A brief account of the most revolutionary philosophy of football, how it changed the ancient foundations of the game, and continues to shape it in the modern era.
In the recent Euro 2012 http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Italy-c2926 to take European trophy, becoming the first team in the history to win the competition consecutively for the first time in history.
However, few people know that the both the finalists of the gala held in http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Poland-c2983, were impressed by the same philosophy that propelled them to the epitome of the tournament.
The same philosophy that helped Jose Mourinho rise to the height of fame as a manager, and win multiple champions leagues with multiple clubs.
The same basic idea that is pioneering a shift in football all around the world, making it a much more attacking game.
Total Football is said to have been pioneered by Dutch football club Ajax during the 1970s, but the roots of the idea goes further back into the history, in a time when the foundations of the game were taking shape.
Back in the 1940s an Argentine football club by the name of http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/River-Plate-c40368 laid the early nitty-gritty of the Philosophy giving birth to a bunch of players that came to be known in the history as ‘La Maquina’ or ‘the Machine’. The team won four Primera Division
titles.
The idea was brought out of the incubation stage and brought out to the world by http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Hungary-c2920 national football team, much to the credit of a Hungarian manager Gusztav Sebes.
The basic theme of the philosophy was a tactical theory in which any outfield player could shuffle role in the field with any other player in the team, and thus the player played the whole match moving from one position to the other according to the flow
of the game.
Anyone of the players on the field could be an attacker, a midfielder and defender in any given game.
http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Uruguay-c3035 adopted that style of play to form the Golden Team, a set of players that went on to become one of the most successful and famous teams in the history of the game.
The historical team that is also known as the Magical Magyars, the Marvellous Magyars, the Magnificent Magyars, or the Mighty Magyars started its era in the 1950s.
The team was included in some of the most famous matches ever played in the game including the “Match of the Century” where a team beat http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/England-c749 (the inventors of association football) for the first time in the history of the sport.
“Battle of Berne” in the 1954 FIFA World Cup where they beat the Brazilians and the “Miracle of Berne” where the Mighty Magyars were beaten in the final of the competition by the feeble Germans, in what is considered to the most spectacular underdog story
of all time.
The team was eventually broken apart due to the 1956 Hungarian revolution, and the great players migrated to http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Barcelona-c38604 and Real Madrid while some chose to come back to their country.
The personalities diminished but their greatest contribution to football, the introduction and implementation of innovative tactics, the use of a core set of players, and the interchangeability of roles during a game, continued to live on through the next
generation.
This is the stage where the philosophy was picked up a Dutch coach Reynolds, who together with his student Rinus Michels gave the philosophy a modern form and applied it to Ajax.
The idea reached his peak at the time of Johan Cruyff, who alongside being one of the most famous players of the game, also became the most famous exponent of the revolutionary system.
The philosophy’s golden days were yet to come.
To be continued....
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