Totally terrific Spain lend Euro a Cruyffian touch
It might have started as an almost subconscious process at Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup, but this year Spain are unapologetically parading the New Total Football after blowing Ireland away at Euro 2012.
- Agence France-Presse
- Updated: June 15, 2012 07:36 PM IST
It might have started as an almost subconscious process at Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup, but this year Spain are unapologetically parading the New Total Football after blowing Ireland away at Euro 2012.
The 'Furia Roja' (red fury) have picked up the baton of 1970s Holland and reinvented and transformed - dare one say even perfected, the concept of 'totaalvoetbal,' brainchild of former Netherlands and Ajax supercoach Rinus Michels.
After all the debate as to why Spain benched their strikers in a tentative opening draw with those experts of the crabby game Italy, their 4-0 romp against the Irish enabled two-goal hero Fernando Torres to underline the message Spain are preaching.
Total football is back, except today's exponents wear red not orange and, unlike the Dutch (with the single exception of Euro 1988), win trophies.
"The good thing is Spain have many players who can fill many positions," said Torres - who graciously accepts others can fill his own place, even 'midfielders' such as Cesc Fabregas.
Spain came here debating whether they do better with a classic number nine - Torres, despite his poor season with Chelsea which nonetheless culminated in a Champions League win - or whether a galaxy of midfield stars can pass the ball into the net.
Having discovered against Italy that tiki-taka with no end product does not suffice - the holders returned to type with Torres - and his brace was a vindication.
"El Nino (Torres nickname) comes home," was the judgment of El Pais newspaper on Friday, which showered the striker with eulogies.
"The man who gave Spain the Cup four years ago, who endured more pain than glory at the World Cup (in the shadow of David Villa), who almost fell into an abyss with Chelsea, has definitively come home.
"The Roja have a number nine and his name is Torres."
Spain are thus doubly blessed in that, even in the injury absence of Villa, they have a 'real' number nine. And yet they can, should his form go walkabout once again as at Stamford Bridge, also call upon the 'false' version in Cesc, knowing he scores goals too.
For the Spanish, the result is all that counts.
"The debate about a number nine will continue," Torres told Telecinco television. "This system worked today (against the Irish) and worked the other day with Cesc."
Midfielder Xavi Hernandez, such a gifted cog in the total Spanish machine, agrees and said after Ireland succumbed to four goals and to a championship record 779 completed passes that "the philosophy is not negotiable."
For Del Bosque, "Torres knows how to find the spaces. We have a system and we showed it works.
"People think it is important to have a striker and it is important for us as well - but it is more important to win."
With the Dutch variant, that was so often the vital missing ingredient - most notably in the 1974 World Cup final when a team so brilliantly led by Cruyff came off second best, at least in terms of the result, to Germany.
Mention of the German class of '74 throws up another thought - namely, that the current Germany team is seeking to copy the Spanish way, with a young and fleet-footed team making the Dutch look pedestrian in Kharkiv.
That reversed the roles of 1974, when the Dutch were the undisputed real thing and remained so until the likes of Barcelona began reinventing the philosophy and grafting it on to the Spanish national side.
Cruyff bridged the generations given his highly successful spell as coach at the Camp Nou while Pep Guardiola was a protege.
Now the Spanish are laying the entertainment on thick by taking a leaf out out the 'Oranje' book as written by Rinus Michels and orchestrated on the pitch by Cruyff.
Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni took up the musical metaphor.
"They are like an orchestra and involve all their players."
As Spain march on, the Dutch struggle - albeit in the knowledge they set the total football rolling.