Mahoney_jr
Bankspieler
Gegenpressing! Innovators: Rangnick und Klopp
Für ein Forum lange Ausschnitte, aber nur sehr kleine Teile des Buchs. Daher hoffe ich mal, das war okay
...It summarised the German obsession with transitions; everyone else loved how Barcelona kept possession, but Klopp studied what they did the moment they lost it.
Focusing on regaining possession immediately changed the way transition football was considered. As outlined above in Chapter 10 in the discussion about the Portuguese focus on the transition, coaching courses usually explain modern football as a series of four situations, flowing continuously in a circle: the possession phase; the transition from possession to out-of-possession; the out- of-possession phase; and then the transition to possession. And repeat. But now, the defensive transition was about regaining the ball quickly and returning immediately to the possession phase, effectively short-circuiting the way football was considered. Sometimes you could watch Barcelona for an entire half and not witness their out-of-possession structure.
Klopp borrowed from this approach and spoke about it with a specific term: 'gegenpressing', which translates as counter- pressing. It's sometimes misunderstood, however. Counter-pressing isn't to pressing what counter-attacking is to attacking. It's not necessarily countering a press, but pressing a counter.
There were two significant differences between Guardiola's approach and Klopp's approach that mean the Dortmund manager should be considered a genuine revolutionary. First, Guardiola's Barcelona pressed quickly simply because they didn't want to spend any time in their out-of-possession phase. "Without the ball, we are a disastrous team, a horrible team, so we need the ball,' explained Guardiola. It was a defensive tactic, merely a proactive way of defending, so they didn't have to defend in the traditional sense. Barcelona would recover the ball and then retain possession for long periods, organising themselves in their positional structure.
Klopp's Dortmund were very different. They were perfectly solid without possession, and defending deep actually suited their counter-attacking. But they gegenpressed because Klopp believed it was a valuable attacking tactic. "Think about the passes you have to make to get a player in a number 10 role into a position where he can play the genius pass,' Klopp later urged. ‘Gegenpressing lets you win back the ball nearer to the goal. It's only one pass away from a really good opportunity. No playmaker in the world can be as good as a good gegenpressing situation, and that's why it's so important.' Barcelona and Dortmund both attempted to regain the ball quickly, but for completely different reasons.
Second, while Guardiola's players would press intelligently, with one man pressuring the opponent on the ball and others cutting off passing angles into opponents, Klopp's side were less calculating and more extreme. They piled players into the immediate vicinity of the player in possession, almost crowding him out through intimidation. It explained why Klopp's wide midfielders, usually Kevin Großkreutz and Jakub Błaszczykowski, tucked inside - their structure was geared towards gegenpressing, which was only possible when compressing space quickly. While other teams were focusing on vertical compactness, Klopp was also concerned with horizontal compactness, and Dortmund frequently regained possession by boxing in teams towards the touchline.
This gegenpressing was often combined with more conventional pressing as the opposition attempted to play out from the back. Most typically, Dortmund would use a medium block, standing off the opposition centre-backs, before pressing once the ball was played into the full-backs or midfielders. Dortmund rarely used a full-pitch press, because doing so encouraged the opposition to kick the ball long. Although that served to disrupt their opponents' build-up play, Klopp really wanted the opposition to play their way into trouble, and Dortmund's mix of pressing, counter-pressing and counter-attacking was essentially how they overcame Bayern to win the Bundesliga in 2011 and 2012...
For a more specific instance of gegenpressing, a classic Dortmund goal came in a 2-1 Champions League victory at Arsenal in 2013. Marco Reus dribbled down the left and attempted to pass inside to Lewandowski, but he miscued straight to Arsenal skipper Mikel Arteta on the edge of his own box. Arteta passed first- time to midfield colleague Aaron Ramsey, and Dortmund stormed into battle. Lewandowski closed down Ramsey from the front, Reus did so from behind, while Henrikh Mkhitaryan moved inside from the opposite flank to congest the play, with Dortmund's midfielders pushing forward to impose further pressure. Ramsey suddenly found himself swarmed by three yellow-and-black shirts: Reus, Lewandowski and Mkhitaryan. Reus slid in from behind to dispossess the Welshman, while Lewandowski collected the loose ball and flicked it right to Mkhitaryan, who slammed home.
In just six seconds Dortmund managed to lose possession, regain possession and score, with their three most dangerous attackers
combining on the edge of the box. Three of Arsenal's defenders had already started their offensive transition and began pushing up the pitch before suddenly finding themselves out of position, and Mkhitaryan's shot was struck from precisely the position left- back Kieran Gibbs had been occupying six seconds beforehand. The left-back, having expected an Arsenal counter, found himself too wide, but Dortmund had pressed the counter; they'd counter- pressed. 'The best moment to win the ball is immediately after your team just lost it,' Klopp reiterated. 'The opponent is still looking for orientation where to pass the ball. He will have taken his eyes off the game to make his tackle or interception and he will have expended energy. Both make him vulnerable."
The combination of Dortmund's compression of the opposition at turnovers and their energy meant they sometimes appeared to have an extra man on the pitch, and in that game at the Emirates this sense was supported by the 'distance- covered' statistics. Arsenal's players ran 106.3km combined, while Dortmund's covered 117.8km. The difference of 11.5km was exactly the distance covered by Dortmund right-back Großkreutz, who constantly found himself unmarked on the overlap.
Dortmund's distance-covered statistics were often remarked on, because this was a side with seemingly limitless energy resources. In their victory over Marseille on the previous Champions League matchday, Klopp had said, 'We had to put in a lot of effort and if we'd run just a few kilometres less today, we would have struggled.' He had previously given his players a target: if they covered more than 118km collectively in nine out of ten matches, they'd be rewarded with three extra days off during their winter break. The players missed the target, but Klopp generously granted them the extra rest anyway because of their efforts.
Later, Klopp would suggest that his players improved when running less, and their increased emphasis on possession play made them less frantic. The running statistics themselves were a bit of a sideshow, but after a few years of Spanish dominance and all the attention paid to possession statistics, German dominance meant that the focus was now on how much ground the players were covering. Klopp's Dortmund, however, were a victim of their own success.
Their brand of pressing and gegenpressing was so overwhelmingly effective, with Dortmund's back-to-back title victories earning respect from supporters across the country and inspiring other coaches, that many Bundesliga sides increasingly incorporated Dortmund's principles into their own play. Bundesliga matches became even more frantic, because more sides attempted to engage the opposition in advanced positions.
Most problematically for Dortmund, one side inspired by their approach was Bayern Munich. While Bayern managed to pinch Mario Götze, Robert Lewandowski and Mats Hummels from Dortmund, perhaps their most decisive steal was the concept of pressing and gegenpressing itself...
Für ein Forum lange Ausschnitte, aber nur sehr kleine Teile des Buchs. Daher hoffe ich mal, das war okay
