a team around messi
Examining the task facing Argentina boss Jorge Sampaoli: creating a team structure which will allow Lionel Messi to flourish
If you are Argentina manager Jorge Sampaoli, the easiest decision in the world is that Lionel Messi is the first name on your teamsheet.
Selecting Messi in the starting line-up is simple enough, but there are plenty more selection quandaries which are far less straightforward to answer: where should you put him? Who should be alongside him? What playing system should the team employ?
When contemplating once-in-a-lifetime talents like Messi, it’s tempting to conclude that tactics don’t really matter. We can just assume he’s so good that he will shine and the team will be successful whatever formation and whichever strategy you employ. Just let him loose, give him the freedom to do his thing and the rest will follow.
That conclusion is even more appealing in the wake of last week’s dramatic friendly capitulation in Spain, which has left many Argentine fans hoping that Messi’s return will automatically make everything alright.
But football doesn’t always work like that. The best players don’t always make the best teams and not even Messi can always be a match-winner, especially at the highest level where defences are ultra-fit, well organised and rigidly disciplined, knowing exactly how they can set about their task of subduing even the greatest creative talents.
That being the case, it’s imperative for every team, however good their individuals might be, to follow a well-ordered tactical plan which allows them to maximise their strengths and exploit the weaknesses of their opponents. Even a player like Messi must only be expected to complement his team rather than carry it, because the latter is almost certain to only produce sporadic bursts of success which will eventually fall short.
Messi knows this very well from the few occasions in his career when it has been his misfortune to play on a team lacking in the necessary collective coherence.
The best example came in the 2013/14 season, when a Barcelona side managed by fellow Argentine Tata Martino failed to win a single trophy and were deservedly beaten to the La Liga title by an Atletico Madrid team – masterfully led by Diego Simeone – which was vastly inferior in terms of pure talent but infinitely superior in terms of working together as a well-structured team unit.
Atletico also knocked Barça out of the Champions League that season, triumphing in the quarter-finals with a 1-0 aggregate victory, and their success was largely based on the fact that when they worked out how to stop Messi, Barca had few alternatives to win.
By the time the two teams went head to head at Camp Nou on Saturday 17 May 2014, for the last game of the season with Atletico needing just a draw to clinch the title while the hosts knew a win would give them the trophy, Simeone’s team were unbeaten in five outings against Barca that season: twice in the Spanish Super Cup (1-1 and 0-0), twice in the Champions League (1-1 and 1-0), and once in La Liga (0-0).
The mighty Barcelona had scored just two goals in their five meetings with Atletico’s rugged defence during that campaign, and Messi had not scored at all. Five games, no goals – the most un-Messi-like record you could imagine, but it had happened far too often to be mere coincidence.
So there was no surprise at all when Atletico got the draw they needed at Camp Nou to complete a remarkable title-winning campaign, with Diego Godin’s towering header from a corner cancelling out a thumping opener from Alexis Sanchez. And there was no surprise when Messi, once again, failed to find his way past Thibaut Courtois in the Atletico goal.
That game marked a distinct turning point for Messi and Barcelona. A few weeks later, they signed Luis Suarez to launch a new era of glorious success based upon a different tactical approach: rather than Messi dropping deep from the ‘false nine’ centre forward role he had occupied for the past five years, he was to take up a new position on the right wing of a potent three-man attack alongside Suarez and Neymar.
By the time ‘MSN’ fired their team to a superlative treble-winning triumph in 2015, Barcelona had found a new way to play; a new method of getting the most out of Messi which made the previous season’s failures fade into distant memory.
But that underwhelming 2013/14 campaign should not be forgotten or swept under the carpet, because it serves as a cautionary example of exactly what happens when a talented group of players is left without a clear tactical direction, doing little more than giving the ball to their best player and hoping for the best.
To convert the failure of 2014 into the glory of 2015, Barca needed to find a formula that worked, and that came with the arrival of MSN. For a while, though, they had fallen well behind a technically inferior Atletico Madrid team who had worked out how to stop Messi and knew that Barca had little else to offer.
And finding a formula that works collectively is exactly the scenario facing Sampaoli now.
Sampaoli knows all this, of course. He is a talented and experienced coach, schooled by legendary Marcelo Bielsa and growing his reputation with significant successes on both the international and domestic stages. Sampaoli is no fool, and he knows that his task is to construct a smoothly functioning collective unit which is also able to get the best out of Messi.
The question is, though, how?
Messi, after all, is flexible. Sampaoli can line him up as a right winger, a false nine, a support striker, an inside right, a pure number ten or a combination of the above.
There are also plenty of options to support him – far more options than many people realise. It’s widely assumed, for example, that Gonzalo Higuain, Sergio Aguero and Mauro Icardi are battling in out to claim the lone frontman role ahead of Messi. But in the decisive World Cup qualifiers against Peru and Ecuador in October, by far the most important games of Sampaoli’s reign, he showed that he is prepared to make bold selections by instead placing placed his trust in the relatively unknown Dario Benedetto of Boca Juniors after controversially leaving Higuain out of his squad (Aguero was injured).
If Sampaoli wanted to be more adventurous, he could always field two of those strikers, of course – although it’s rarely been used by Argentina, a 4-3-1-2 formation with Messi in a free role two of Aguero, Higuain, Icardi or rising star Lautaro Martinez has plenty of potential, and would perhaps be the favoured option for Messi himself.
Perhaps, though, the identity of the striker(s) is less important than the player who provides attacking width on the left flank.
Thanks to his ability to float perfectly weighted, in-swinging, angled passes into the stride of his teammate’s runs into the box, Messi has enjoyed fabulous connections with left wingers in the last two or three years, with first Neymar and now Jordi Alba (who is nominally a full-back but plays like a winger) benefitting greatly from Messi’s ability to pick them out to perfection.
There’s a case for believing, therefore, that Angel Di Maria or Paolo Dybala, rather than any of the strikers, will have the second-most important attacking role to play for Argentina this summer.
Behind Messi there are more decisions, with Sampaoli’s tactical variety giving him the freedom to line up with a flat back four, a three-man central defence, a double-pivot in midfield, wingbacks, ball-playing passers or dogged chasers and tacklers, or whatever else he might prefer. Sampaoli has plenty of options, but he has to settle on something. The World Cup qualifiers and recent friendlies, however, do not give too many clues about what that all-important something might be.
For starters, the team was led by three different managers over the course of their 18 qualifying games, with former Barcelona boss Martino overseeing the first six, then Edgardo Bauza taking charge for the next eight, and finally Sampaoli coming in for the last four.
Between them, those three managers worked their way through a truly dazzling number of personnel, using no less than 45 players during the 18-game qualifying process.
45 players in 18 games is a ridiculous tally – if any club side used so many players before even reaching the halfway point of a league season, there would be an outcry over a lack of direction and planning, yet Argentina somehow made it through arguably the toughest of all qualifying zones despite such a horrendous lack of continuity. (Brazil, by contrast, used ‘only’ 35 players despite winning the group at a canter, so Argentina’s alarming rate of churn can’t be blamed solely on the inherent difficulties of South American national team selections.)
Sampaoli, at least, was pretty consistent during his four qualifiers, going with a 3-4-3 formation for three of those games and always featuring Messi on the right of a front three, flanked on the other side twice by Dybala and once by Di Maria, who played on the left of the midfield four in the other three games.
That, then, seems to be the way forward for Sampaoli: a back three, and Messi on the right of a forward three, with probably Aguero or Higuain in the middle and Dybala or Di Maria on the left. Except Messi isn’t playing like that for Barcelona this season, instead being given a ‘free role’ behind lone striker Suarez, and despite being unable to field him in last week’s friendlies Sampaoli noted he is intending to give Messi the same position he is occupying for his club – which would mean a move away from the nominally right-sided role he filled during the qualifiers.
Another change in the recent friendlies came in defence, with Sampaoli going against his former three-man central defence by lining up with a flat back four against both Italy and Spain – with the disastrous results in the latter surely tempting the coach to return to a back three.
So will it be a back three or a back four for Argentina? Messi in a central role or coming inside from the right wing? We still don’t know, and time is running out.
Sampaoli, we can be sure, knows pretty well what he wants to do, but in competitions like the World Cup there is always plenty of potential for teams to rapidly ‘evolve’ as the tournament proceeds, depending on the form and fitness of individual players. So even when the coach names his first starting eleven for the World Cup opener against Iceland on Saturday 16 June, it won’t necessarily mean the team will end up playing the same way throughout the tournament.
There is still time for Argentina to find a system that works. But find a system they must, and the lack of certainty at this late stage of proceedings is a big worry.
Selecting Messi in the starting line-up is simple enough, but there are plenty more selection quandaries which are far less straightforward to answer: where should you put him? Who should be alongside him? What playing system should the team employ?
When contemplating once-in-a-lifetime talents like Messi, it’s tempting to conclude that tactics don’t really matter. We can just assume he’s so good that he will shine and the team will be successful whatever formation and whichever strategy you employ. Just let him loose, give him the freedom to do his thing and the rest will follow.
That conclusion is even more appealing in the wake of last week’s dramatic friendly capitulation in Spain, which has left many Argentine fans hoping that Messi’s return will automatically make everything alright.
But football doesn’t always work like that. The best players don’t always make the best teams and not even Messi can always be a match-winner, especially at the highest level where defences are ultra-fit, well organised and rigidly disciplined, knowing exactly how they can set about their task of subduing even the greatest creative talents.
That being the case, it’s imperative for every team, however good their individuals might be, to follow a well-ordered tactical plan which allows them to maximise their strengths and exploit the weaknesses of their opponents. Even a player like Messi must only be expected to complement his team rather than carry it, because the latter is almost certain to only produce sporadic bursts of success which will eventually fall short.
Messi knows this very well from the few occasions in his career when it has been his misfortune to play on a team lacking in the necessary collective coherence.
The best example came in the 2013/14 season, when a Barcelona side managed by fellow Argentine Tata Martino failed to win a single trophy and were deservedly beaten to the La Liga title by an Atletico Madrid team – masterfully led by Diego Simeone – which was vastly inferior in terms of pure talent but infinitely superior in terms of working together as a well-structured team unit.
Atletico also knocked Barça out of the Champions League that season, triumphing in the quarter-finals with a 1-0 aggregate victory, and their success was largely based on the fact that when they worked out how to stop Messi, Barca had few alternatives to win.
By the time the two teams went head to head at Camp Nou on Saturday 17 May 2014, for the last game of the season with Atletico needing just a draw to clinch the title while the hosts knew a win would give them the trophy, Simeone’s team were unbeaten in five outings against Barca that season: twice in the Spanish Super Cup (1-1 and 0-0), twice in the Champions League (1-1 and 1-0), and once in La Liga (0-0).
The mighty Barcelona had scored just two goals in their five meetings with Atletico’s rugged defence during that campaign, and Messi had not scored at all. Five games, no goals – the most un-Messi-like record you could imagine, but it had happened far too often to be mere coincidence.
So there was no surprise at all when Atletico got the draw they needed at Camp Nou to complete a remarkable title-winning campaign, with Diego Godin’s towering header from a corner cancelling out a thumping opener from Alexis Sanchez. And there was no surprise when Messi, once again, failed to find his way past Thibaut Courtois in the Atletico goal.
That game marked a distinct turning point for Messi and Barcelona. A few weeks later, they signed Luis Suarez to launch a new era of glorious success based upon a different tactical approach: rather than Messi dropping deep from the ‘false nine’ centre forward role he had occupied for the past five years, he was to take up a new position on the right wing of a potent three-man attack alongside Suarez and Neymar.
By the time ‘MSN’ fired their team to a superlative treble-winning triumph in 2015, Barcelona had found a new way to play; a new method of getting the most out of Messi which made the previous season’s failures fade into distant memory.
But that underwhelming 2013/14 campaign should not be forgotten or swept under the carpet, because it serves as a cautionary example of exactly what happens when a talented group of players is left without a clear tactical direction, doing little more than giving the ball to their best player and hoping for the best.
To convert the failure of 2014 into the glory of 2015, Barca needed to find a formula that worked, and that came with the arrival of MSN. For a while, though, they had fallen well behind a technically inferior Atletico Madrid team who had worked out how to stop Messi and knew that Barca had little else to offer.
And finding a formula that works collectively is exactly the scenario facing Sampaoli now.
Sampaoli knows all this, of course. He is a talented and experienced coach, schooled by legendary Marcelo Bielsa and growing his reputation with significant successes on both the international and domestic stages. Sampaoli is no fool, and he knows that his task is to construct a smoothly functioning collective unit which is also able to get the best out of Messi.
The question is, though, how?
Messi, after all, is flexible. Sampaoli can line him up as a right winger, a false nine, a support striker, an inside right, a pure number ten or a combination of the above.
There are also plenty of options to support him – far more options than many people realise. It’s widely assumed, for example, that Gonzalo Higuain, Sergio Aguero and Mauro Icardi are battling in out to claim the lone frontman role ahead of Messi. But in the decisive World Cup qualifiers against Peru and Ecuador in October, by far the most important games of Sampaoli’s reign, he showed that he is prepared to make bold selections by instead placing placed his trust in the relatively unknown Dario Benedetto of Boca Juniors after controversially leaving Higuain out of his squad (Aguero was injured).
If Sampaoli wanted to be more adventurous, he could always field two of those strikers, of course – although it’s rarely been used by Argentina, a 4-3-1-2 formation with Messi in a free role two of Aguero, Higuain, Icardi or rising star Lautaro Martinez has plenty of potential, and would perhaps be the favoured option for Messi himself.
Perhaps, though, the identity of the striker(s) is less important than the player who provides attacking width on the left flank.
Thanks to his ability to float perfectly weighted, in-swinging, angled passes into the stride of his teammate’s runs into the box, Messi has enjoyed fabulous connections with left wingers in the last two or three years, with first Neymar and now Jordi Alba (who is nominally a full-back but plays like a winger) benefitting greatly from Messi’s ability to pick them out to perfection.
There’s a case for believing, therefore, that Angel Di Maria or Paolo Dybala, rather than any of the strikers, will have the second-most important attacking role to play for Argentina this summer.
Behind Messi there are more decisions, with Sampaoli’s tactical variety giving him the freedom to line up with a flat back four, a three-man central defence, a double-pivot in midfield, wingbacks, ball-playing passers or dogged chasers and tacklers, or whatever else he might prefer. Sampaoli has plenty of options, but he has to settle on something. The World Cup qualifiers and recent friendlies, however, do not give too many clues about what that all-important something might be.
For starters, the team was led by three different managers over the course of their 18 qualifying games, with former Barcelona boss Martino overseeing the first six, then Edgardo Bauza taking charge for the next eight, and finally Sampaoli coming in for the last four.
Between them, those three managers worked their way through a truly dazzling number of personnel, using no less than 45 players during the 18-game qualifying process.
45 players in 18 games is a ridiculous tally – if any club side used so many players before even reaching the halfway point of a league season, there would be an outcry over a lack of direction and planning, yet Argentina somehow made it through arguably the toughest of all qualifying zones despite such a horrendous lack of continuity. (Brazil, by contrast, used ‘only’ 35 players despite winning the group at a canter, so Argentina’s alarming rate of churn can’t be blamed solely on the inherent difficulties of South American national team selections.)
Sampaoli, at least, was pretty consistent during his four qualifiers, going with a 3-4-3 formation for three of those games and always featuring Messi on the right of a front three, flanked on the other side twice by Dybala and once by Di Maria, who played on the left of the midfield four in the other three games.
That, then, seems to be the way forward for Sampaoli: a back three, and Messi on the right of a forward three, with probably Aguero or Higuain in the middle and Dybala or Di Maria on the left. Except Messi isn’t playing like that for Barcelona this season, instead being given a ‘free role’ behind lone striker Suarez, and despite being unable to field him in last week’s friendlies Sampaoli noted he is intending to give Messi the same position he is occupying for his club – which would mean a move away from the nominally right-sided role he filled during the qualifiers.
Another change in the recent friendlies came in defence, with Sampaoli going against his former three-man central defence by lining up with a flat back four against both Italy and Spain – with the disastrous results in the latter surely tempting the coach to return to a back three.
So will it be a back three or a back four for Argentina? Messi in a central role or coming inside from the right wing? We still don’t know, and time is running out.
Sampaoli, we can be sure, knows pretty well what he wants to do, but in competitions like the World Cup there is always plenty of potential for teams to rapidly ‘evolve’ as the tournament proceeds, depending on the form and fitness of individual players. So even when the coach names his first starting eleven for the World Cup opener against Iceland on Saturday 16 June, it won’t necessarily mean the team will end up playing the same way throughout the tournament.
There is still time for Argentina to find a system that works. But find a system they must, and the lack of certainty at this late stage of proceedings is a big worry.