La Pelota: Back to Basics
Much our shortcomings that season were due to my disdain for the 4–4–2. To put it simply: I just didn’t believe in it, and therefore, neither did the players. I noticed that we worked too hard, specifically in the midfield, when defending and in possession. There was a lack of coverage and we struggled to move the ball with two flat central midfielders and two strikers seemingly miles away. If the two strikers dropped back to defend, we had no one up top to provide an outlet. Our fullbacks feared joining the attack with overlaps and crosses because of the gaps they’d leave behind, there was very little movement from our wingers and even less dribbling down the flanks, and we continued to struggle with balls in behind. The 4–4–2 provided us with structural integrity and nothing else. It was stale and predictable—perfectly ordinary.
Early on in the season, Holiday fractured his tibia after a rough landing when going for a header. This left us with only Boggess as an option. I took this as an opportunity to escape the boring 4–4–2 and try something new, except the boys were not quite ready for change. We switched to a versatile 4–3–3 (usually with a 5 and two 8’s or two 5’s and a 10) in the hopes of improving ball circulation in the center of the pitch. It was a partial success in terms of keeping the ball and moving it in the midfield, but a failure at getting the ball forward. With Boggess on his lonesome and our ineffective wingers, our midfielders ended up working more than ever since our wide players and 10 rarely tracked back. We were shredded to pieces more than ever. Apart from the pernicious flaws that already existed, we continued to add new ones.
It wasn’t until that night we hosted Asheboro FC that we hit rock bottom. At this point of the season the term Antifútbol served as a defense mechanism, a joke Eddie and I told ourselves in moments of horror, frustration, and just pure comedy. We lost 8–0 that night, most of their chances coming from our own mistakes on the ball, losing it in our own half due to our technical and tactical impotence. That night Antifútbol was a euphemism thinly veiling the word help.
After watching the game film, Eddie and I noticed that ninety percent of our turnovers came from a bad touch or an inaccurate pass. We lost possession 34 times because of a poor first touch and 26 times for passing to the wrong colored shirt. We also lost every individual duel in both attack and defense, whether through muscle or ability. We learned that no matter what system we tried, it would not work. Nothing would work with low-skilled, incompetent players.
This left us with a conundrum. Do we abandon the 4–3–3 despite improvements in the midfield and regress to the 4–4–2? Or do we stick it out and build from the weary foundation we have already laid? In the end, I decided to stay with the 4–3–3. I’d rather lose by playing the best football we can rather than sacrificing our play for an outcome. I had faith in the process.
That process was to take things back to the basics. In every training session Eddie and I had the boys work on rudimentary things like dribbling around a cone and passing back and forth to a partner over and over and over. We worked a lot on 1v1s and had them do push ups, sit ups, planks and squats whenever they made a mistake. It was Baby Fútbol blended with bootcamp, with our philosophy being: you either become good or you become strong.
First we became strong, and we could notice the difference right away in both muscle and technical ability. Our technique improved drastically, but we depended far more on our strength than our technique at this point. We had become a team of gladiators rather than footballers, and we turned every match into a slugfest. It was Antifútbol at its finest. What I had imagined as our way out further trapped us in. We remained condemned to a style of play I was so desperate to escape.
Until next time,
For love and glory.
