How Pep changed defending

Following Manchester City’s signing of John Stones, Adam Bate takes an in-depth look at how Pep Guardiola has changed the role of the modern-day centre-back.

There’s an accepted wisdom about what John Stones needs to do in order to improve. Speaking ahead of last summer’s European Under-21 Championships, England coach Gareth Southgate identified a “desire to keep the ball out of the net” as being crucial. Sam Allardyce has been rather more blunt. “I’d teach him how to defend,” he said of Stones in May.

But what is defending now? For some, Pep Guardiola has changed the notion of what it is to be a defender. Others might insist that clean sheets are the measure that matters but football is ultimately about winning matches and Guardiola has done more of that than most. His career win percentage of 73.5 per cent is unrivalled at the elite level of the game.

Guardiola is rarely styled as a pragmatist, but he’s found a way that works for him. Dogged defending is one way of keeping a clean sheet but even clean sheets are no more than a means to an end. The Catalan coach has skipped to the final page of the coaching manual by aiming for it all. For him, it’s about defending and attacking as a unit.

It was during his time in Mexico playing under mentor Juan Manuel Lillo that these ideas crystallised. Like Lillo, Guardiola does not see defence and attack as separate entities. In such a system, the role of the centre-back naturally become very different. The job is to spark attacks for the team as well as stop them.

Of course, there’s still a need to head and tackle. But Guardiola’s Barcelona were able to circumvent potential problems despite being targeted as the shortest side in Europe. A combination of zonal marking and aggressive pressing combatted it. In the 2010/11 season, for example, Gerard Pique blocked more crosses than any centre-back in La Liga.

Guardiola has had the best defensive record in every league campaign of his career at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. Tellingly, the most goals he’s ever conceded came in the first of those seven seasons and the fewest came in his last one with Bayern. Far from being found out, this is a coach who is refining his approach and getting better. This way works.

While Jose Mourinho said recently that he prefers specialists, Guardiola’s response was to tell his players that he’d play with 11 midfielders if he could. The 45-year-old coach might still stand alone as a unique figure, but the influence of his approach can be identified in the numbers. When it comes to defenders, the game is going his way.

In the 2009/10 Premier League season, John Terry and Nemanja Vidic were the only two centre-backs in the country to attempt an average of more than 50 passes per game. When it came to short passes, Terry and his Chelsea defensive partner Ricardo Carvalho were the only players to make 40 accurate short passes per 90 minutes.

Even just six years on, that picture has changed. There’s been a 500 per cent increase in the number of Premier League defenders in the 50-passes-per-game club. As for those making 40 accurate short passes per 90 minutes, it’s no longer one club playing this way but seven sides who have defenders registering such figures. It’s a significant difference.

Is it necessarily new? Not entirely, of course. Bobby Moore made 66 accurate passes from centre-back (albeit over 120 minutes) as long ago as the 1966 World Cup final. But this is no longer the preserve of world-class defenders in one-off games. Clubs such as Swansea have been inspired to build an entire philosophy on Barcelona’s obsession with possession.

Guardiola’s influence on that style of play is obvious. When a team wins the 2011 …

continue reading in source www.skysports.com