gemmell, Norberto Raffo levelled for Racing before half-time with a header from what Celtic claimed was an offside position. Celtic were further unsettled when they returned to their dressing room at half-time to find there was no water. It got worse in the second half. Juan Carlos Cárdenas scored early to give Racing the lead, after which they set about wasting time, with the crowd hanging onto the ball for long periods.

A win apiece meant a playoff in Montevideo, and this time Celtic decided to fight back. ‘The time for politeness is over,’ said Jock Stein. ‘We can be hard if necessary and we will not stand the shocking conduct of Racing.’ The game was even more brutal than the first. It was settled by another Cárdenas goal, but the result hardly mattered amid the violence. Celtic had three men sent off and Racing two, but it could easily have been many more. Celtic fined their players, Racing bought theirs new cars: victory was everything.

Racing may have been representative of the way things had gone in Argentina, but they certainly weren’t the worst exponents of the win-at-all-costs mentality. That prize, without question, went to the Estudiantes de la Plata of Osvaldo Zubeldía.

Juan Carlos Onganía seized power in a coup in June 1966 and, realising the power of sport, made money available to the clubs to clear their debts. In return, the championship was revised, being split into two - the Metropolitano and the Nacional - the aim being to encourage the development of sides from outside Buenos Aires. The stranglehold of the big five was broken and, in 1967, Estudiantes became the first Metropolitano champions.

When Zubeldía arrived at the club in 1965, having been dismissed from the national side, his initial target had simply been avoiding relegation. As a player with Boca Juniors, Vélez Sársfield, Atalanta and Banfield, he had been noted for his intelligence and his positional sense, and that awareness of shape and space was the cornerstone of his management. ‘He was a right-half, so he played just alongside me at Boca,’ said Rattín. ‘Even as a player he was a real studier of the game. He would look at the law, and he would stand right there on the border of it.’

Zubeldía led Atalanta to two respectable finishes, but found things rather more difficult with Argentina, perhaps because, as Valeriy Lobanovskyi later discovered with the USSR, it is a much harder thing to impose a vision on a team at national level, where the time available to work with players is so brief, than it is at club level where the involvement is day-to-day.

‘He came to the club a month before starting,’ said Juan Ramón Verón, who is generally acknowledged to have been the most naturally gifted player in that Estudiantes side. ‘He looked at the first team and he looked at the third team and he saw the third team was playing better, and asked himself what was the point of keeping the old players.’

He retained only four of them, preferring to try to mould young minds. ‘Zubeldía was a very simple man, and work was his goal,’ Verón went on. ‘He was very fond of teaching, of spending time with and working with the players. He came here with another trainer, Argentino Genorazzo, who was a very crazy guy, who was never at any club for long because he was always falling out with people. But when they got here they had a plan, and they already knew what they wanted to do.

‘We had a pre-season, which had not happened before. Coaches started to get heavily involved in daily training, which before then had not been usual. When Zubeldía came here, we started going into concentration the day before the game. We lived at the training ground. We learnt tactics on a blackboard and then practised them on the pitch.’

No club from outside the capital had ever won the title before, so there were no expectations, no demands for instant success. ‘The fans here were more patient, so Zubeldía could work here for three years without having to win championships, which he would not have been able to do at, for instance, Boca,’ Verón said. ‘We were really young and didn’t really notice what was happening. Things just started growing, and we realised one day that we had a great team.’

In
El Gráfico
, the journalist Jorge Ventura wrote of their style as ‘a football that is elaborated over a hard week of laboratory work, and explodes on the seventh day with an effectiveness that consecrates the tale of positions. Because Estudiantes continue to manufacture points just as they manufacture football: with more work than talent… Estudiantes keep winning.’

They trained harder and more meticulously than any Argentinian side ever had before. ‘All the possibilities afforded by the game were foreseen and practised,’ Bilardo said. ‘The corners, the free-kicks, throw-ins were used to our best advantage and we also had secret signs and language which we used to make our opponents fall into the trap.’

Estudiantes finished second in Group A of the Metropolitano championship in 1967, qualifying them for the last four. That in itself was some achievement, but they went on to come from 3-0 down to beat Platense 4-3 in the semi-final before a comfortable 3-0 win over Racing in the final. ‘Their victory has been a triumph for the new mentality, so many times proclaimed from Sweden until here, but rarely established in facts,’ the columnist Juvenal wrote in
El Gráfico
. ‘A new mentality served by young, strong, disciplined, dynamic, vigorous, spiritual and physically upright people. It is clear that Estudiantes didn’t invent anything. They followed the path already traced by Racing the previous year… Estudiantes won after the thirty-six-year “ban” of championships on ambitious “small” teams. Estudiantes defeated their convictions and their limitations as an ultra-defensive-destructive-biting team. Estudiantes defeated the intoxication of a unique week in their club history, claiming the most exemplary of their attributes in the hour of victory: humility.’