by Ruud Gullit
Defenders know the ploy is coming, and they still sprint off in the wrong direction. The explanation is simple: when you’re running backward you have far less control over your body and you quickly lose balance with the slightest twist or turn. When you’re running forward you have far more control, and when you have the ball, you’re the one who sets the pace.
In the AC Milan front line, Marco van Basten was a past master when it came to dummying and faking. As a teammate, you have to be able to anticipate that. On the right at Milan, I knew exactly where the attack was heading when Paolo Maldini was defending at the back on the left. Instead of to Van Basten as striker, the pass would come to me, or vice versa. I preferred Marco to be on the receiving end because then I knew the ball would go in.
Of course we weren’t supposed to go straight to where the ball was going to arrive; we had to find our way there bit by bit. Paolo Maldini or midfielder Carlo Ancelotti would play to Van Basten up front and he would pass back to midfielder Demetrio Albertini. I’d run in with a defender hanging on to my coattails and feint toward Albertini, before sprinting away, deep. All Albertini needed to do was feed the ball into space and I was off.
Switching roles after losing possession
Attacking in the way I’ve described here is like playing without an opposing team. It’s a theoretical attack, an ideal situation that you try to re-create in practice. In reality you have to be continually aware that you may lose the ball at any stage of the attack.
As a player you had to know exactly what to do, what your task was, if Ancelotti, Van Basten or Albertini lost the ball while moving forward. At AC Milan we constantly practiced how to switch roles as soon as we lost possession in the middle of a coordinated attack. It is basically about organizing the team to prevent a goal being scored. (When regaining possession, it’s less about organization and there’s more space for intuitive play.)
Rule 1: Never lose possession in the center when building an attack
You see it so often, even at the highest level: triangle passes between two central defenders and the keeper. Irresponsible if your aim is to win matches, because it is far too risky. Yet it seems practically endemic in the Netherlands. In other countries, teams in that kind of situation simply kick the ball as far as they can upfield.
Even FC Barcelona regularly commit the cardinal sin of building up through the center. It caused a major problem last season against Celta de Vigo. Gerard Piqué was taking far too long, lost the ball, and Celta scored: 1–0. If Barcelona can’t do it, then lesser teams shouldn’t even try. So what should you do if everyone is tightly marked? Pass back to the keeper, who’ll send the ball into the other half for the strikers to battle for possession. After all, it’s not always possible to build up from the back.
Rule 2: Never let the other side attack through the center
This starts with the forwards. They have to force the other side to attack along the wing, because there you have more chance of closing down a player and regaining possession by using the touchline like an extra defender. In the center, in midfield, you’re more vulnerable and it’s easy to find yourself outflanked; after all, the other side can move either left or right or simply go forward. This is where the manager plays a key role. Whatever the team’s system, it’s the manager’s job to find a solution to this problem.
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These two defensive rules were our basic creed at AC Milan. It was drilled into me and fine-tuned during my first season (1987/88); in my second season we won the European Cup and played brilliantly. No opposing side could find an answer. By next season, every team we played had analyzed our game and adapted its strategy. That made it much harder and forced us to develop as a team.
Changing the selection is the usual way to achieve this: some players disappear and others with specific skill-sets are brought in to maintain the element of surprise. It’s an extremely difficult process. Managers and coaches are loath to break up a winning team. As a result, even top clubs like Bayern Munich and Barcelona find it almost impossible to win the Champions League twice in a row.
The only way to succeed two seasons in succession is by a thorough analysis and adjustment of the team and by ensuring that players maintain their concentration, hunger and passion. A key aspect is to have players with exceptional individual qualities in the attacking lineup.
European Champions 1988
Before we qualified for the 1988 European Championship in what was then still West Germany, the Dutch national side had experienced some major disappointments. In 1983, we had failed to qualify for the 1984 Championship in France on goal difference when Spain beat Malta 12–1, and two years later we missed our chance to compete in the World Cup in Mexico after Georges Grün scored just before full time in the play-off against Belgium.
So we arrived as untried newcomers that year in West Germany, although the squad was packed with experience. Ajax had just won the European Cup Winners Cup; shortly before the European Championship, PSV had won the European Cup and in Italy Marco van Basten and I had won the league championship with AC Milan.
Bizarrely, we lost our first game, against Russia (the Soviet Union as it was), 1–0. Despite the initial setback, we had a stroke of luck in our last group game against Ireland, which we won with a goal scored by Wim Kieft—who was offside—with a quite unorthodox header.
For the Netherlands, the semifinal against Germany was the real final. Fourteen years before, the whole country had sat weeping in front of the television as they watched the Dutch suffer the ignominy of defeat to Germany in the World Cup final of 1974. We had come to put that right.
The game had taken a strange course, with a penalty awarded quite correctly to Germany, while our penalty was a gift from the Romanian referee, Ioan Igna. In Germany against the Germans, with a gift like that in a European Championship semifinal: strange things are bound to happen. Ronald Koeman made sure of the penalty and that gave the team such a boost that Van Basten soon guided the winning goal home.
With that the championship had been won as far as we were concerned, our revenge was complete and I organized a huge party in Hamburg. We were on top of the world. The next day we left for the final in Munich and the whole squad went to watch a Whitney Houston concert. Inconceivable today. It was not until the coach, Rinus Michels, came to review tactics that we started focusing on the actual final, when we would again face the USSR: “You have achieved something fantastic, but now that we’ve come to Munich, we might as well win the final. Then we’ll really have done something.”
That was the gist of it, as if it was taken for granted that we would win even though the Russians were the stronger team. I don’t really have a plausible explanation; it just felt that way. Our keeper, Hans van Breukelen, even stopped a penalty. A sweet symmetry: in the opening game we were stronger but Russia won; in the final, Russia were stronger and we won. The scoreline was 2–0, with goals from Van Basten and myself.
My own role in the European Championship was modest, despite being the captain. I played either as second striker or on the left or right in a 4-4-2 formation, depending on where we could hurt the other side more. I was exhausted, broken after that intense first season at AC Milan. Mentally and physically I was totally worn out after the relief of winning the Italian title.
When I arrived for the tournament I was too tired to play with the energy I had shown at AC Milan, however badly I wanted to. Michels even stopped me taking free kicks. But happily Van Basten recovered his form for the tournament following months of injury and after waiting on the bench during the opening game against Russia. Marco was fresh so I was constantly passing to him.
I put my ego on hold and knuckled down for the team and for the result. My form returned in the final, and as a reward Michels let me take the free kicks. That led indirectly to the opening goal. My free kick was followed by a corner from which I scored with a header: 1–0. Later, Van Basten volle
yed in a world-class shot that epitomized the championship. In the French media, L’Équipe would later call my first goal “the forgotten goal.”
At last, in 1988, a Dutch national side had won a major trophy after the lost World Cup finals of 1974 and 1978. Later, in 2010, we reached the final of the World Cup in South Africa. I’m extremely proud of our achievements in the soccer world. The Netherlands may be a small country, but in 1974 we transformed the game with our total soccer concept. We were pioneers, and although we didn’t qualify for the European Championship in France in 2016, we are still considered one of the giants of international soccer.
The peak
It was at AC Milan that I developed into a mature player. To a large extent that was down to my new surroundings. Italy was attracting top players in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Clubs were allowed to have up to three foreign players under contract and money was no object—Italy then was like England today. Italian clubs bought up the world’s best: guys like Maradona, Rijkaard, Van Basten, Zico, Falcão, Daniel Passarella, Lothar Matthäus, Zbigniew Boniek, Michel Platini, Jürgen Klinsmann, Preben Elkjær Larsen, Andy Brehme, Michael Laudrup and many others. And Italy itself also had world-class players such as Franco Baresi, Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Baggio, Paolo Maldini, Giuseppe Bergomi, Pietro Vierchowod and Roberto Mancini.
The level of soccer played in Italy’s Serie A was far superior to that of any other European league. It was similar to the difference between Spain’s Primera División and Europe’s other leagues today. Good players improve each other and raise the competition to a higher level.
For strikers, Serie A could be grueling; every Italian knew how to defend, whether playing for Juventus or for Cremonese, Lecce, Ascoli or Cesena. You had to be fast to even create the possibility of a chance.
At Fiorentina, they had Daniel Passarella, captain of the Argentinian side that had won the World Cup in 1978. There’s a photo in which he elbows me straight in the face. I had just headed a ball onto the bar and one on target, so he took over from Giuseppe Bergomi or Riccardo Ferri as my marker. “Welcome to Serie A,” he barked. Passarella was so intensely vicious, a real Argentinian killer. “You were a big fellow, so I had to do something about it,” he confessed when we ran into each other recently. We laughed about it.
Vierchowod, at Sampdoria, was one of the best defenders I ever came across. Ask Van Basten what he thinks of Vierchowod. Marco managed to get past him only once when we played against the star defender. A lucky goal after the ball had bounced back off the bar. Marco just nodded it in.
Switching roles
Dutch clubs don’t focus on training players in how to switch roles after losing possession. Strikers can find that difficult because their focus is on the ball. During my first year at AC Milan as a striker, whenever I missed a chance I would stay where I was, absorbing the disappointment or just taking a moment to rest. To correct this I had to tell myself: Ruud, first get back into position, then you can reflect or rest. At Milan, players like Sacchi, Ancelotti and Baresi would soon bring you back down to reality if you were lost in thought and forgot your place in the organized team.
Standing still after an attack is deadly for a team. Some players look down at the ground in shame after missing a shot and walk back. Instead, you should really look up and run straight back to your position, otherwise the keeper will throw the ball over your head to the right or left back and they’ll have all the time they need to start a counterattack. At AC Milan every player switched roles automatically whenever we lost possession. If you didn’t work like that, you simply didn’t get selected. By playing with discipline we nullified every surprise that the other team had prepared for us. At AC Milan there was no way we could be surprised, because we were so well organized. It took truly great players like Maradona, Zola, Careca, Zico or Klinsmann to be able to give us a run for our money with their incredible individual skills.
Pressure
Being so tightly organized we first had to give the other side space to play forward. By forcing players to the side, we made them build up from their right or left back. Then when they passed the ball into midfield, all ten of us were ready to pounce on it, to regain possession.
In a sense we paved the way for Barcelona. They do exactly what we did. In fact they penetrate even faster and deeper to build pressure in the other half. A key reason for giving the other side space was that if we attacked too soon the ball would go straight back to the keeper. So there was no point putting the other side under pressure too early. In those days keepers could still pick up a ball from a back pass. The rule wasn’t changed until 1992.
The new rule makes it easier for a team to put the other side under pressure. You can go twenty or thirty meters closer to the opposing goal: which leaves the other side far less space to build. And the faster you regain possession, the nearer you are to goal and the less distance you need to make up.
How to beat the wall
At that time, there was no team outside Italy that knew how to deal with the way we pressed. Even good players make mistakes under pressure. At training sessions we practiced pressing and sticking close together, keeping within five meters of each other, perfecting our tactics.
We would practice playing for offside, with eleven men against seven defenders. The seven were the keeper, Sebastiano Rossi; the four defenders, Franco Baresi, Filippo Galli (later Alessandro Costacurta), Paolo Maldini and Mauro Tassotti; and two midfielders, Carlo Ancelotti and Frank Rijkaard. I was out on the right opposite Maldini. We fought hard, but we never got through, not even with long-distance shots.
Later we played eleven against five defenders, including the keeper, and even then it was impossible to get through the defense, not even with a through ball.
When we were at the height of our game, we trained eleven against eleven on a half-size pitch no wider than the sixteen-meter area. You have to be able to combine, because it’s impossible to dribble. It was not always fun but it forced you to make quick decisions. It was vital to practice like this because other teams were digging themselves in further and further when they played AC Milan, leaving ridiculously little space. You had to be able to make a decision in an instant if you wanted to get through the defense. It was not the most picturesque way to play, but it was necessary.
Creativity in attack
In addition to an organized defense you need a plan of attack. This has to include plenty of space for players to use their intuition, particularly the strikers. You can’t rely on prepared moves. Everyone knows them. Kids get them spoon-fed from childhood at their local club. The right winger moves to the center, meets an opponent, knocks back to the right midfielder, and the right back moves over as third. Intuitive players are able to break through these standard patterns with unexpected, creative moves.
Best of all is when you have two players of that quality in your team. As long as they can work together, that is, because, in the end, you have to have an instinctive, infallible understanding. They say that good soccer players can always play well together, but sometimes the combination simply doesn’t work and different qualities of various players don’t match. At FC Barcelona they have at least three amazing players: Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar. The way they work together is exceptional.
Rituals
The whole process leading up to the match itself—the bus ride, arriving at the stadium, dressing-room problems, the warming up and the national anthems or the Champions League hymn—forms a kind of ritual for the players. Everyone experiences it in their own way, but it’s a ritual nonetheless.
Whether you sit with your headphones on listening to music, or you read a book, go to the toilet three times or make sure you’re last on the pitch, everyone is in their own cocoon. I don’t try and figure out whether a player is going to play well or not. The way they behave in the tunnel says nothing about how they’ll play. You often hear players, managers and analysts come up with all kinds
of explanations for the result based on what they could see before the game started. I don’t believe in those crystal ball theories. It’s a retrospective romanticized view that often bears no relation to what really happens before the match. Many people, especially those who aren’t directly involved, think they see more going on than meets the eye, but it’s usually not that complicated.
It’s nothing more and nothing less than a ritual that you have to go through in order to get to what really matters: the game.
To England
In 1995, I moved from Italy (after AC Milan, and Sampdoria in Genoa) to England and began playing in London for Chelsea. Once again I had to adapt. This wasn’t about the English 4-4-2 game, or even the 5-3-2 that we sometimes played; it was more that most others at the club didn’t play at the same level I had experienced in Italy. They were good players, but at a different level. I went from European top to English average. But I quickly adjusted my expectations to accept the new situation instead of allowing it to become frustrating.
Some of the Chelsea players were less quick with the ball and they were not always moving, unlike my former teammates in Italy, which is what made them average. For developing players, English soccer is a tough place: it’s difficult to learn to play faster and to always be moving, while staying out of trouble and avoiding the kicking and shoving of the other side. I still had the speed in my mind and my legs. That was fortunate, because I was everyone’s favorite target, especially Vinnie Jones, who got me in his sights more than once.