The Death Of Tiqui Taca

I still remember the day I fell in love with Spanish football - June 18, 1986 (Well, it would have been the 19th in Australia). I had recently been in hospital to have a tumour removed from my neck, so I was at home while my friends were at school, as were my sisters, my parents were working etc. My dad had also recently bought our first ever VCR, for the main purpose of recording the televised World Cup games which were all played through the middle of the night and early morning in Australian time. So this was the first World Cup I got to watch lots of games, indeed, aside from English league highlight shows and FA Cup finals, it was the first time my 13 year old self got to watch top class football.

In that round of 16 game, Denmark were hot favourites, having emerged from the tournament's 'group of death' with a perfect record, including a 6-1 demolition of Uruguay, and were being tipped as possible title contenders. After going behind midway through the first half, Spain then completely dismantled the Danes, eventually winning 5-1. I watched the video over and over during the next few weeks. Compared to the British football, the only football, I had seen up to that point, this was mind blowing. When I watch the footage back now, the passing is nowhere near the level we're used to seeing today but, at that time, I'd never seen anything like it. By the final 15 minutes, I got to see my first ever 'Olé Football', the Spanish passing around the field at will to the '¡olé!' cheers of the crowd. Unfortunately, the Spanish fell to Belgium in a penalty shootout (a recurring theme over the next two decades) in the quarter finals but, reinforced by my heritage, I became a lover of Spanish football.

Over the next decade, what I most came to recognise as Spanish football was a slow, patient game of building up, with players very comfortable on the ball. Again, because it was the only real reference point available to Australians pre-internet, cable TV and Champions' League saturation, the British football (and its offspring, Australian football) looked prehistoric in comparison. Fast, long ball movement aimed at strikers who might get on the end of a quarter of those passes was what I normally got to see. The British version took a lottery approach to forward progression, wrote off the losses and bred running workhorses who could bustle to victory. As an illustration, Glenn Hoddle, England's most technically gifted player, could find his way into Pelé's (theoretical) all time greatest team in the late '80s, but was frozen out of selection for his country as his skills were seen as surplus to requirements. The Spanish, on the other hand, did all they could to keep the ball. That meant they weren't continually trying to get into the opponent's goal box as that would risk losing the ball regularly.

The other aspect that really developed during the '90s in Spanish football was, what I called, the 'waterpolo approach' to football. What I saw the Spanish do at an international level (Spanish club football was still largely inaccessible to Australians at the time) was to do exactly what water polo players do - hold the ball outside the edge of the goal area, and continually move it from left to right, forward down the flank, back along the line and cross to the other side, all while a couple of attackers move around in the box, trying to open up space for one incisive pass to put them in the clear. But they don't make that pass unless it's an almost certain thing. They hold it, move it around, until it is.

This is a clip of a 2012 goal that shows the 'waterpolo' movement, side to side until the space opens up. Some call it boring. I can't think of anything more exhilarating on a football field!


During the first decade of the 21st, something 'new' came along. Commentators began calling it 'tiqui taca' (or 'tiki taka' in english). It was perfected by FC Barcelona and by the Spanish national team, teams which had a large number of players in common. These teams completely dominated possession against their opponents, choked them out of games, then put them to the sword once they were exhausted from chasing shadows. The main revolutions that were discussed were that the key players in these teams were small players, without the size and robustness that had come to be seen as essential qualities for modern football. In maintaining possession, small players rarely had to outmuscle larger opponents one on one and, by never relying on balls in the air, height never became an issue (maybe this is why I love it so much, being a rather short man myself!). And it worked, with Spain winning 3 straight international titles and Barça winning countless domestic, European and international titles.

But, as I saw it, it was not anything new. This was simply Spaniards playing the way that Spaniards had thrilled me my whole life. The difference was that it had been distilled to a science rather than a general feeling, and it was being played by one particularly brilliant generation of players. Luis Aragones is credited as bringing the technique to the Spanish national team but it's always existed. The very name - tiqui taca - is even credited to none other than the Spanish coach in that 1986 World Cup - Javier Clemente, while the style can easily be traced to Johan Cruyff's decade long tenure as Barça manager in the '80s and '90s, itself a development of the style he pioneered with Ajax and The Netherlands as a player in the '70s. Tiqui taca has been around for a long time now. By the time José Mourinho finished up his tenure as Real Madrid manager in 2013, there was considerable acrimony between him and the spanish players in his squad. In spite of the successes he brought, they were very disillusioned that he was asking them to play in a way that was 'un-Spanish'. These players weren't simply wishing they could play in the 'Barça way' as they were able to when on national team duty. They were upset that they weren't allowed to play in the manner that had been ingrained into their footballing DNA for decades.

Of course, in a handful of games over the last few years (a significant proportion of those being Barça vs Chelsea games, with Chelsea under 3 different managers in that time), teams have shown that the system which has so dominated, can be beaten on the odd occasion. Those Chelsea teams, in UEFA Champions' League games against Barça, predominantly went for the extreme stifling option and relied on a couple of moments of supreme strength and speed to smash and grab victories. The fact that these kinds of successes were few and far between, however, merely proved the dominance of the Spaniards, as well as the fact that even that method that had a few successes over a 6 year period, was normally unsuccessful, as most teams deployed the exact same tactic without result. As an aside, one of the criticisms I've had to sit through over and over about the Spanish system was that it was boring, 'passing for it's own sake', and produced few actual goals. While this was true, on paper, the fact of the matter is that no-one had any real idea on how to counter the Spanish, so most teams deployed 8 or 9 defenders behind the ball in an attempt to stifle the space for passing towards goal. I still think it's impossible to blame Spain for the negativity of their opponents. The really revered teams - Netherlands '74, Brazil '82, etc - may well have scored more goals. But that's because they never had to break down two solid walls of defenders to get into the goal box. That the Spaniards still managed to find any way through at all is testament to their will to score and win - their opponents were the ones responsible for any boringness. Of course, domestically, many teams still played Barça in the spanish way and, while not often successful, the games were not the stalemates often seen in European and international fixtures featuring unadventurous opponents.

A bit of a wikipedia style insight into tiqui-taka.


But a few international teams over the last 12 months have shown the real way forward in the tactical development of the game. Brazil in the Confederations Cup in 2013 and, most recently, The Netherlands and Chile in the 2014 World Cup, have all subdued the Spanish dominance. And, most tellingly, they have all done it in a surprisingly similar fashion. But first, a quick look back at the 2012 European Championship Final.

Italy had played Spain in the first game of the group stage and had come away with a draw. In quite a good game, both teams went at each other with great skill. Both teams, however, are also notoriously slow starters in competitions, and both improved as the tournament progressed. The Italians, in particular, after a disastrous 2010 World Cup, grew in confidence with their new, young squad and were ready to really take the Spanish on in the final. In that game, they were the only team in the entire competition who attempted to attack the Spanish, rather than sit in the defensive 3rd and simply stifle. Italy had the confidence to attack. Unfortunately, for the Italians, they didn't, quite yet, have the quality to match. They lost 4-0, showing that, when teams didn't just sit and stifle, the Spanish were able to score plentifully and that tiqui-taca was, actually, quite exhilarating.

And so to Brazil, The Netherlands and Chile. These three teams brought to their clashes with Spain, that very same will to attack as Italy had shown. What they also brought, however, were teams that had a few qualities that Italy '12 lacked - experienced top class performers and the same ability to be comfortable on the ball when under pressure that the Spanish had shown for the previous 6 years. They did all play a version of the counter-attacking game - in all 3 matches the Spanish still dominated the possession statistics. It was however, their ability to not panick when counter-attacking, and to do so with greater regularity due to their composure on the ball, that was key. In all 3 matches, a lack of speed at the back came to haunt Spain. This was always an issue, remember, but not one that needed much attention when the opponent rarely had the ball. These three, though, could hold the ball once they had it, as well as capitalise on the speed of their forward players, especially those out wide. In a way, they each played a form of tiqua taca that had one advantage over the Spanish version - speed. The Spanish version of tiqui taca, as outlined earlier, is very patient and, for want of a better word, 'slow'. These three, however, each had enough players with on the ball quality to just about match the Spanish in the midfield (Robben, Vidal, Oscar, etc), with an advantage in speed going forward (it should also be noted that all three had superb tacticians as managers). But, fundamentally, they each played their own versions of tiqui taca in order to beat the Spanish version. As a small proof, during Spain's final group match of the 2014 World Cup, the Australian team went out and used almost the exact same tactics that the Dutch, Chilenos and Brazilians had succeeded with. They certainly had it over Spain in the speed department but, tellingly, not in their on the ball passing precision. The tiqui taca element was missing for Australia. Spain beat them 3-0 in a canter.

I've heard commentary that tiqui taca is now dead, the final nail hammered in by Chilé. I don't think this has happened at all, for two reasons. One - the methods that have beaten Spanish tiqui taca rely heavily on the ability of teams to hold the ball and pass well themselves - it's not a rejection of tiqui taca but the next level of tiqui taca. Two - far from being a six year novelty, the style is deeply ingrained in Spanish football. Yes, a particularly 'golden' generation of players took it to a giddy height, but they didn't invent it and, though I can't claim to know what the leading lights of Spanish football development will do in the future, I really can't imagine the desperation to control the ball falling away from the Spanish psyche too quickly. So, the teams that have beaten Spain have done so by developing tiqui taca to another level while the Spanish themselves would now, rather than abandon it, be desperate to do just the same. Tiqui taca is not dead. The Spanish themselves will continue to develop it, and the teams that are able to conquer it will need to be excellent on the ball technicians to do so.

the beatles and picasso

i've been reading 'revolution in the head' by iain macdonald. i think it's the 3rd time i've read it now. it's by far and away my favourite book on the beatles. this time, however, i'm listening (closely) to each track as i read about it. it has me thinking...

one of the things macdonald brings out is that for a long time, the beatles were wholly unconcerned with lyrics. they dealt in complete clichés. and, when you listen through, right up until 'help' (with the possible exception of 'there's a place' on the 'please please me' album), the lyrics are rather unimpressive. not only are the lyrics all clichéd derivatives, they are outdated clichéd derivatives. so why does the music still have such potency now?

my feeling is that lyrics, for the early stage of the beatles' career, functioned in much the same manner as faces or still life settings did for picasso in the early stages of cubism. he just used subject matter as something to push around the canvas. the real point was not the subjects he was painting, but the way the paint looked on the canvas when he finished. the subjects were something the audience could kind of grab onto in the midst of rather abstract notions of image. for the beatles, i think the same applies. they were pushing music around into such new and distinct places, but the lyrics were there to help the audience be able to attach themselves to what was, fundamentally, fairly abstract sonic ideas at the time. the music still works well now because, in spite of one aspect of it being relatively dire, other aspects - musical form, production ideas etc etc - are, even today, continually surprising and, well, good.

to demonstrate, listen to some of the recordings of cover songs from the 'beatles for sale'/'help!' era. musically, things like 'dizzy miss lizzy', 'slow down' or 'everybody's tryin to be my baby' are sonically years behind 'i feel fine', 'ticket to ride' or even 'yesterday' - original songs they were recording at the same time. the lyrics rely on the same clichés, but the sounds framing the lyrics have been pushed around significantly. they actually sound rather at odds with each other, being played on the same albums. the point being that this helps show how the beatles used lyrics as a foothold. to complain about it is probably like complaining that picasso should have jumped straight into pure abstraction. it would have been impossible to make the philosophical jump straight across in either case. in spite of all the talk of 'originality' and 'genius', i'm sorry, but art never works that way. it can only ever evolve.

the great thing is, though, what happens later on when the artists begin thinking about those leftover bits from previous eras, and start moving them into line as well. for picasso, you end up with things like 'guernica', where subject matter and technique are seamlessly intertwined, just about to the point of perfection, in the service of the artwork. i'd say something like 'strawberry fields forever' is analogous to that - lyrics and sound intertwined so closely as to make a perfect representation of the ideas being presented.