Tactical review of 2019: Re-emergence of Brazil and a judicious high press

Tite has transformed the way the seleção play but 2019 was mainly about Liverpool and their very modern football

This year has been all about Liverpool. It is not just that they are European and world champions, or that they are well set to win the Premier League for the first time since 1990. It is that their football feels a distillation of the modern game. It is high tempo, hard-pressing football with a fluid front three and extremely attacking full-backs.

So universal do those traits seem to have become at the highest level of the game that teams who don’t play in that way appear almost old-fashioned. One of the reasons José Mourinho left Manchester United a year ago was because his refusal to press seemed symptomatic of somebody whom the game had passed by, yet the biggest doubt about his replacement, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, is that he too is fundamentally a counterattacker who struggles with what has come to seem to be the defining quality of the best modern coaches: their ability to organise an attack so that they can interact quickly enough to break down compact defences that sit deep against them.

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from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/dec/31/football-tactical-review-2019-liverpool-brazil-high-press