Tactical genius?

The Special One (aka Jose Mourinho) was hailed by the Sky pundits as a tactical genius after Manchester United's 2-0 win over Chelsea turned the Premier League procession back into a race. Though if Chelsea win the 4 home games out of their remaining 6, Spurs will have to win 5 and draw the 6th of their matches, so Chelsea must still be strong favourites.

The reason for my implied snort at Mourinho's tactical genius (or maybe you heard it from where you are sitting) is that the basis of the Special One's plan was to man mark Chelsea's danger man, Eden Hazard, together  with a physical approach and two quick young forwards. The last part of this might have been accidental, as Mourinho may well have rested the ageing bones of Zlatan Ibrahimovic anyway, after United's away game in the Europa league 3 days before from which the poor dears got back rather late.

Man to man marking is how youngsters are first taught to defend. Revolutionary, huh?  Indeed, in his column today Martin Samuel called United's tactics "primitive". Jamie Carragher said on Sky that "you don't see it often now" as he showed an extended example of how Ander Herrera followed Hazard wherever he went (though I wouldn't really have thought that needed pictures to explain it!) The kids soon learn that they need to either mark their man or stay in their position as they quickly realise that a 100% man marking approach sets up lots of one on ones around the pitch in such a way that the defenders can't easily support each other.  So you don't see teams at almost any standard going for man to man marking across the team. But the tactic of man marking the opposition's most dangerous player, to cancel him out and effectively make it a game of 10 against 10, must be something that every coach of a boys' team has thought of, if not used. I certainly did, though Carragher is right that it isn't used much at the top level now.

It certainly was. West Germany assigned arguably their best player, Franz Beckenbauer to mark England's man of the tournament in the 1966 World Cup Final. That didn't work as man of the match Alan Ball ran Germany ragged. Bizzarrely it emerged afterwards that Alf Ramsey had instructed Charlton to mark Beckenbauer, so the two men accompanied each other closely round the Wembley pitch for 2 hours. Beckenbauer has since said that he was relieved to hear the final whistle*.

A few years later, Borussia Moenchengladbach assigned Bertie Vogts to man mark Kevin Keegan in the 1977 European Cup Final. That also didn't work as Keegan ran his marker into exhaustion, a tired Vogts bringing down his opponent for the penalty that sealed the game 3-1**.

But man marking the opponent's star player can work. I arrived at university in Manchester in the heyday of George Best, a genuinely world class player and certainly one of the best British players ever to play the game. One of our tutors was football mad and an evangelist for Best's skills. On one occasion, when he was eulogising about George, I provocatively chipped in "well, I've seen him half a dozen times at least and he ain't scored yet". Now scoring isn't the only measure of a player playing well, of course, but there was a reason. All of those games were against my team, Everton, who were a very good side at the time  - winning the championship in 1970 - and they had a good manager (see my post of 15 March) who had a plan for dealing with Best.

That plan included tight marking. From about 1971 onwards, Catterick selected a young full back, Terry Darracott, specifically to man mark Best. Darracott went on to play nearly 200 times for Everton but is often best remembered (sorry, lame pun intended) for his limpet like marking. But the plan also included keeping the team compact, not getting drawn up the pitch and playing quickly on the counter. The final ingredient was tackling. It always seemed to me watching that, when Best got the ball, Everton appeared close to panic. If his marker was tight (God help him later with Catterick if he ever wasn't!) he would try to hold Best up, inviting him to pass. Meanwhile the nearest two other Everton players abandoned their duties to sprint goalside of Best. They had to get close enough to launch a tackle if Best went on one of his mazy and often devastating runs with the ball. If Best took his man on and got past then two or three Everton players in succession would fly into challenges to stop him getting into his stride. And I mean fly: Kendall and Harvey loved a sliding tackle and this was before red and yellow cards had been invented***. If Best got past that lot, he would be clean through with overlapping colleagues and a goal would be very likely. But that pretty much didn't happen. In a five year period from 1967 to 1972, United played Everton 12 times, winning 3 and losing 7 and Best only scored twice. Piecing it together from the football stat-nerd site 11 v 11****, I went to 8 of those games, 6 of them at Goodison. Everton won 6, drew the other 2 and Best indeed did not score. Remarkably United, with its team of the talents including Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Brian Kidd as well as Best, only scored once in those 8 games. So Catterick's tactics worked. They relied on Best's inclination, faced with a defender, to take him on rather than pass (ditto Hazard). And Mourinho's tactics were similar, including getting quite physical, or at least as physical as you can in the modern game and playing on the counter.

One surprise was that the pundits were surprised by the way United played. After all, Mourinho set his team up just the same for the FA Cup quarter final at Stamford Bridge only last month. On that occasion the plan failed as the man assigned to mark Hazard, Ander Herrera, got sent off. This is always a risk with man marking as the two players can easily get tetchy with each other.

Herrera, by the way, is an ideal candidate as a man marker. A mobile midfielder, he is nippy and so able to catch up a few paces if his man drifts away from him. He is comfortable almost anywhere on the pitch, so happy to follow his man everywhere. And most of all he's a nark, well up for niggling his opponent for 90 minutes and never letting him get any peace. As an added bonus he can play a bit and we saw the result. Many defenders assigned to a man marking role lose concentration and dislike being unable to make runs to receive the ball. But sometimes this thwarted desire to be creative results in the marker doing a few really good things when the ball falls to him. And so it was with Herrera, not just marking Hazard out of the game, but playing the pass for United's first goal and scoring the second. The pundits praised him for playing the ball quickly to Rashford, but the man marker must to do that anyway: he has the "freedom of a tight brief" in the words of a PR guru I worked with. So no need to think, let the ball go and immediately get back on the case and look where your man is.

There is, of course, nothing more dispiriting for a team than to see the man marking their star player out of the game doing the things they expect of their team-mate.

Everton's star player of the 60s, Alan Ball, often found himself facing tactics simialr to those Everton deployed on George Best. But Catterick, or Ball himself, devised a counter based on one and two touch football, which kept Ball in the game and, with Ball's perpetual motion, tested the marker to the limit. Imagine going to your man, he releases it and moves, you spin and try to follow only to find he's done another give and go and is off again. This isn't the way Best played and it isn't natural to Hazard, either. Worse for Chelsea, they only had two creative players on the pitch - well, one and a half really, the half being Pedro. Which was why, after the result was almost certain anyway, Conte eventually brought on Fabregas.

The first time I experienced really tight man marking as a schoolboy winger I found it difficult having someone follow me everywhere like a puppy dog and had a poor match. But then I didn't have any of the skills of a Ball or a Best, which is why I ended up on the other side of the marking equation, at centre back, where I was comfortable playing in a flat back four zonally or, as many park teams do, playing with a traditional centre half, who marks the centre forward and a "sweeper" centre back whose job is to cover. I enjoyed playing both of these roles, though the marking role requires much less thought and positional awareness. I used to psyche myself up for the marking role by joining my wife shopping on a Saturday morning. I found the jostly crowd at St Helens indoor market, with its 3 tripe stalls in those days (wonder if that's still the case?) perfect for getting me in the right kind of bad mood. "What a you glaring at?" she would say and I would reply "I'm getting ready to stay within 2 paces of some bugger wherever he goes on a 7000 square yard pitch". Because if you do that you are in a position to challenge every time he receives the ball before he can control it, he can never run at you with the ball and only the very best players at any particular level will be able to deal with it. The centre forward will always be one of the other team's better players, if not their best but only a few have the temperament to be trying as hard in the last 10 minutes as the first 10, if they haven't had a sniff of a chance all game - those guys are a nightmare to mark. And you get a lot of satisfaction if he gets substituted. Made a lot of my Saturdays in the late 1970s and early 80s!

I wonder if we'll see more "primitive" man marking tactics after this result of United's win. I'm not sure tactics can be primitive - there are tactics that work and tactics that don't. If I was managing a team playing Chelsea in the next few weeks, Hazard could certainly expect more of the same.

*Franz Beckenbauer recalls marking Bobby Charlton for two hours - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3715273
**Liverpool's glory night in Rome - https://www.theguardian.com/football/2002/jul/15/sport.comment4
*** Players got "booked" (officially "cautioned") and sent off, of course, but not very often then. Best was a tough lad - he didn't complain and he didn't retaliate, great temperament (though not one for temperance!)
****http://www.11v11.com/teams/manchester-united/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Everton/. I don't remember all of these games though the 3-1 win against then reigning European champions United on 19 August 1967 is a vivid memory, as is the 2-0 win for Everton at Old Trafford on 13 August 1969, which helped set Everton on their way to the title. I reminisced with the scorer of Everton's 2nd goal, John Hurst, a year or two ago. He remembered it just the same as I do - a neat one two 10 yards inside United's half set him clean through against a defence pushing up for offside. I don't think it was filmed for tv.