How to play like Barcelona or Swansea: Tika-Taka Football.

Barca play brilliant football. I can't EVER remember seeing a team play better football in my life (though in the days of Football Italia on C4, when AC Milan were free to view, and Van Basten, who I still think is the best striker I've even seen - I rem he scored a diving header from the edge of the box, the ball about waist high and it ended in the top corner - Gulliet, Reykard, Baresi etc were also magic to watch. But the football was not quite as 'pure'. Barca pass and move the way you dreamed about when you were a kid. And in Messi, the best player I've ever had the pleasure to watch.

But teams are learning how to play them, and win. Inter, Chelsea, Real - they all beat Barca the same way, in big matches. They sit back, are strong and defend deep, and score fast on the break or at set pieces.  Real eased to the title this season.
It's not pretty watching those teams play Barca in this way -- but at the same time, it always strikes me as unusual that Barca have NO other way to play, no plan B. They keep coming in waves, side to side, looking for the gap. And if Messi is off form, IMO it can be a tipping factor.
With how Real did this season, will be interesting to see what Barca do over the summer, whether they'll look to change/tinker with the style of play in any way.

Also, a style of play will only get you so far. You need the very best players to be successful (win things) playing this way. Because for me, other areas of Barca's game, like strength, power, are lower priority - so you have to be bloody sure you're so good at that passing game that it mitigates/outweighs those areas you're weaker in.

It's a bit of a leap to move onto Swansea, and LFC - but here goes. Rogers can introduce a new style of play with a focus on pass and move (Barca type stuff). But unlike at Swansea, teams will come to Anfield and sit back and say 'go on, have a go, break us down', whereas last season teams would have gone to Swansea and had more of a go, had an expectation to get a result, attacked more, giving Rogers boys more room to play their game. Also, to win regularly/consistently, we'd need to have quality players to play this sytle 'well enough' to make it worth our while. Do we have them now? Possibly. Can they adapt? Maybe. Some you can see would be OK, others not so easy to see it.

Either way, still think it's the best way to play football. If we can somehow combine the pass and move style with a defensive strength and set piece power, we should be grand

To embrace this style of play you really have to rethink what defense is. It's not just the classical way of defending, physically strong players, good tacklers etc. There's other ways, and one of them is like Cruijff said: If we have the ball they can't score. Ofcourse, when you do loose the ball sometimes the defense might look really shakey because you have many players in front of the ball and there's alot of space. But it's important to not focus on those individual moments, but instead look at how much you concede in general, look at how effective it is.

Rodgers took a far more conservative possession approach at Swansea than Barcelona has, why that was and if it will be different at our club remains to be seen. It'll be interesting to see where our defensive line will be. I'm inclined to think that including the keeper into the passing game is his thing, which would mean his defensive line will remain low, and alot of the passing and staying in possession will be done by the defenders, while looking for combinations and openings for a fast breakthrough, often through the flanks.

Sorry to resurrect old threads but given the demise this season of Barca and now the Spanish national team 'tika taka' is being declared dead. So do we actually play it. Will we see a change in style or if the right players are involved can it still be successful?

Sorry to resurrect old threads but given the demise this season of Barca and now the Spanish national team 'tika taka' is being declared dead. So do we actually play it. Will we see a change in style or if the right players are involved can it still be successful?

I perceived that the first few months of Rodgers' Liverpool saw tiki taka being implemented. I think it's a great style of football and basis to start playing the more progressive, attacking brand we've seen in the past year or so. Now it's much more similar to the gegenpressen style of play that is exhibited by Dortmund and, last year, Bayern Munich. I believe Rodgers cottoned on to this sea change in European football and with the likes of Sturridge and Coutinho signing for us back in January 2013, he was able to replicate something similar with greater success. However I don't believe he could have achieved it without cultivating it from the tiki taka basis he laid down when he first came in.

This is worth a read but personally I think the teams that played the best tiki-taka just got too old. All styles need to involve as opposition managers figure out how to deal with them.

http://whitehouseaddress.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/spains-final-act-tiki-takas-end.html