The Death of Tiki-Taka Football --- Why Spain Had No Chance in the World Cup

As most football fans are aware of, the 2008 Euro Cup, 2010 World Cup, and 2012 Euro Cup winners, Spain, have been eliminated after just two World Cup matches. Not only did Spain lose, they lost badly. A Spanish side that only conceded two goals in seven matches in the 2010 World Cup gave up seven goals in only two matches thus far in the World Cup. Frankly, Spain were dominated.

But the question is why? This was practically the same squad that won all the previous championships, with the same manager, with the same tactics. Could age have really been the main factor? Not likely, although many of the Spanish players have reached or are soon to reach their thirties.

As all of these things have stayed the same -- stayed constant -- there is one very important factor that has changed over the last six years. The style of football that other countries and clubs play. With Tiki-Taka dominating everyone, there was an increased demand to figure out a way how to defeat it. All Tiki-Taka is is slow build-up play through the middle of the field with short passes. This is why Spain's excellent midfield of Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Xavi, etc., were so key to their successs; they had the ability to control the ball in the middle of the field and complete hundreds of passes.

Alba struggled mightily against
a pressuring Chile side

So if a team is going to just play through the middle of the field, how do you plan to stop them? Well of course, you're going to stack the middle of the field and outnumber them. Although Iniesta is one of the best dribblers in the world, there is no way he can dribble through three players on a consistent basis. With the center of the field shut down, Spain now has to play wide and use their wing backs to push forward and send in crosses. As shown yesterday, Jordi Alba is not too used to doing this for the national team, and he struggled mightily. It would be one thing if Alba had all day
on the ball to pick out a cross, but the style most teams play now is to be high pressure on the ball.

This brings us to the successor to the Tiki-Taka, a style that I cannot think of the name for. This style, however, is similar to the style Pep Guardiola uses at Bayern Munich; a style where the ball is constantly being pressured and the team doing the pressure is looking for a dribbling mistake from a player who is not used to holding possession of the ball. Look at the Australia v. Netherlands game yesterday. Australia was pressuring the ball very aggressively, and it turned out that they had a 2-1 lead at one point in the game. Australia had a lead over the Netherlands. That is not something that happens by chance.

Compare the Australia v. Netherlands game to the Cameroon v. Mexico game. Cameroon did not pressure the ball at all. They were very content with letting Mexico hold possession throughout almost the entirety of the match until the 80'. This lack of ball pressure made it almost impossible for Cameroon to create any chances. When you don't have the ball, you can't score. Needless to say, Cameroon lost that game 1-0 with only one real scoring opportunity coming after the 80', after they decided to pressure the ball.

So should every team and club start using this high pressure style? It doesn't really matter if they should, they're probably going to.

So is this high pressure, ball attacking style going to be the tactic to rule for the next 20 years? Most likely not, just as Tiki-Taka lasted about 6 years (or until a new tactic arose), this high pressure style will most likely have the same life cycle.