The history of Total Football
Football has had teams that have created their own style and that due to their success and impact have, in a certain way, changed the sport itself. And quite likely, Total Football is one of the most remembered.Total Football is a style of play that consists of a player taking the place of another teammate when he makes a pressing or attacking movement, always maintaining the tactical scheme so that each player can circumstantially become a defender, midfielder or striker, according to what the game of the team or the rival requires.
Here, high ball possession comes into play, which is achieved, in part, thanks to intense pressure when the ball is lost, which allows it to be recovered quickly, added to a passing game that allows progressive progress.
Johan Cruyff
Jimmy Hogan
Jimmy Hogan was an English footballer who performed as a striker and played for several clubs in his native country such as Fulham, Bolton Wanderers, Swindon Town or Burnley, however, and despite being a good player, Hogan stood out as one of the most influential coaches of football history. During his last stage as a player, at Bolton, he faced FC Dordrecht, club from the Netherlands, defeating them 10-0, and this led the Dutch club to decide to bet on the Englishman as coach in 1910.There he stayed for two years where he implemented training methods aimed at improving ball control and the physical condition of the players, something that impressed the Football Dutch Federation who gave him the opportunity to be the coach for a match of the Dutch national team. From there, he would go to Vienna to coach Austria Wien until the start of World War I, which led him to Hungary where he coached MTK Budapest, there, he would put together an epoch-making winning team for the country. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Hogan trained in Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary.
The Austrian Wunderteam
This was the name given to the Austrian national team of the 1930s, which dominated European football during that decade with a playing style rarely seen at the time, where the Austrians mostly controlled possession of the ball. The Wunderteam was coached by Hugo Meisl, who, due to his great passion for football, managed to establish friendships with some influential coaches such as Herbert Chapman or Jimmy Hogan, with whom he met for a time in Austria and from whom he learned several of the principles that later applied with the Austrian national team.That Meisl team was an important inspiration for Ernst Happel, one of the most important managers in history and who brought his ideas to the Netherlands at the beginning of the 60s.
La Maquina
That was the name given to the River Plate team during the 40s, which included names like Adolfo Pedernera and Angel Labruna and which saw the first steps of legends like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Amadeo Carrizo. La Máquina was one of the reference teams of the time and had a very offensive style of play where the mobility of its players, especially in attack, made them a very difficult team to defend. In fact, for some historians, the false nine was first implemented on this team.Aranycsapat
Aranycsapat is the Hungarian name for the golden team of Hungary in the 1950s, which get together some of the best players of the time such as Ferenc Puskas, Sandor Kocsis and oltan Czibor and which was led by Gusztav Sebes on the bench, a renowned admirer and disciple of Jimmy Hogan. Hungary changed the typical 3-2-3-2 that many teams played at the time for a 4-2-4 in which the players change positions maintaining the same tactical scheme. Playing that way, they beat Stanley Mattews´s England 6-3 and 7-1, in what were two of the best football demonstrations in history.Jack Reynolds
Thanks to the recommendation of his friend Jimmy Hogan, Ajax Amsterdam hired a little-known English coach named Jack Reynolds, who would remain at the club from 1915 to 1925 and lead it to win the first titles in its history. In 1922, Reynolds' Ajax faced Feyenoord for the first time, beating them 3-2, although the Rotterdam team filed a complaint about the third goal that, according to their perception, had not crossed the goal line, a complaint that was accepted. That conflict started the biggest rivalry in Dutch football.Reynolds used an attacking game idea in which he tried to control possession of the ball and create space in the central area of the field, opening the game on the wings. English was the element that led Ajax from being an amateur team to one of the most important in the country, helping it to improve both in terms of facilities and training and sports results.
In his third spell as Ajax coach, between 1945 and 1947, Reynolds had a young striker named Rinus Michels on his team, who would use many of the Englishman's ideas to perfect a style of play that would travel the world and be remembered by many decades. Michels used ideas that the best teams of the most recent decades of football were using to implement them in Ajax, a club that he began training in 1965.
The story of Michels and his influence on Cruyff is well known as well as that of the latter in other coaches like Guardiola, to cite an example.
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