Total Football

This is the name given to the style of football (the variant based on using feet to pass around the ball, which is ball shaped, called soccer in the USA) pioneered by a number of teams in the Netherlands in the 1970s, notably Ajax and the national side, and is often associated with the player Johan Cruyff.

The philosophy is very much that, with the exception of the goalie, the team play really do play as a team, i.e. the roles are much flatter and more interchangeable than in the traditional and modern specialization of roles on the pitch. It requires skill from the players, but it can be very effective as it means that given the right break, defence easily becomes attack, and vice-versa.

Other aspects of the philosophy can, I believe, be summed up as follows: Winning is the main aim. The only way to win is to score goals. The only way to score is to have the ball. Therefore, given that there is only one ball on the field, its possession is critical to the game. If possession is nine tenths of the law, it must be maximized and the style of play must minimize risk of losing the ball. This means that good passing skills are necessary, and less-predictable long passes are discouraged, and that one should only pass the ball to someone in a space. This reduces the risk of tackling, and hence loss of possession, and therefore the roles of the players should support this search for space and maximization of possession.

In short, although not perfect, the thinking behind TotalFootball is that it attempts to ensure that at any point in time you have the ball and that you can keep the ball, and therefore you can attempt to score with the ball, thus minimizing the risk of losing.

The strategy is far from infallible, though. The Dutch team lost to Italy during the European championship in 2000, despite the fact that they were in possession of the ball during most of the match. Italy has a strategy which is primarily oriented towards defense rather than attack. The Italians managed to prevent the Dutch from making any goals, so that the decision had to be made by taking penalties. The Dutch team is notoriously bad at taking penalties. So they lost.

It has been said that the Italians cannot win from the Dutch, but the Dutch can very well lose to the Italians.

-- StephanHouben (disappointed fan)

That was a disappointing match, but although the Italians played highly defensively, the Dutch did have many more attempts at goal than the Italians thanks to their possession of the ball. However, it would have been nice if they had been able to hit the target. A total approach only takes you so far, it minimizes risk but does not create guarantees or absolute determinism. Nothing is for free and you still have to close that last bit. :-} -- KevlinHenney

Note that TotalFootball only works if you have very good players. Does your methodology have to change to accommodate different skill levels?

teams in lower leagues often play long ball and/or long throw tactics, which are almost the exact opposite to TotalFootball in that you try to score from a single long pass/throw.

Philosophically, is winning on penalty shots a proper requirement of the game? Is it correct requirement setting to combine score more goals than your opponent with score as many goals as your opponent and win on penalties? Would you like to work on a project that had two disparate measures of success? Aren't teams that play to win on penalties despised?

-- EricJablow

Winning on penalties is the (im)moral equivalent of cheap, but risky, political point scoring on a project. Its presence is not a requirement of the game, or of projects, just a fact. In each case the question of fairness is always raised. C'est la vie. -- KevlinHenney

But you cannot win every game on penalties. Only when approaching the finals. Initial games can be tied, thus rendering the strategy of resorting to penalties a bad one. It could work on the World Cup, though, but not in national tournaments.

There have a lot of ideas suggested that try to reach a result without the use of penalties, as they are seen by some as just a game of chance. The other ideas, such as, counting the number of corners or bookings a team had during the game never seemed very good and are basically unfair as a team may then try to deliberately win corners or get the opposition booked, without trying to score. The alternatives don't get round the fact that one team must win and the other must lose and unlike figure skating you don't get marks for style.

-- KennethMcKee

Does soccer (or rugby for that matter) have a diagrammatic notation like american football?

Soccer doesn't have it, that I know.