Team Focus: Should Chelsea Really Play A More Possession-Based Game?
The unrivalled success of Pep Guardiola's Barcelona team as well as the Spanish national team from 2008 through 2012 sparked a huge rise in the idealisation of their tika-taka style of play. Bayern Munich have become arguably the best club side on the planet, while Germany swiftly proved themselves to be the best team at the 2014 World Cup, both doing so by dominating possession as they ground opponents down. Being able to control games and pass teams off the pitch has become, for many, the ultimate aspiration when it comes to how to play 'the beautiful game'.
And that is what sparked Jose Mourinho's recent outburst after his Chelsea team - who will soon be crowned Premier League champions - were subjected to a chorus of "boring, boring Chelsea" as they shut out second-placed Arsenal at the Emirates to record a highly disciplined but rather dull goalless draw to maintain their 10-point lead at the top of the table. The exuberant celebrations with which the players welcomed the final whistle were widely criticised, as many questioned the legitimacy of the country's best footballing side cheering merely stopping their opponents rather than going across London and playing them off the park.
Mourinho responded by claiming that we have become too obsessed with retaining and recycling possession, and wanting to play football in a very particular way. "Maybe, when my grandsons play, football will be a game without goals and we’ll just enjoy people passing the ball. But when football is played without goals, you will say it’s boring." He has a point, but there are those still in disbelief that such a talented squad should feel the need to approach their run-in in such a way.
But then why should they have to play in any particular way if their unquestionably knowledgable and gifted manager feels that is not the best course of action? It is they that hold the lead at the top of the table and it is they that will win the Premier League this season, so why should they change the reactive, pragmatic approach they have taken to using in recent matches since the team's early season form dissipated?
To be clear, Chelsea have not played this way all season. In the first half of the 2014/15 campaign they were by far and away the best footballing side, and have thus averaged 55.1% possession, the sixth-most in the Premier League. Before their recent games against United and Arsenal - in which they ceded possession to their opponents - they had even seen more of the ball than the Gunners.
As Mourinho claims, if they win the title they will have had a successful season, regardless of their possession share. Atletico Madrid won La Liga last season with the 10-highest average possession (just 49%), while Rayo Vallecano finished 12th in the table with 56.8% of the ball, the second most. No need to question which team would have finished the season the happier.
Granted, Chelsea's situation is vastly different to that of Atletico's. The Blues have the means, finances and players to dominate the Premier League and play past opponents, and many people find it frustrating that they have started to opt against doing so, but the truth is that they do not - as some have suggested they might - have any duty to entertain. Mourinho's job is to win trophies and doing so without as much of the ball as Barcelona or Bayern Munich is certainly still successful. As the above graph highlights, there is a general trend showing that possession correlates with league position, with Bayern (70.2%), Barcelona (69.2%) and PSG (63.5%) leading Europe's top 5 leagues for possession and all three likely to win their respective domestic titles. Generally, at the other end, too, less possession means relegation is more likely, plainly because worse teams struggle to retain possession.
This is not, obviously, by any means an exhaustive rule, though. United (60.7%) rank fourth in Europe for possession and may well finish outside the Premier League's top 3; Inter rank second in Italy (59.2%) but aren't having a great campaign; Valencia are 43rd in Europe for possession but may even challenge the top 3 in La Liga; Crystal Palace are safely in the Premier League's mid-table but have the lowest share of the ball of all 98 teams in Europe's top 5 leagues (40.5%).
The graph helps to pick out some teams that perhaps do 'better' or 'worse' than their possession share suggests they should. Lens, for example, are 20th in Ligue 1 despite enjoying 48.1% possession; Vallecano are 11th with 57.5% possession; Cagliari are 18th in Serie A with 48% possession, the same average share as the Bundesliga's 5th-placed team, Schalke. The trend line shows where teams should be according to their possession, with the likes of PSG, Tottenham and Getafe closest to it. Clearly, however, there is not necessarily any reason to particularly prefer a possession-based approach. Chelsea will have no qualms about winning the league having had less of the ball than the likes of Borussia Dortmund or Liverpool.
It may be that their approach could limit them European competition, though, where the trend is even stronger. Bayern (66%), Barcelona (63.8%), Juventus (58.4%) and Real Madrid (57.9%) - the four teams remaining in this year's competition - have recorded the most possession. Chelsea had less than half of the ball in both legs against PSG and failed to put the tie to bed despite leading on 3 occasions.
Chelsea won the Champions with only 47.5% possession in 2012, though, while Atleti came within a matter of minutes of victory in last season's final despite having just 46.3% possession. Granted, neither team will go down in history as one of the greatest ever footballing sides, but their achievements are in no way lessened by those stats.
Jose Mourinho has no obligation to entertain: even though many people that pay good money to watch football may contest it, his duty is merely to lead Chelsea to success. Roman Abramovich's disgruntlement at Chelsea not playing sufficiently good quality football was reportedly the reason that Mourinho's last tenure was ended, but would he, or Chelsea's fans, prefer their team to miss out on the Premier League title for four seasons in a row, or be back at the summit, whatever the method? There is quite simply no question about it.
Do you think there is too great an obsession with possession football? Do you think Chelsea are justified in playing whatever style of football they please? Let us know in the comments below
@MiguelSuave: How could Chelsea have depth issue when they have/had talented players on their bench.. CFC had Schurrle, Salah, Remy, Drobga, Ramires, Peter Cech, Fillepe Luis and now Cuadrado. These aforementioned players are all quality at their respective positions. There was a funny statistic on WhoScored recently that showed Mourinho and Chelsea did the least amount of interchange/subs this season, meaning with the most talented depth/bench in the EPL and the least substitutions made hmmmmmmmmmmmm ;)
In the beggining of the season Chelsea was playing some Beautiful football and they just seem to lose Gas as the season got longer.. Problem with Chelsea is the same that Real has. an extremely lack of Roster Depth.
"To be clear, Chelsea have not played this way all season. In the first half of the 2014/15 campaign they were by far and away the best footballing side." The most relevant part of the article and a fact seemingly lost amid the "boring" hysteria. Chelsea already did all the playing in the 1st half of the season. With fatigue and injury issues setting in, Mourinho made the necessary adjustments to ensure Chelsea made the finish line. And they did that in dominant fashion.
Well it is boring, and it was the main reason why he left Chelsea last time around. The tzar wanted to see more attractive and attacking football, remember?
I'm not sure about the level of obsession, but Chelsea's playing style suits them. Maybe they'll tweak it a little here and there next season, maybe not. But the bottomline is, whatever works, as long as results keep coming, I see no reason for change. Winning and winning titles are the main objectives in any sports. It's all that matters.
Teams that are not so good in defensive phase are fool to play this elitist kind of football, they take only unnecessary risks by doing so. Chelsea playing low on the pitch is clever, in this moment of the season they want to be hermetic, and for scoring mourinho does all in on fabregas and hazard, trying to shoot less but better with his top players upfront. Clearly Chelsea are not fitted to play a more risky football, and they don't even need to being first with that gap and only a few weeks to go.
Possession should be a consequence not an aim, the aim is to score, and for scoring you have to shoot a lot or shoot better. Teams that have as blueprint the aim of controlling the ball prior to shooting, like PSG, make me laugh hard, they are Barcelona wannabes but obviously they didn't understood nothing about Barca. Barca use possession as a defensive tactic, not to shoot, to have more density around the ball when they lose it, to run less, recover quickly and don't let the opponent play. Having the control of the ball means having control over the game, and only teams that are perfect defensively can afford to play like that, because it forces the game to become a matter of "how much can your defence resist in 90' of relentless attacks?", implying that my def phase can play this risky, full pressure.
Who decides Mourinho's obligations? Surely either his senior management, or the fans. And there's no abstracted rule. If fans or the chairman want more priority given to entertainment, then the obligation emerges. As of now it seems Abramovich is content, but perhaps he isn't. The fans seem content - the only real way to measure is that they keep turning up. Although if Chelsea start to dominate for years and they do not begin to dominate in terms of new fans, worldwide interest, in the way of Man Utd, management might decide that for all the success a change is needed. But it's definitely simplistic to say Mourinho has no obligation to entertain. It could be that fans only care about winning, but if that were true they'd care equally for England winning at cricket, even if they did not care for cricket as a spectacle. Certainly fans everywhere want to be entertained and in fact the best sides of all time have not often found these two dual objectives to be in conflict.
What this article hasn't mentioned is that over-possessing the ball could also be a form of defence, retaining and keeping the ball for longer durations= less chances the opposition has of scoring (Something Barca has done for years with a weak back 4)... Those smaller aforementioned teams perhaps play the possessive game due to a lacklustre defence... Hmmm Chelsea certainly needs to play more of a possession game as they have the world class talent almost at every attacking point, their EPL style of football clearly didn't work in the UEFA champs league as they were dominated for 90mins in both outings against PSG...