The ESPN FC crew discuss how Lionel Messi’s form has made others around him better and react to his 400-career-goal milestone.
You may be wondering what’s special about the Guadiana river.
I guess it’s not often that a Champions League coach makes geographical or topological references during a pre-match press conference in order to emphasise a footballing point. But Luis “Lucho” Enrique ain’t just anyone.
During his Parc Des Princes appearance on Monday afternoon ahead of Barcelona’s Champions League tie at PSG, the Asturian drew on what every Spanish kid learns in geography class in schools from the Basque country and Galicia in the north to Andalusia in the far south.
“Right now the pressure we put opponents under comes and goes like the Guadiana river,” said the 44-year-old, dipping into his special lexicon. “But we want it to be less irregular, more consistent”.
He used the image of the 766-kilometre (476 miles) river, which cuts from Castilla-la Mancha through Extremadura and Andalusia to the Spain-Portugal border, to hint at impatience with his players’ efforts because the Guadiana river is a bit eccentric. For a confluence of geographical and climactic reasons it’s sometimes not just in spate but in flood; at other times, utterly barren and in drought. Pouring forward in a torrent, or near absent and moving at a painfully slow trickle.
Evocative football image, isn’t it?
It’s an everyday Spanish saying: “To disappear like the Guadiana.” If you’ve been following Barcelona this season but only watching highlights, you might find their coach harsh given his comment.
As far as “pressing” is concerned, Enrique has already got them replicating one of the central plinths of the Pep Guardiola era — probably the one that received the least credit and that their opponents were most glad to see dissipating and then disappearing.
Luis Enrique’s hard work reintegrating the press has made Barca look like their best again.
It used to be brutal to play against the Barca teams of that era. Opposition defenders and midfielders never got a moment’s peace on the ball before one of Guardiola’s players was gnashing at their ankles trying to rob the ball away.
Famously, that harassment dwindled without those being stalked needing to issue a “cease and desist” order. From hungry attack-dogs to playful, gentle puppies across about a season and a half of decline.
But wait — can you see hackles and hear snarling? The dogs are lean and hungry once more.
What it means to press
The thing is that “pressing” is a state of mind — not just a physical resource. Pressing refers to the idea that the majority of players neither possess the technical skills, the speed of reaction, the mental agility nor the competitive calm to maintain their “A” game if they are being nagged by opponent(s) trying to either relieve them of the ball or affect the direction and efficacy of what they do with the ball.
Jack Charlton used the expression “Put ’em under pressure” to catchphrase his long ball philosophy, which also argued that if you let the other team try and cope with having possession gifted back to them — only in their own defensive third of the pitch and with the football coming down at them with snow on it from a long forward punt — then they probably wouldn’t cope very well.
Ireland knew that after a hoof forward they’d win the ball back in a dangerous area within about eight or nine seconds. They knew how to take advantage of that.
Last week, Malaga took advantage of another fashion of “putting ’em under pressure.” Javi Gracia’s team made it look like there were fourteen of them compared to the eleven of Barcelona as frantic pressing — sometimes within the rule book, sometimes not — was used as a nullifying, destructive force. It won the Andalucian team a point, it meant that between them, the 22 players had a grand total of two miserable efforts on goal.
Malaga also used the press, albeit with a more negative intent vs. Barcelona.
Horrible. Enough to give pressing a bad name. (Not horrible to see Barcelona pressed, and not horrible that Malaga took a point; just a horrible spectacle for anyone except the Rosaleda faithful.)
But the main reason that Luis Enrique is so fanatical about a concept which, I’d say, was pinched from basketball’s “full-court press,” is that he sees it as Barcelona’s most potent attacking tool, at least just behind the genius and geniality of Leo Messi’s inventive play.
Giving credit where it’s due
I was in the audience for Granada manager Joaquin Caparros’ post-match press conference lamentations at the Camp Nou on Saturday. He’s an experienced, savvy coach but I completely disagreed with something he said.
He was savage about the way in which his team conceded the first goal. In his book, they were solely culpable for the error that gifted possession to Neymar in the 26th minute.
No way — this was an error that was forced, or at least heavily influenced. What happened was that young Munir El-Haddadi (little wonder Luis Enrique loves him so) worked the full-back Dimitri Foulquier until he passed inside to Hector Yuste just to get rid of possession.
At that stage, there was no real danger. But Yuste hadn’t wanted the ball; in particular, he hadn’t wanted to be forced to take it on his right foot on the half-turn so that, with Ivan Rakitic adding a bit of speculative pressing, he felt he had to turn towards his own goal looking to get rid of possession.
New arrivals like Rakitic and Munir have adjusted quickly to Luis Enrique’s methods.
Now, at this stage there’s no need to get fancy with the argument. Yuste made a total pig’s breakfast of it, but his stray pass in the general direction of Jean-Sylvain Babin had been caused by Munir and Rakitic putting into practice a reasonable version of what their coach wants — and Neymar being 100 percent sharp enough to anticipate, long before the error, what might happen.
It has been the pattern of Barcelona’s season. And this is where I’d urge you to make this a multimedia experience.
Take a look at these four moments.
Barca vs. Elche: Matchday 1, 42nd minute
Out on their left wing, Munir and Jordi Alba hassle right-back Damian Suarez until he gifts the ball diagonally infield to Sergio Busquets, who feeds Messi to open the scoring. (Watch here, beginning around 1:27.)
Villarreal vs. Barca: Matchday 2, 82nd minute
With a burst of pace, Messi drops back to press Manu Trigueros just outside the Villarreal penalty area as the home side try to clear their defensive zone and hang on eight minutes for a very big point.
Messi causes a breakdown in Trigueros’ composure (watch around 4:54 here) and technique and as the ball bounces clear, Dani Alves is on it like a hawk on carrion. He finds Neymar, who releases Messi and as the shot squeezes beyond Sergio Asenjo, Sandro Ramirez pokes it home on the goal line and Luis Enrique’s team has their first competitive away win.
Barca vs. Athletic Club: Matchday 3, 79th minute
Sandro has only been on the pitch for a matter of seconds before haring up to prass Aymeric Laporte, who’d been enjoying unhurried possesion. The French defender panics into skewing a clearance straight to Busquets and two passes later, Neymar scores. (Watch the move unfold here.)
Barca vs. Granada: Matchday 6, 82nd minute
It’s 5-0, the contest is long, long over. Messi is a full 20 metres away from centre-back Jeison Murillo as right-back Allan Nyom passes across the pitch to him (see here; fast-forward to 5:13). Before the ball has left Nyom’s right boot, Messi is willing to venture that he can move faster than the ball, that he can cover 20 metres more quickly than Nyom can pass it over 25 metres.
It should be a losing bet but Messi does get there, robbing Murillo and he scoring his 401st career goal.
When the press works, it really works
Overall this is pressing as an attacking tool. Not destructive not defensive.
I believe there are three types of this football concept. To press aggressively and simply put a spanner in the works of the opponent. To press to regain the ball, only to circulate it backwards once it’s won back and then slowly start to build an attack. Finally, to press high, to have every teammate on high alert and to then instantly try to turn it into an SAS motto: They who dare, win.
With every Barca player harassing opponents in sync, the effects are devastating: goals, goals and more goals.
The idea is to rob teams high up the pitch, where they will be at their most disheveled and where quickly won possession will blast a hole through any “parked bus.”
The reason I say that it’s a state of mind is that if the body is willing but the mind weak, then there will be no sprint, no extra work — and no press. More than that, the state of mind must be collective. If Busquets isn’t alert against Elche, at Villarreal if Alves and Neymar aren’t on their toes at Villarreal, if Neymar isn’t thinking “bloody hell, Munir and Rakitic are going to cause Foulquier to screw up here…’ against Granada, then the pressing only fits into the first category. Destruction.
The reasons for Enrique to be satisfied are obvious: this is the best pressing we’ve seen since the middle of Guardiola’s era. It is directly causing goals, assists and winning Barcelona points. It’s also making them very hard to play against — the crowd and, to a large extent his players, are loving it.
So where does Enrique’s river metaphor fit in all of this? His use of the “sometimes flood, sometimes drought” Guadiana image is an indication that he believes there’s much more to come. That the brand leaders — Munir, Sandro, Messi and Rakitic — can be joined far more often by, oh, let’s say … Neymar.
That every single player, beyond (perhaps) the two centre-halves and keeper, can be more alert for the juicy morsels that are available when others make the successful first press. That there are no armistices. That it’s hell to play Barcelona all the time, not just some of the time.
I think we should applaud Luis Enrique for not only his early work on the training ground, work that has given teeth and legs back to the pack of puppy dogs he inherited, but for his use of metaphor.
But instead of his Spanish river comparison, he might equally have drawn from Shakespeare — something I’m loathe to do given my antipathy to the unnecessary reverence for his work — and said: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune…”
But I won’t press the matter. Barcelona are beginning to take things at the flood. Fortune lies in wait.