Totaalvoetball in a new guise

The future of football is over once again: What conclusions can be drawn from the 2012 European Football Championship? Thomas Alkemeyer and Nikolaus Buschmann on crazy player types, unbounded playing philosophies and the technical perfection that arises from the moment. Football is constantly reinventing itself. The European Championship has impressively confirmed this wisdom, which is as banal as it is saturated with experience. Before the showdown in Poland and Ukraine, the Spanish style was regarded as the incarnation of modern football par excellence. However, opponents seemed to have slowly adapted to the Iberians' fast, short passing game and developed quite successful alternatives based on a renaissance of supposedly outdated footballing concepts. Parts of the footballing public were increasingly annoyed by the Spaniards' "ball-pushing" and accused them of playing a self-indulgent "tiki-takaccio". It seemed as if the glamour of the performances of Iniesta, Xavi & Co had faded in contrast to the previous title wins. The final impressively countered this criticism. However, the criticism was already unfounded: Spain scored the most goals of all the teams in the preliminary round and only conceded one goal on their way to the final.

Squadra Azzurra prevented the Spaniards from playing short passes in the group stage. However, their opponents repeatedly found ways to disrupt the Spanish flow of play: They closed down passing lanes and kept the spaces around the penalty area tight, instead of simply playing along with the turf chess as before. As a result, the Spaniards hardly ever managed to realise their combination play in the penalty area, apart from against the overstretched Irish, until the final. The performance of the initially underestimated Italians was impressive. The Squadra Azzurra formed their defence in the opening match of Group C sometimes as a back three, sometimes as a back five. Depending on the match situation, they were able to utilise the space efficiently and build up overpaying constellations. With their varied play consisting of quick counter-attacks, precise passes to the front and goal-scoring moves from the resting ball, the Italian team caused the Spaniards a lot of problems. Playmaker Xavi replaced. The Portuguese, on the other hand, prevented the Spanish midfield from developing with a huge amount of running and efficient counter-pressing. They forced Vincent del Bosque into a move that was tantamount to an insult to his majesty: he substituted his playmaker Xavi, who looked more tired and less inspired than usual at this point. A look at the defining personalities of this European Championship also proves that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all playing system - it's the mixture that counts. Who is used depends on the tactical approach to the respective opponent. Until the Germans were eliminated in the semi-finals, Joachim Löw in particular was characterised by a by no means "lucky hand".

The era of the classic penalty area striker is not over. Despite his undeniable tactical mistake in the semi-final of moving one more man into the centre, completely abandoning the right side, in order to restrict the Italian playmaker Andrea Pirlo: The German coach has realised that his squad consists not just of a regular team and a substitutes' bench, but of 16 or 17 players of comparable quality but different playing styles. In the face of the suspicions fuelled by the mass media and numerous football pundits on the fan mile at home, Löw opted for the seemingly old-fashioned attacker Mario Gomez against the Netherlands, who had been "sore" in the match against Portugal, as Mehmet Scholl had convincingly and rhetorically diagnosed: he was rewarded with two great goals. The performances of Andrij Shevchenko and Niklas Bendtner also show that the era of the classic penalty-area striker is not necessarily over. Both can decide a game with just a few actions. They scored exclusively with their heads, as was the case in a preliminary round with an above-average number of headers. Fernando Torres also only needed a few appearances to become the top scorer at the European Championships. Toni Kroos, the man-marker, and the Germans' lack of self-confidence. In the match against the Greeks, Löw opted for a tactical variant that required agile players who were able to combine well. Schürrle, Reus and Klose did an excellent job against the robust but awkward Greek defence. The fact that the German team's dream of a title did not come true was only partly due to an irritating line-up and inadequate tactics: the man-marking duties for Toni Kroos in the semi-final exposed the self-confidence displayed by Löw at the previous press conference as whistling in the woods. Just as crucially, the Germans lacked the backbone of a great team. Their play lacked stability, rhythm and direction. Bastian Schweinsteiger, despite occasional flashes of brilliance, was a shadow of his former self due to injury. Even the German team's outstanding player, Sami Khedira, could not make up for this loss. And perhaps one or two of the FC Bayern players ("mia san mia") also lost the self-confidence in the tragic course of last season that you always need against an Italian team - especially when you fall behind. Especially as the otherwise versatile German team lacked a means of winning games even when they are in mediocre form: they lacked any penetrating power in set-piece situations.

Playing philosophies have long been detached from the national context. Italy and Spain were undeniably the two best teams in the tournament and reached the final. They represent different playing philosophies that have long since broken away from national football traditions. The Spanish team is a comparatively homogeneous entity that presents "Totaalvoetbal" in a new guise with a combination of technical skills and internalised tactics. The Italian team is no less tactically adept, but it combines very different types of players in a variable system of play that, unlike in the days of catenaccio, is not restricted to closing down the penalty area. Their ability to switch from defence to offence in a flash led to the spectacular goals scored by the exceptional striker Mario Balotelli in the semi-final.

Boarding school pupils and anarchic footballers.

Until the final, the Squadra Azzurra had the tournament's outstanding player: Andrea Pirlo, an unparalleled strategist and artist. The 33-year-old played pinpoint passes over 40 or 50 metres like an assembly line - and unlike his predecessors, the great directors of the 1970s, he also ran an enormous average of twelve kilometres per game. "Guys" like Pirlo, Balotelli or Cassano add that extra dose of craziness and surprise to the functionalist system of football in boarding schools for systematically trained young professionals, which could give the development of football a new grade. In terms of entertainment value, it wouldn't be a bad thing if the future of football lay in the variability and synthesis of disparate playing ideas.

The Spaniards have once again shown the way: their 4-6-0 system was born out of grade due to David Villa's injury. But it could be as forward-looking as Jonathan Wilson predicted after the 2010 World Cup in his book "Revolutions on the pitch", which is well worth reading. In response to the competition's countermeasures, the Spaniards added a tactical variation to their short passing game: With surprising wing changes, they proved that they are no strangers to the long pass either.

Creative power and planning combined. In Xavi and Iniesta, the Spaniards also have players who are able to grasp the potential of a situation at lightning speed and realise it with technical perfection. Their actions reveal a playful creativity that is born out of the moment without the need for overthinking. This creative power combines planning with an intuition honed over many years. As with the 1:0 against the overstretched Italians, it leads to overwhelming "works of art of the moment", as Christoph Bausenwein once put it, in which everything fits together in such a way that nothing can disrupt them. They are not creations out of nothing, but come about when players with a distinct feeling for space and the ball, excellent technical skills and a finely tuned tactical sense of play play together. These skills make it possible to prepare the future in the present in a somnambulistic way. The contingency of the game of football demands this creativity. It has to be painstakingly developed. Just like in other areas of uncertainty in society. Prof Dr Thomas Alkemeyer is the spokesperson for the Research Training Group "Self-Formation", Dr Nikolaus Buschmann is a fellow.