Why Luis Enrique is more 'tactician' than 'Harry Potter'
Barcelona manager Luis Enrique would have us believe he just turns up, says the magic words and leaves the rest to Messi, Suarez and Neymar. The reality is he has been far more influential than that.
Journalists could be forgiven for thinking they were sitting in a Hogwarts hat-sorting ceremony rather than a pre-match press conference, when Barcelona manager Luis Enrique jovially suggested all he does was utter the magical phrase 'abracadabra' to get the best out of his fabled forward line of 'Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar'.
When asked how he brings the magic to MSN, Enrique said: "I tell them abracadabra and the magic sparks. That's all I do."
Seeking to clarify to a bemused silence, Enrique continued: "I have always had good forwards and now at Barcelona, I have the best in the world."
Amid the humility, was Enrique merely confirming the wide-spread theory that all he has to do is turn up, select the attacking trio, then sit back and watch the good times roll into the back of the net?
Perhaps that was what he was trying to convey as he breezily swept through the media session on the eve of his team's UEFA Champions League Round of 16 clash against Arsenal.
The reality is that Jordi Roura and Tata Martino - the two coaches who preceded Enrique - are proof that without direction Barcelona can find it difficult to solve the problems thrown at it, despite having a team you would struggle to assemble on a video game.
Enrique talks up the effect of 'MSN', but one of his biggest contributions to the evolution of Barcelona's style is to get the ball to the front three as much as possible. It sounds obvious, but, as an analysis from World Soccer talk identified, under Pep Guardiola, Barcelona's dominance was concentrated in the possession game espoused by its midfield and orchestrated by Xavi. Enrique's team conducts most of its damage a bit further up the pitch, with his three star attackers the focal point of the team's attacking play.
Enrique has straightened up the attack and placed the emphasis on getting the ball to 'MSN' as quickly and directly as possible, which is where Ivan Rakitic comes in. The Croatian transitions the play from back to front with his range of accurate passing, which is a key reason why he was recruited from Sevilla. All the while Barcelona stays true to its core value of possessing the ball, it just seeks to do it higher up the pitch, within the forward line, rather than in the midfield.
A key similarity between the 'Barcelona' of Pep Guardiola and that of Enrique is something the latter did allude to in his press conference: Pressing.
Last year Enrique told FourFourTwo Magazine: “With a good, fit team, pressing should start as soon as you lose the ball in the other team’s half. You want to win the ball back as quickly as possible. I’d like my team to have 100 per cent of the ball if possible. If your team is well positioned, if you’ve got the ball, the other team gets tired. Once you regain possession you need quality on the ball, otherwise it will go back and forth.”
Therein lies the second major tactical advancement the Catalan has brought back to the team, high pressing and an urgency to win the ball back quickly after losing it, enabling a rapid transition from defence to attack, getting the ball into the feet of the 'magicians' up the front.
The third tactical nuance is Messi's evolution as a right-sided attacker. The Argentinian inevitably drags defenders to him wherever he is on the pitch and Barcelona tends to stack its right flank, with Messi dropping into the midfield to create weight of numbers, before rapidly switching to Neymar on the left.
The straightening up of the attack, the intensity of its high press and the flexibility of Messi to maraud the right flank and commit players to out of their natural positions, gives Barcelona the tactical flexibility to complement its possession philosophy and solve most of the tactical problems presented to it.
When Atletico Madrid man-marked Gerard Pique, Javier Mascherano and Sergio Busquets in its recent 2-1 loss to the Blaugrana - thereby cutting off the channels to Rakitic - Barcelona used its wide defenders to launch attacks from deep-lying positions.
When teams try to sit back and 'park the bus' in the way Gary Neville's Valencia did during the Copa Del Rey semi-final first leg, Barcelona sets up camp in the opposing third, with the likes of Pique and Mascherano afforded extra space to dictate the play and create over-lapping numbers in wave after wave of attack.
The jury is out on how Arsenal should solve attempt to solve the riddle that has confounded the last 32 teams that have tried to best Enrique's unit, suffice to say Enrique has brought far more tactically than just uttering the word 'abracadabra'.
