Examining Mourinho and Reimagining Fluidity
What is fluidity?
Is it a string of seamless passing and positional interchanges or play? Or in contrast, a seamless transition along the infinite path of the football phases, fulfilling our hunger of aesthetics? Or instead, this isn’t only a problem of aesthetics, and more to a miniscule of the complexity of human nature masquerading as a game?
Instead of looking to the popular proponent of positional play such as Pep Guardiola, Erik ten Hag, or basically every person mostly influenced by the Dutch idea of space dominance in football and Spanish technical nous on playing in the small space, we would see the example on the last person you would heard alongside the word “positional play,” Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho, grew up during the twilight Salazar’s era, and in a family affected by Salazar’s downfall. The chain of events is more than likely to shape Mourinho’s view of football — and life, as Peter Conrad analyzed this in 2006:
After the revolution, the cannery workers expropriated the business; Setubal, the coastal town where Mourinho was born, acquired a communist mayor, and his parents — stigmatised as bourgeois — had to move out of their big house. This sudden, humiliating demotion left Mourinho with unregenerately right-wing views.
We would also see Mourinho talking about his usual stuff during the 2016 presidential election, where he describes his favorite candidate, the right-wing Rebelo de Souza as a leader with “winning qualities” and “charisma:”
I have a clear understanding that we need a winner, but not only a winner. We need charisma, and uniting these winning qualities and charisma, I think that’s what Portugal needs right now.
Mourinho’s biggest fairytale is often told in the narrative of “defensive excellence and counter-attacks,” corresponding with his desire to win by any means. In the 2010 semi-final against Barcelona, Mourinho opts to kill Barcelona’s attack by closing the water tap — congesting Messi’s space and closing down their midfielders, and then countering by using the trio of Eto’o, Milito, and Sneijder. Or, putting the icing on the cake — the 2014/15 Premier League title — by playing Kurt Zouma as the defensive midfielder.
Now yes, yes. Mourinho played to win. But the misunderstanding of Mourinho’s belief is that he does this by prioritizing counter-attacks, low defensive block and cynical play. It is rather that Mourinho tries to embrace the complexity of the game by minimizing it to the extent that his team could implement it in various situations.
Mourinho is a proponent of tactical periodization, a methodology that embraces the complexity of the game and trying to incorporate tangible and intangible things related to it on training, so that it could be replicated on the match. An easy way to understand this is that tactical periodization tries to reduce the complexity of the game into bite-size. Therefore, Mourinho aims to dominate the complex nature of the game.
These are achieved mainly by using small-sided games, as Mourinho explained in this article (Oliveira et al., 2006)
The beauty of this type of training [drill-based tasks] it is the possibility to develop at the same time many things. It is hard to define the goal of this task [a specific SSCGs that Mourinho applied] because he is very rich.
Therefore, let’s examine the team whose legacy is best known for the deadly counter-attacks — the 2012 Real Madrid. Here, we would see on how they build dominance against a compact block against Levante by using many attacking strategy alongside tactics.
Although Real played with a 4–2–3–1 on paper, we would see their intricate positional interchanges during the game, depending on the situations.
Benzema was given more responsibility to drift wide and interchange position with Ozil. These positional interchanges will become Real’s other weapon on breaking Levante’s block.
Ozil’s influence in these interchanges seen on this match, where he tried to create triangles to break Levante’s block out wide, so that Real could create an overload in Levante’s last defensive line. As you can see, the positional interchanges results in a 4v4 situation near the penalty area.
Levante opted for more depth, playing in a 4–2–3–1, since Real players caused them problem in-between the lines. Here, Benzema and Arbeloa showed great cooperation with Arbeloa dragging the RB, giving the pivot a dilemma to cover or to engage to Benzema. With his movement, Benzema evades the defender.
Then, we meet the trademark Mourinho team thing; the seamless transition between phases. We could see that right after Ronaldo almost conceded turnover behind the penalty area, the players directly facing the final third of the line moves back and simultaneously run again to the penalty area — you could also see Benzema sprinting the from the right side of the penalty area to be a pass option, with each of their players having great awareness on their runs.
As Levante’s shape is getting even narrower, Real tried to exploit the width by packing the three players in the middle of the pitch, while a player offer some width so that it looked like a 4v4 matchup, with Real having an advantage over the width.
Individual brilliance also help Real on underloads. We could see a 3v5 situation, but Ronaldo is so dangerous on cutbacks that he sucks the 3 defenders’ attention to him, running to the near post, resulting in Coentrao being free in the far post.
We could also see that Real is preparing a 3v2 out wide, seemingly for triangular movements. But watch as 2 of their players — Ozil and Benzema, slowly moves forward, facing the last defensive line as Real plays centrally. Then, both of them makes a run to the penalty area.
On Real’s fourth goal, Alonso manages to take out Levante’s midfield by using a disguise pass to Ronaldo. This results in a 1v1 situation which benefits Benzema.
Then, Ronaldo gets to the right side to further sucks the defensive unit’s attention and creating easy switches for Madrid. The switch then falls to the left side, while Ronaldo slides to the left side again to play a quick-one two to Benzema. Levante tried to counter by using their passing pattern to the striker, but that triggered Real’s press, and the aggressiveness of Ramos neutralized their counter-attack.
Real Madrid uses 3v2 weak side overloads-run scheme again to break Levante’s block with speed. The first intention is to stretch Levante’s midfield, which is done by switching the ball to Benzema.
With the game ends in a 5–2 score, Mourinho’s Real Madrid showcased an array of attacking prowess, seamlessly.
Conclusion: What is fluidity, then?
Rather than asking what is fluidity, let’s reframe the question as “how this concept corresponds with human nature?” A coach who lives and breathes with his idea transmits the idea to the players who corresponds with it, whether by ability or values. At best, this generates the supposed “idea” on the pitch, seamlessly.
We could also see it with the general with his soldiers in the warfare. The political candidate with its supporters, transmitting his idea on the political warfare. A religious leader with its followers. Therefore, fluidity is likely to be a subjective nature, a miniscule of human beings and its’ value, a mean to embrace the thing closest to us, moving seamlessly until the death of time.
