The Barcelona ‘Pivot’ - How Busquets mastered football’s hardest role

when Johan Cruyff became the manager of Barcelona in 1988 he came with a vision to play a brand of football that was attacking attractive but most of all but the quality of the players at the Forefront he envisioned a world in which Superior technique was decisive not physicality or athleticism and to make that a reality Cruyff developed the idea of positional football a very logical almost mathematical way of playing the game focused on giving time and space to his players and limiting that of the opponent and his autobiography crove said that our foundation was technique and everything else was positioning and support good positional play meant that you didn't have to run so far so technique was able to come more easily to the fore in pursuit of these ideals kroyff made a controversial decision by promoting a young Joseph Guardiola to the first team a player who quote couldn't defend had no strength and couldn't do anything in the air but only a year later Guardiola would become a staple in kroy's famous dream team playing as his perote or pivot at the base of his Midfield diamond and despite his perceived lack of athleticism growth believed Guardiola had the fundamental qualities needed at the top level it's technique and insight and by putting a player like that at the heart of his team he could play The Possession football that he dreamed of with the fluid movement the constant triangles and the endless ball circulation when it came to defending even Croy himself admitted that Guardiola was not the ideal defensive midfielder but he made up for it with his incredible positional sense which tied in perfectly with Crow's growing interest in mathematics paying extreme attention into the Angles and distances between players and his way of seeing football became about fine-tuning these things about refining your position so you had to run less working with Guardiola that allowed him to intercept passes break up play and even apply pressure not by sprinting 30 meters but by moving a few meters at the right moment and as you all know these ideas were incredibly successful Grove stream team won four consecutive League titles and Barcelona's first ever European Cup but as you also know football evolves cry if moved on Guardiola eventually retired and just before he did so suggested that players like him had become extinct because the game had become more tactical and More Physical than ever before but Barcelona is a unique Club where history and tradition are not just things you speak about but are lived day to day the Youth Academy La macia continued to operate under the koi philosophy and the search for the next Guardiola focused on highly technical intelligent Playmakers some of whom you may have heard of but it was fitting that in the end the true air was discovered by Guardiola himself when he became coach of Barcelona B in 2007 and in his promotion winning team at the base of his Midfield was none other than Sergio busquets as a direct descendant of kroyff Pep had very clear ideas about football indeed this was a second coming of Grove's positional play to Barcelona and Pep's immediate promotion of busquets to the first team to become the metronome of his possession machine was eerily similar to kroy's own promotion of Guardiola again you had a player who appeared too lanky too weak but was an absolute master of technique and crucially of position in fact afterbuzget's debut in the first team kreif himself wrote that busquets positionally seemed like a veteran with the ball he made what is difficult look easy disposing of it with one or two touches and without the ball he gives us a lesson that of being in the right place to intercept and running just to recover the ball all while being young and inexperienced the same sins as his coach a quite incredible quote from his debut that aptly sums up us gets his entire career and as Pep Guardiola was refining his own ideas about positional play building structures fine-tuning distances creating a web of triangles it's very telling that he put a young Sergio busquets right at the center of it and a team that wanted to dominate the ball to the extent that it did the pivot had to be completely in tune with the philosophy that his coach was implementing as the most Central player you are effectively The Hub of possession the connection between all the nodes in the network and it's through you that the ball is circulated that means you're constantly forming triangles with your teammates to create passing options and to find the third man which is a fundamental Concept in possession football but it's not just your own team's positioning you need to be aware of what's crucial is constantly identifying the space because its awareness of space one or two touches it looks like the simplest thing in the world especially when viewed from above but down on the pitch keeping track of that space scanning every few seconds and executing under pressure is exceptionally difficult and you can get a sense of that as we translate these clips into virtual reality you realize just how quickly all of that information needs to be processed and acted upon for Barcelona bus gets awareness of time and space allowed them to circulate the ball with immense speed and precision putting together increasingly long and hypnotic passing moves but what made bus gets unique was that he was much more than just this possession calculator in fact on the ball his technique was exceptional you've probably seen the compilations of his ghost-like press resistance or even his deceptive passing through the lines which again if we translate into VR you can see requires an almost miraculous speed of thought so complete was busquets in possession that he might have played even if his defending had been lacking but as we know that wasn't the case of course he had all of the positional qualities of Guardiola before him the game intelligence that is valued in this system above all other traits it seems incredibly simple but it's no coincidence how often the ball just breaks to bisquets or he's positioned perfectly to intercept a pass but what made busquets fit for the modern game what Guardiola himself perhaps lacked was his capacity to also be a Midfield Destroyer with those long telescopic legs and exceptional timing busquets has topped the list of tackles and interceptions at Barcelona for every year since 2015. his height also meant that he was very capable in the air accommodating for the diminutive stature of his Midfield colleagues but there's one more aspect to busquets and Guardiola before him that can't be Quantified or even shown via footage and it circles back to Johan Cruyff Christ spoke often about his relationship with former coach renus Mitchells and how he acted as a tactical mouthpiece on the pitch someone who could keep an eye on the big picture and reorganize his team tactically if necessary pep although he was quite young undercoife would go on to do exactly the same thing for Louis van Gaal who made pep Barcelona captain at just 26 citing that he could speak like a coach and that he used to tell players like Figo where they should be and eventually that same role fell to Sergio busquets he explained it in a recent interview how much influence you have from the pivot position how he'd have to be aware of everything from the shape of the opposition to the movement and spaces and even to the subs bench so he could tell teammates how to respond to changes you're always thinking he said the tiredness is more mental Than Physical you put all of this together and realize that Sergio busquets and Guardiola before him weren't just quality players asked to perform a specific role for their coaches at the time they actually represented the very philosophy the vision that they had for their team embodiments of the style of football they believed in and in both cases these players were hand-picked by their coach straight out of the Barcelona Academy and went on to Captain the club which leaves us at the present day with a new coach trying to follow the footsteps of croith and Guardiola Javi Hernandez is a direct descendant from that school and so far he's worked incredibly hard to bring crothian positional play back to Barcelona and now with Sergio busquets leaving the club he too has the opportunity to Define his vision by selecting a new pivot formed in His image only this time the circumstances are different there is no standout player to promote from the B team and to make matters worse Barcelona are in financial turmoil their ability to bring players in is also severely compromised that puts Javi in an extremely difficult situation he stressed dozens of times already how good his new pivot needs to be because he knows more than anyone that replacing Sergio busquets isn't just about finding a good or even great defensive midfielder no just like kroyff and Guardiola before him this position could Define the style and very possibly the success of javi's Barcelona era so between the coach and the club it will be very interesting to see how they balance the philosophy that Javi wants to implement with the financial constraints at hand and make no mistake about it whoever does inherit that role will tell us a lot about the direction of this project writing at the time of Messi Suarez and Neymar quote highlighted the immediate attention on the three attackers they're also good he said but I'll be interested to see them when busquets is no longer in the squad I think everyone will be shocked by the change it will bring about well Johan that time is finally upon us and like you I believe that what happens next could very well Define the future of this Football Club thanks so much for watching I hope you enjoyed uh if you're interested in the VR footage that we use it actually comes from a training software called be your best which Pro players and amateur players are using to improve their awareness scanning decision making Etc in virtual reality and be your best to have Connie provided me with a discount code for you guys so if you want to check out this really exciting Next Generation training software uh you can click the first link in the description but otherwise thanks everyone so much for your support we're actually nearing 100K subscribers which is crazy uh so if you can click that button and help get me one closer it would be greatly appreciated but uh other than that yeah hope you enjoyed and I'll see you in the next one take care foreign

Channel: The Purist Football

Views: 1,849,009

Keywords: football, fc barcelona, football tactics, fcb, barca, soccer, soccer tactics, cules, culers, la liga, champions league, uefa champions league, ucl, premier league, epl, football analysis, real sociedad, la real, imanol alguacil, imanol, david silva, la liga tactics, spanish football tactics, spanish football, sociedad

Id: lEmz3dGqe24

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023