Given that he had a team that contained the talents of David de Gea, Thiago Alcantara, Iker Muniain and Isco, it is tempting to assume that Julen Lopetegui's job as the Spanish Under 21 manager is a fairly easy one. Yet there was more to Spain as they won their second consecutive European title then a collection of talented players; their typical play based on short passing and intense pressure placed those talents in a position to excel.
Again, the temptation is there to generalise and assume that a Spanish national team playing that kind of football is a given; that it is automatic. Yet it is not. Players spend only a fraction of their time with the national team and during such restricted time-frames it is practically impossible for them to 'learn' a method of playing.
So how do Spain manage to play in that manner? An explanation was provided in part by Lopetegui himself who said "We have a crystal clear philosophy on how to play football...ultimately for all Spanish national team football we want to have many players near the ball, and we want players with great technical repertoire. That is why we include players with these qualities."
The rest of the article can be found on Blueprint for Football.
You Are Reading
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Where I Write
Categories
Anfield Island
Art
Athletics
Award
Blueprint for Football
Books
Brazil
Calcio
Canoe
Coaching
Culture
Cultured Football
cycling
Eleven magazine
Featured Articles
Field
Five Questions for Cultured Football
Football
Football Pink
Footy Analyst
General
General Sport
GENSillum
Growing Up in Malta
Il Re Calcio
In Bed With Maradona
Inside Left
Interview
Ironman
Italy
Juventus
Late Tackle
Liverpool
Magazine
Malta
Masters Athletics
Merlin Publishers
Music
Olympiad
Olympics
Opinion
Parenting
Paul Grech
Pool
public relations
Recognition
Review
Rugby
Runaway Travel
Skylife
Snapshots of Malta
Snooker
social media
Spiel Magazine
Sportiv
Sports Book Chat
Sports Book Chat; Swinging Balls
Sunday Circle
Swimming
Swinging Balls
The Botafogo Star
The Gentleman Ultra
The Tomkins Times
Times of Malta
Torino
Travel writing
Triathlon
Twitter
TwoHundredPercent
Wales
Weightlifting
Well Red
When Saturday Comes
Writing
Writing for Charity
Youth Football
0 comments:
Post a Comment