THOMAS MÜLLER (2010, 2014)

Everything changed in 2009, when Louis van Gaal took over at Bayern Munich and brought possession football to the Bundesliga. The Bavarians reached their first Champions League final since 2001. Ballack got injured, missed the World Cup, and never turned out for Germany again. The Nationalmannschaft played a new kind of game, with a new playmaker, a skinny kid called Mesut Özil.

And an even skinnier kid came out of nowhere—the third German division, to be precise—to catch half of Europe and Germany’s opponents in South Africa on the blind side. Twelve months after Thomas Müller had been an unused sub in a 1-1 match between the Bayern Munich B team and Kickers Offenbach, he picked up the Golden Boot and the Best Young Player award for his five goals at the World Cup.

There are more elegant players in Joachim Löw’s squad (Özil), faster ones (Mario Götze), more thrilling ones (Marco Reus), but Müller is special, incomparable. He doesn’t look like a footballer to begin with. The roving forward often seems to scuffle over the pitch with one sock half rolled down and a white undershirt limply hanging out the back of his shorts. And his body looks ill-suited to the job. “I’ve tried, but muscles don’t grow,” he’s said about his spindly legs. The son of a BMW engineer, he has made the most of his physical attributes and relative lack of power. “There are others who are better in the air, better with their right and with their left,” he told Süddeutsche Zeitung. “My legs were never a problem. They’ve helped me, even playing the youth team. If you can’t just count on your physical attributes, you have to switch on your brain and make certain runs to evade direct tackles.”

Müller has memorably described himself as a “Raumdeuter,” an interpreter of space. It’s an apt label for a player who eludes categories as easily as slow-thinking opposition defenders. Müller sounds out areas that few care to explore, for example the gap between the back four and the goal line when there’s a throw-in. To everybody else, it’s a barren land, not worth furrowing. Most of his teammates at the club and international levels are better with the ball—some are better without it too. Müller finds room for his legs when there isn’t any and ways toward the goal that are hidden to everyone else.

Germany have always had small, technical players. In fact, they’ve always had many more than the “Panzer” stereotype alleged. But Müller wouldn’t have thrived in previous Nationalmannschaft editions. Discovering space in unchartered territory—his expertise, his raison d’être—simply wasn’t much of a concern before 2010.

In the dark age of the noughts decade, Germany didn’t worry about finding space for their game against big-name opposition, their main aim was to deny space to the other side. Without the ball, they often had 50 meters of green ahead of them. Only when they started monopolizing possession did getting behind deeper defenses become a problem that cried out for a specialist. (Müller, in fairness, is not bad in counterattacks either).

Löw’s Germany tend to have the ball and plenty of chances. Lack of leadership is still an easy hook to hang defeats on (see the 2-1 loss to Italy in Euro 2012), but the new buzzword has become “efficiency.” It’s what Germany used to excel at—in the view of others—and what they fear is slightly missing in this ensemble of highly gifted technicians. “All the possession counts for little if you don’t have efficiency up front,” warned Germany’s sporting director Oliver Bierhoff a month before the tournament.

This is where Müller should come in. His former youth coach Hermann Gerland once said that he could “play badly for 90 minutes but still score a goal.” He’s not just a tourist who enjoys jaunty trips to foreign spheres; he arrives like a thief in the night, bent on plundering (a goal or two). In Brazil, much will depend on him. Thomas Müller could well decide what the definitive chapter on Löw’s team will read like a generation or two from now.

Michael Bradley’s success is built on the mastery of his emotions

by Bobby Warshaw

Getty Images

June 12, 2015 2:17 PM

How often do you make the decision you actually want to make? How many times do you just do what you think should actually be done to be the person you want to be, rather than letting fear or pride or ambition cloud your judgment? It’s not easy, is it?

Michael Bradley is clearly the best player on the U.S. men’s national team. He just beasted two of the best teams in the world. He’s a clean passer, hard working and intelligent. I think, though, his most defining attribute, the one that helps him the most, is one that you can’t measure: his emotional stability on the field.

There’s a lot of ways to mess up in soccer. But too often we do it because of our own emotions and motivations.

When I watch guys play, including myself and my teammates, I can usually apply an emotion to every action. When a center back plays a long ball to the empty channel, he lost his nerve; when a center mid plays a diagonal pass across the field, he got flustered; when a player forces a difficult ball forward, he got anxious. My personal pet peeve is when a guy tries a complicated play to look good, rather than playing the simple pass.

Players have a lot of thoughts racing through their minds. We want to make a great play to stick out. We want to avoid a bad play to keep our place in the team. We want to make a great play to make up for a bad play. We want to avoid a terrible play to keep from the public embarrassment. We want to shine to get recognized by others.

You can’t blame the players. We train so hard to be intelligent, and then the game happens. It’s flying a million miles an hour and the fans are screaming and teammates are yelling and coaches are making hand gestures. When your heart rate’s up and your blood’s flowing and your mind’s racing, logic isn’t ruling. And so a lot of intelligent players that lose the plot.

It’s often not necessarily even the wrong play that gets made, but it’s not usually the best one. The spurt of emotion pushes them towards an action. It blinds them to the logical decision.

But when I watch Michael Bradley, I can never sense a raw emotion. Yes, sometimes raw emotion is good. It can certainly create moments of magic. But more often than not it clouds your judgement, especially in a center mid that controls the game. Michael is always stable, logical.

Some people call it his soccer brain. It’s true, Bradley has a wonderful soccer brain. He’s a soccer junky. But like anything, there’s two parts: theory and practice. There’s a lot of people that can outline the X’s and O’s and proper shifts and movements and use all the jargon. The difficult part is executing the thoughts when there’s a storm around you.

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Michael doesn’t seem to let those emotions overcome him. He always does what his logical mind would want him to do. He never lets emotion push him in the wrong direction. When he goes for a chipped pass, I don’t sense it stems from vanity. When he plays a long ball, I don’t get the feeling it’s selfish. When he needs to make short passes in tough situations, he doesn’t let fear stop him. He can let his intelligence take control.

He plays the game in the right frame of mind. And as a result, he analyzes the game the way it should be seen. He doesn’t get in his own way.

Soccer is a tough game in itself, but the mind can often over-complicate things. Players are human, and players get nervous and scared and ambitious like everyone else. The emotions set our mind running in different directions and our body follows suit.

There’s a lot of players that can pass and run. It takes something else to be special. What sets Michael apart is that he doesn’t let the extraneous emotions affect him. Selfishness and fear don’t creep in.

I can’t imagine a life where I have control over my emotions. But I bet it’d be pretty nice.

Despite Loss to Belgium in Round of 16, USA Made Positive Impact in Brazil

By Janusz Michallik, 

Jul 2, 2014

When I evaluate soccer teams and players, I often remind myself of the four pillars in the game: technical, tactical, physical and psychological.

American soccer fans are likely familiar with the last two, as the U.S. men's national team has both in abundance. Spirit, work ethic and a back-to-the-wall mentality were all there against Belgium. Always have been and always will be. In fact, when I spoke to Belgian soccer expert John Chapman, he said the feeling in the Belgian camp was that they did not worry so much about the individuals on the U.S. team as much as the never-say-die attitude.

Truthfully, Belgium never expected to play the U.S. team and would have been more comfortable playing as an underdog against, say, Germany or Portugal as they had probably anticipated. The role that, you know, U.S. soccer has played forever.

Don’t forget that the Red Devils are very young and inexperienced and although better on paper, had little experience playing in World Cups as of late.

Knowing all of this ahead of this game, as against Germany, I said that there is no logical reason why Belgium should dominate Team USA over 90 minutes.

Yet, before you knew it, Belgium could have scored in, what, 30 seconds? Psychology plays a big part, and the tone was set for almost the rest of the match. The truth is that, of course, Belgium did dominate the U.S. and Tim Howard kept his team in the game.

Rooting for Team USA, I also had the audacity to think quietly in my head that I wished both Germany and Belgium would score already after early domination so we would start playing. Reverse psychology, I guess, but you get the drift.

Team USA has the talent and know-how, but hasn't figured out how to manage it. Discipline is usually a strength for the U.S., but it seems that the team becomes uncomfortable on big occasions. That has been a theme for a couple of World Cups now as the team starts slow and is often handcuffed by what I can only assume is fear or a message from managers to be pragmatic.

This goes against the American mentality, in my opinion, and we've see what the team is capable of when forced to attack.

The U.S. did get more adventurous quickly, but to try and describe the Belgium game tactically would be a chore because both sides lacked tactics. Doug McIntyre from ESPN The Magazine best summed up USA's approach:

That trend continued for the rest of the game. To break down where the U.S. had problems defensively would be tedious, as it seemed like it was everywhere. It was emergency defending, and even though some players looked good in putting out fires, it was just that.

Because of the hectic, wide-open aspect of the game, USA fought and worried Belgium more than the Red Devils would like to admit. Technically, Belgium was better and had a much higher understanding of movement with and without the ball—but they were just as disorganized and naive as the U.S. team on many occasions.

The real difference is often merely technical: Confidence on the ball, lack of possession because of careless passing in crucial moments and touches to keep a movement going. Things that players can easily improve in a high-pressure environment.

Speaking to FIFA.com after the Belgium game, coach Jurgen Klinsmann seemed to acknowledge as much, saying:

We are still in the process of learning to take our game to the opponent. No matter what their name is, we cannot just wait too long to start our game.

I think there is a little bit too much respect when it comes to the big stage—why not play them eye-to-eye? I don't know how many years that takes to change but it's something we have to go through. The players have got to realise they have to take it to the opponent.

The U.S. came close in the end, and although I was not all that sure that they could, I was not surprised that they almost pulled it off. Give this USA team a finger and they'll take your arm.

All the team missing is the couple of players that could be the X-factor, like a Romelu Lukaku and many other names that quickly come to mind. Frankly, the U.S. may be one of the very few teams in this World Cup that lacked such a player. Howard has proven that he belongs in that category, of course, but Klinsmann's team needs not just one, but a few difference makers to achieve success at the other end.

Howver, the performances of young players like DeAndre Yedlin, John Brooks and Julian Green—who scored with his first World Cup touch—suggested that more X-factors are on the way.

It's good that those players had their chance to show what they can do, however short it was for some of them. After all, look at the impact they made. From now on, though, Klinsmann must find ways to work them into the conversation for the starting XI. For the team to move forward, these young, exciting players should become the focal point as soon as possible.

When Americans look back on this World Cup, we will be proud. No regrets given the opposition, and maybe the team still overachieved. The team once again galvanized the nation and parts of the world.

That, again, is progress for those that did not believe it was possible.

Klinsmann again has proven that he is a good leader, and his personality suits this team well. He had many doubters leading into this World Cup and he answered with results when they mattered.

Most of the time.

I still have a feeling that he often flies by the seat of his pants when making tactical or personnel decisions, but the team responded well under him. I'm sure fans will continue to wonder how much better strikers Chris Wondolowski and Aron Johannsson were than the ones left out, but it is clear that in the end Klinsmann had little trust in both.

At least we can appreciate the fact that Green was baptized in the right way. His experience in Brazil will pay dividends in the future.unham/Associated Press

The U.S. national team has been to the round of 16 on a number of occasions now and frankly, it's uncertain if they can get past it. They reached the quarterfinals in 2002 before falling to Germany, but have failed to advance back to that stage or further since. There is a call for progress and that is understandable.

The U.S. fought its way to a 0-0 result after 90 minutes, but just as it felt it would only take one chance for them to break the deadlock, the same could also be said for Belgium.

USA had that chance, but failed to take advantage of it.

Wondolowski, a natural poacher in front of goal, saw his chance sail over the crossbar in the final minutes of stoppage time. Three minutes into extra time, Kevin De Bruyne finally beat Howard, before Lukaku fired in what ended up being the game-winning goal. With a stroke of luck and a better touch, it could have been a different story and the U.S. would be on its way to a quarterfinal meeting with Lionel Messi's Argentina.

As I think back to the four pillars of this wonderful game, I can’t help but feel that talent should be mentioned separately. U.S. soccer has good balance in all the key categories, but is still a little short when it comes to pure skill.

So, Klinsmann will take the plaudits that the team has earned, the recognition from the world's media, the positive momentum that was created in Brazil and move on while building on the pillars of the game. Perhaps next time it will be someone like Green or Yedlin who tweets out a message like the one above from Belgium captain Vincent Kompany:

"Two words..Thibaut Courtois #Respect #BelUSA."

It's possible for U.S. soccer to raise the bar and its expectations, but more work still needs to be done. Regardless, the team's performance in Brazil signified progress.

Barcelona's Secret to Soccer Success

 By Simon Kuper

We all see that Barcelona are brilliant. The only problem is understanding just how they do it. That’s where my friend Albert Capellas comes in. Whenever he and I run into each other somewhere in Europe, we talk about Barça. Not many people know the subject better. Capellas is now assistant manager at Vitesse Arnhem in Holland, but before that he was coordinator of Barcelona’s great youth academy, the Masia. He helped bring a boy named Sergio Busquets from a rough local neighbourhood to Barça. He trained Andres Iniesta and Victor Valdes in their youth teams. In all, Capellas worked nine years for his hometown club.

During our last conversation, over espressos in an Arnhem hotel, I had several “Aha” moments. I have watched Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona umpteen times, but only now am I finally beginningto see. Guardiola’s Barcelona are great not merely because they have great players. They also have great tactics – different not just from any other team today, but also different from Barcelona teams pre-Guardiola. Barça are now so drilled on the field that in some ways they are more like an American gridiron football team than a soccer one.

Before getting into the detail of their game, it’s crucial to understand just how much of it comes from Guardiola. When a Barcelona vice president mused to me four years ago that she’d like to see the then 37-year-old Pep be made head coach, I never imagined it would happen. Guardiola was practically a novice. The only side he had ever coached was Barça’s second team. However, people in the club who had worked with him – men like the club’s then president Joan Laporta, and the then director of football Txiki Beguiristain  - had already clocked him as special.  Not only did Guardiola know Barcelona’s house style inside out. He also knew how it could be improved.

Guardiola once compared Barcelona’s style to a cathedral. Johan Cruijff, he said, as Barça’s supreme player in the 1970s and later as coach, had built the cathedral. The task of those who came afterwards was to renovate and update it. Guardiola is always looking for updates. If a random person in the street says something interesting about the game, Guardiola listens. He thinks about football all the time. He took ideas from another Dutch Barcelona manager, Louis van Gaal, but also from his years playing for Brescia and Roma in Italy, the home of defence. Yet because Guardiola has little desire to explain his ideas to the media, you end up watching Barça without a codebook.

Cruijff was perhaps the most original thinker in football’s history, but most of his thinking was about attack. He liked to say that he didn’t mind conceding three goals, as long as Barça scored five. Well, Guardiola also wanted to score five, but he minded conceding even one. If Barcelona is a cathedral, Guardiola has added the buttresses. In Barça’s first 28 league games this season, they have let in only 22 goals. Here are some of “Pep”’s innovations, or the secrets of FC Barcelona:

1.  Pressure on the ball
Before Barcelona played Manchester United in the Champions League final at Wembley last May, Alex Ferguson said that the way Barça pressured their opponents to win the ball back was “breathtaking”. That, he said, was Guardiola’s innovation. Ferguson admitted that United hadn’t known how to cope with it in the Champions League final in Rome in 2009. He thought it would be different at Wembley. It wasn’t.
Barcelona start pressing (hunting for the ball) the instant they lose possession. That is the perfect time to press because the opposing player who has just won the ball is vulnerable. He has had to take his eyes off the game to make his tackle or interception, and he has expended energy. That means he is unsighted, and probably tired. He usually needs two or three seconds to regain his vision of the field. So Barcelona try to dispossess him before he can give the ball to a better-placed teammate.
Furthermore, if the guy won the ball back in his own defence, and Barcelona can instantly win it back again, then the way to goal is often clear. This is where Lionel Messi’s genius for tackling comes in. The little man has such quick reflexes that he sometimes wins a tackle a split-second after losing one.
The Barcelona player who lost the ball leads the hunt to regain it. But he never hunts alone. His teammates near the ball join him. If only one or two Barça players are pressing, it’s too easy for the opponent to pass around them.

2. The “five-second rule”If Barça haven’t won the ball back within five seconds of losing it, they then retreat and build a compact ten-man wall. The distance between the front man in the wall (typically Messi) and their last defender (say, Carles Puyol) is only 25 to 30 metres. It’s hard for any opponent to pass their way through such a small space. The Rome final was a perfect demonstration of Barcelona’s wall: whenever United won the ball and kept it, they faced eleven precisely positioned opponents, who stood there and said, in effect: “Try and get through this.”
It’s easy for Barcelona to be compact, both when pressing and when drawing up their wall, because their players spend most of the game very near each other. Xavi and Iniesta in particular seldom stray far from the ball. Cruijff recently told the former England manager Steve McClaren, now with FC Twente in Holland: "Do you know how Barcelona win the ball back so quickly? It's because they don't have to run back more than 10 metres as they never pass the ball more than 10 metres."

3. More rules of pressingOnce Barcelona have built their compact wall, they wait for the right moment to start pressing again. They don’t choose the moment on instinct. Rather, there are very precise prompts that tell them when to press. One is if an opponent controls the ball badly. If the ball bounces off his foot, he will need to look downwards to locate it, and at that moment he loses his overview of the pitch. That’s when the nearest Barcelona players start hounding him.
There’s another set prompt for Barça to press: when the opposing player on the ball turns back towards his own goal. When he does that, he narrows his options: he can no longer pass forward, unless Barcelona give him time to turn around again. Barcelona don’t give him time. Their players instantly hound the man, forcing him to pass back, and so they gain territory.

4. The “3-1 rule”If an opposing player gets the ball anywhere near Barcelona’s penalty area, then Barça go Italian. They apply what they call the “3-1 rule”: one of Barcelona’s four defenders will advance to tackle the man with the ball, and the other three defenders will assemble in a ring about two or three metres behind the tackler. That provides a double layer of protection. Guardiola picked this rule up in Italy. It’s such a simple yet effective idea that you wonder why all top teams don’t use it.

5. No surpriseWhen Barcelona win the ball, they do something unusual. Most leading teams treat the moment the ball changes hands – “turnover”, as it’s called in basketball – as decisive. At that moment, the opponents are usually out of position, and so if you can counterattack quickly, you have an excellent chance of scoring. Teams like Manchester United and Arsenal often try to score in the first three seconds after winning possession. So their player who wins the ball often tries to hit an instant splitting pass. Holland – Barcelona’s historic role models – do this too.
But when a Barcelona player wins the ball, he doesn’t try for a splitting pass. The club’s attitude is: he has won the ball, that’s a wonderful achievement, and he doesn’t need to do anything else special. All he should do is slot the ball simply to the nearest teammate. Barcelona’s logic is that in winning the ball, the guy has typically forfeited his vision of the field. So he is the worst-placed player to hit a telling ball.
This means that Barcelona don’t rely on the element of surprise. They take a few moments to get into formation, and then pretty much tell their opponents, “OK, here we come.” The opposition knows exactly what Barça are going to do. The difficulty is stopping it.
The only exception to this rule is if the Barça player wins the ball near the opposition’s penalty area. Then he goes straight for goal.

6. Possession is nine-tenths of the game
Keeping the ball has been Barcelona’s key tactic since Cruijff’s day. Most teams don’t worry about possession. They know you can have oodles of possession and lose. But Barcelona aim to have 65 or 70 per cent of possession in a game. Last season in Spain, they averaged more than 72 per cent; so far this year, they are at about 70 per cent.
The logic of possession is twofold. Firstly, while you have the ball, the other team can’t score. A team like Barcelona, short on good tacklers, needs to defend by keeping possession. As Guardiola has remarked, they are a “horrible” team without the ball.
Secondly, if Barça have the ball, the other team has to chase it, and that is exhausting. When the opponents win it back, they are often so tired that they surrender it again immediately. Possession gets Barcelona into a virtuous cycle.
Barça are so fanatical about possession that a defender like Gerald Pique will weave the most intricate passes inside his own penalty area rather than boot the ball away. In almost all other teams, the keeper at least is free to boot. In the England side, for instance, it’s typically Joe Hart who gives the ball away with a blind punt. This is a weakness of England’s game, but the English attitude seems to be that there is nothing to be done about it: keepers can’t pass. Barcelona think differently.
Jose Mourinho, Real Madrid’s coach and Barcelona’s nemesis, has tried to exploit their devotion to passing. In the Bernabeu in December, Madrid’s forwards chased down Valdes from the game’s first kickoff, knowing he wouldn’t boot clear. The keeper miscued a pass, and Karim Benzema scored after 23 seconds. Yet Valdes kept passing, and Barcelona won 1-3. The trademark of Barcelona-raised goalkeepers – one shared only by Ajax-raised goalkeepers, like Edwin van der Sar – is that they can all play football like outfield players.

7. The “one-second rule”No other football team plays the Barcelona way. That’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness. It makes it very hard for Barça to integrate outsiders into the team, because the outsiders struggle to learn the system. Barcelona had a policy of buying only “Top Ten” players – men who arguably rank among the ten best footballers on earth – yet many of them have failed in the Nou Camp. Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic did, while even David Villa, who knew Barcelona’s game from playing it with Spain, ended up on the bench before breaking his leg.
Joan Oliver, Barcelona’s previous chief executive, explained the risk of transfers by what he called the “one-second rule”. The success of a move on the pitch is decided in less than a second. If a player needs a few extra fractions of a second to work out where his teammate is going, because he doesn’t know the other guy’s game well, the move will usually break down. A new player can therefore lose you a match in under a second.  
Pedro isn’t a great footballer, but because he was raised in the Masia he can play Barcelona’s game better than stars from outside. The boys in the Masia spend much of their childhood playing passing games, especially Cruijff’s favorite, six against three. Football, Cruijff once said, is choreography.
Nobody else thinks like that. That’s why most of the Barcelona side is homegrown. It’s more a necessity than a choice. Still, most of the time it works pretty well.

March 22, 2012 - Simon Kuper

http://www.miostadium.com/opinions/simon-kuper/barcelonas-secret-soccer-success