Chelsea v Barca

[Keyser Soze]

A couple of points. It's a lot easier to play pragmatic football than it is to be brave enough to dominate possession.

Valverde's Barcelona are not a patch on Pep's Barcelona when it comes to keeping the ball or dominating possession.
I would argue that Valverde is pragmatic in that it's practical to play to Messi and Iniesta's strengths, however he has been hamstrung (with or without his blessing) of signings such as Paulinho, Gomes, Vidal, D Suarez etc who clearly not at the level to play the football that Cruyff advocated at La Masia.

Ferguson and Mourinho have had great success against Wenger but their success has been very limited when it comes to Guardiola, despite spending far more at Madrid and United than Pep did at Barcelona.

I can see what you are saying and Wenger can be held up as an example of what you are saying but Pep has struggled far more against philosopher's like Klopp than he has done against Mourinho and Ferguson.

Wenger has lost the plot to a certain degree and has failed to acknowledge that a team needs balance but I don't think you can label Pep in the same way.

Despite similarities in ball retention the way Pep has evolved in Munich and Citeh is completely different to how he played at Barca.

He plays to a teams strengths and a nation's strengths or weaknesses. Anybody would be a fool not to build a team around Messi yet when he went to Bayern he saw that his creativity came out wide in Robben and Ribery. At City he uses Silva and De Bruyne as his match Winners.

Again though I can see where you are coming from I do believe a possession based style can be adopted on limited funds if a coach is brave enough and has a clear enough vision set out.

As much as it pains me to say it, Martinez did this in the lower leagues down West and there are plenty of clubs in Spain who will refute your idea that you cant play possession football without huge amounts of money.

There are obviously huge challenges in this country but clubs are definitely trying to produce more technical players but the challenge is having the vision and strategy of bringing these kids through when the money is there to just go and buy a 26 year old ready made from the continent.

The last two paragraphs are great points. Swansea were a successful exponent, and what kept it going was then developing the underlying infrastructure and youth set up to feed a "known system". It was probably something I missed out on my commentary on Barcelona - in that the players coming through can feed the system along with the star players they spend money on. I think what it says is that once you have that infrastructure your manager selection then becomes critical, so that each coach sticks to that style, even if they are slightly finessed in the way you speak about Valverde's take on the Barca style.

Where Swansea went wrong was the Bradley yankee guy. He seemed to me a mismatch on that entire infrastructure. This new coach seems to be more in tune and as a result they will now probably survive.

Good debate though, this one.

[Penarth Blues]

A couple of excellent posts - thank you. I’d just note that I still don’t like the possession style of football as I don’t think it entertaining in the slightest no matter how technically gifted the players. It’s a personal opinion and I understand others will disagree.