Johan Cruyff built his footballing philosophy on playing attractive, fluid football – a style which remains at the core of all who he touched within the game.<\/p>\n
Total Football did not end with Cruyff\u2019s passing, with his most passionate disciple striving to bring such a thinking to the Premier League.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the most influential person in football history,\u201d Pep Guardiola eulogised of Cruyff in an interview with the Guardian last year. \u201cHe changed not one club. He changed two clubs \u2013 as a player and a coach. It\u2019s impossible to find another guy like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s approach to the beautiful game is modelled on Cruyff\u2019s thinking, and we are starting to see the most fundamental strategy of Cruyff\u2019s thinking come to fruition at Manchester City, with Kevin De Bruyne the centrepiece of Guardiola\u2019s gameplan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe discussed space the whole time.\u201d Barry Hulshoff of the 1970s Ajax side said of his time playing alongside Cruyff. \u201cIt was all about making space and coming into space.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finding space, that is bread and butter of Cruyff\u2019s approach. He set his teams up in a way that would create space for the right players at the right time. It was as simple as that, it just took the majority of English clubs a long time to catch up.<\/p>\n
There has been a real burgeoning shift in England away from the traditional 4-4-2. Rarely will you find a Premier League side who deploy a flat system, with traditional wingers.<\/p>\n
The No 10 position, trequartista, enganche, whatever you want to call it, was born out of this mass tactical evolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cArsenal have done very well against the 4-4-2,\u201d said Sir Alex Ferguson. \u201cHenry doesn\u2019t play through the middle, he goes into space, and Bergkamp drops off. Henry needs space to play. If you give it to him he destroys you, but if you deny him space you\u2019ve got a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bergkamp\u2019s ability to drop off and create space for Henry to run into blew teams away on occasion. Teams didn\u2019t know how to defend against such an approach, and became the Gunners\u2019 raison d\u2019\u00eatre for their success in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, it is somewhat incongruous to see teams without some form of No 10. Therefore, coaches have to be more creative to find space for their attacking players. That is where Guardiola, with Cruyff\u2019s vision firmly in his mind, comes in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
City began the season in somewhat sluggish manner, sneaking over the line against Brighton on the opening day, before being held at home by Everton.<\/p>\n
In both of those games, it seemed that Guardiola was unsure about how to get the most out of the myriad of creative options available to him. Fast forward a month and he seems to have cracked it.<\/p>\n
Against Brighton especially, De Bruyne popped up in congested central areas all too often, virtually alongside David Silva. Silva\u2019s game can function in such environments, with his fleet-footed skills not needing space in which to operate.<\/p>\n
De Bruyne is different. He needs space to open his legs, and thread those intricate, but more ranging passes that can split a defence in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
Against Liverpool it clicked. A look at the average position data shows De Bruyne found much more space in which to operate. Silva dropped deeper, Gabriel Jesus operated further forward, and De Bruyne shone, garnering his first two assists of the season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then, against a beleaguered Watford, De Bruyne drifted into an average position further wide, and found that pocket of space in between the full-back and midfield which he loves to operate in.<\/p>\n
Such an approach proved very successful for Eden Hazard at Chelsea last season. When the Belgium international could find that space in front of the full-back, untracked by a midfield marker, the result was often devastating.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter whether De Bruyne is hugging the touchline, or operating more centrally, Guardiola wants his midfield dynamo working in space, wherever that may be.<\/p>\n
And with so many players capable of excelling in the nooks and crannies, skipping past markers at will, De Bruyne could be that undetectable weapon at the forefront of a City title tilt.<\/p>\n
Cruyff would approve.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Man City style based on Cruyff’s thinking Johan Cruyff built his footballing philosophy on playing attractive, fluid football – a style which remains at the core of all who he touched within the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[643],"tags":[272,131,243,76],"class_list":["post-15485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport","tag-featurehome","tag-man-city","tag-pete-hall","tag-premier-league"],"yoast_head":"\n