Style of Play
We have the same idea as each other. Keep the ball, create movement around and off the ball, get in the spaces to cause danger.
“ ” —Xabi Alonso (Spanish midfielder)Tiki-taka is above all, a systems approach to football founded upon team unity and a comprehensive understanding in the geometry of space on a football field.
Tiki-taka has been variously described as "a style of play based on making your way to the back of the net through short passing and movement," a "short passing style in which the ball is worked carefully through various channels," and a "nonsensical phrase that has come to mean short passing, patience and possession above all else." The style involves roaming movement and positional interchange amongst midfielders, moving the ball in intricate patterns, and sharp, one or two-touch passing. Tiki-taka is "both defensive and offensive in equal measure" – the team is always in possession, so doesn't need to switch between defending and attacking. Commentators have contrasted tiki-taka with "route one physicality" and with the higher-tempo passing of Arsène Wenger's 2007–08 Arsenal side, which employed Cesc Fàbregas as the only channel between defence and attack. Tiki-taka is associated with flair, creativity, and touch, but can also be taken to a "slow, directionless extreme" that sacrifices effectiveness for aesthetics.
Read more about this topic: Spain National Football Team
Famous quotes containing the words style of, style and/or play:
“The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)