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after 52 games 27 different opponents across three competitions B lusen finally tasted defeat against Atlanta in the Europa League final the loss was humbling but it can't overshadow how miraculous this season really was not just because of the turnaround in league position not even because bayern's 11-year dominance was ended but because Alonzo's leusen have fundamentally shifted the footballing landscape today in a heavily requested video I'm exploring Alonzo's incredible tactical revolution in depth what makes him unique in the modern game and why our very perception of football managers might never be the same [Music] again as you guys can imagine I have to use the internet a lot to research and create these videos and I don't always do that at home I'll often sit in a coffee shop I've even watched full games waiting at the airport but the danger of that is those networks are unencrypted and my personal information is vulnerable to hackers and that's why I highly recommend nordvpn the sponsor of today's video so what nordvpn actually does is create a secure tunnel between your device and the internet which protects you from attempts to access your data and if you're thinking I don't even use public Wi-Fi if this isn't for me that's why you're wrong because what's stopping you from clicking a dodgy link or downloading a virus or something that's why nordvpn goes the extra mile with its threat protection feature which which is kind of like your guardian angel of cyber security it scans for potential malware and says hey are you sure you want to click that trying n VPN is completely risk-free thanks to a 30-day money back guarantee and if you use the link on screen you get a massive discount on a 2-year plan and an extra 4 months free give it a go since the success of guardiola's Barcelona and the Spanish national team possession football has generally been seen as the best and most effective way to play the game but not just any possession football both of those teams were built on a philosophy that had been involving for a long time with its roots in the Dutch Total Football of the 70s and C's dream team in the '90s today it's known ASO deos or positional play over the years we've seen many coaches base their football on this method and today there's a whole generation inspired by Guardiola directly but we haven't seen anything quite like this jabby Alonzo had the privilege of playing under some of the world's greatest managers including Carlo angelotti and Jose Mourinho but undeniably there is a strong Guardiola influence and Alonzo's team share many of Pep's positional play principles however B lusin are far from an imitation no this is a significant reimagining one that sets Alonzo apart from many of his peers and I'm going to explain why in my previous videos I've often described positional play in terms of structure players spread out each occupying their own Zone to maintain regular distances between them and their teammates they then pass the ball around this structure often moving around zones themselves but always retaining the necessary width and depth to create space and exploit that space But the real magic of huo deposition is not found in the global structure itself but the local interactions between players what I mean by that is the individual decisions players have to make to keep the ball moving how close do I get to my teammates do I play long or short do I turn and dribble or pass and positional play gives the players a set of principles to navigate these scenarios some of the most important being as follows occupy a space and don't intrude on other spaces look for triangles to find the third man be aware of free spaces and move into those spaces and perhaps most importantly always look to find the unmarked player or the free man and through these local principles you end up with a cohesive team on the global level however we've seen somewhat of a trend away from this approach as some coaches have sought more Direct Control by imposing Global structures that take priority over the local principles as an extreme example Antonio con has been known to favor automation throughout his career predefined sequences based on the location of the ball and the opponent and these are coached relentlessly during training on the pitch that creates stability but also rigidity if things don't go to plan it's harder for players to find their own Solutions in the moment this is the first Major Way Alonzo is setting himself apart because though his teams have a clear shape he's putting the emphasis back on those local principles giving the players a toolkit to solve problems outside of any predefined structure a heavy Touch by Hoffman is problem solved as galdo eventually moves into that free space and is able to find the free man this principal first approach explains why Leverkusen are so adaptable to any opponent but it doesn't explain why they're so effective note that's down to the second crucial difference in Alonzo's method what really differentiates Alonzo's Leverkusen and most of positional play teams is an emphasis on player proximity now in recent times getting players close together has been attributed to less positional football for example the so-called relationist move movement but there's no reason why you can't use principles of positional play while bringing players closer together for example this is a very typical passage from Alonzo's Leverkusen players get close together and sigh through their opponents with quick passing in movement already we can see several ways in which the local principles are overriding the global structures Hoffman and galdo come closer to create passing angles sacrificing lusin width and depth plos goes ahead of Jaca to create a triangle for the third man and Vitz the left interior sees the empty Zone and attacks the right half space these are all principles of positional play they're just applied in a smaller Zone and done spontaneously to solve a problem however what's not immediately clear but what's so powerful is the effect this has on the opponent one of the key features of modern defenses is the ability to turn a block into a press and in my last video I explained how pressing triggers determine when to apply that pressure common triggers are passes to fullbacks and center backs since they can be easily isolated and most teams confronted by an effective press will end up going backwards to the keeper or playing the ball long but not by lusen Alonzo's team rather than being forced backwards almost always choose to play the ball back into pressure and they almost always bypass that pressure the secret here is of course player proximity because the distances are shorter you can move the ball much quicker with just one touch so even if every player is marked you can get rid of it before you get caught by finding the third man the effect of playing the ball back into pressure is that you constantly move your opponent in this congested area they're not just going to stand and watch they're going to try and win the ball and if you do this enough it creates a kind of condensing of your opponent particularly the Midfield and forwards and if space is condensed in one area it's going to be open somewhere else and Leverkusen are primed to exploit that space as you can imagine this is effective against teams that press High since if you beat the Press there's a load of space in behind and all of this might remind you of Roberto deseri since pressure baiting and Third Man combinations kind of became his signature but lusin don't just do this from Deep they play into pressure everywhere no matter how high or low the opponents defend and it usually has the same effect forcing that condensing and creating space either out wide or between the lines so often you wonder how players are just unmarked but it's because their passing has fundamentally shifted their opponent and lusin commit to this even against deep congested defenses but the same principle applies condense exploit space now all of this makes lusen a great attacking Force they don't just get the ball into good areas they move and disrupt their opponent but their close possession has a crucial secondary effect which is what allows them to dominate games and could be the most important factor in their unbeaten run when you look at Len's defensive numbers they are a bit of an anomaly despite conceding the fewest goals in the Bundesliga they have the fewest defensive actions of any kind the fewest tackles fewest interceptions fewest blocks or clearances they defend without defending this is of course possible because of their incredible possession phase which more than anything keeps the ball away from their opponent and as you might have guessed proximity makes for a good counter press since you've always got numbers around the ball at near equal distances but that's not the whole story because despite playing into pressure so often this whole possession system is really patient and as Leverkusen break lines and move forward they do so as a team take the wide center backs given the chance they will always carry the ball as far of the pitch as possible which for one gets them closer to play those quick passes but more importantly effectively minim IES the playing area and that's a conscious decision because getting their Defenders as close as possible to the forwards is what makes leus so dominant the intent not just to play in tight areas but to trap their opponents in those areas and by counter pressing in this way they rarely have to defend their own third so from a purely tactical perspective Alonzo's system defies some common knowledge but puts his team in a position to dominate dominate the ball the pitch and the game but having this theoretical game model as one thing much more important are the footballers that make it reality and you can't talk about leverkusen's unbeaten title about acknowledging just how special this group really is no team goes 50 games and beaten without immense footballing quality throughout this team are players who are not just brilliant but consistently brilliant from jaa's metronomic control and passing to grimaldo's taste for the sensation V his moments of Genius it feels an injustice not to mention everybody but ultimately there's not much more I can say when you watch you feel it and you simply enjoy it gets better and better for by a lusen what can be explained though is the common thread within the Leverkusen Squad that turns a group of incredible players into an incredible team and that isn't simply technical quality but game int elligence now jabby Alonzo explained that Leverkusen were very strategic when it came to their transfers before the season of course there was a demand for technical quality but even more important was a player's understanding of the game Grimaldo Hoffman bonifas and Jacka were all signed based on this quality and all of them became essential starters while stanisich and T also arriving the summer have played important Squad roles now game intelligence is a very difficult thing to Define but the best way to demonstrate it is how each of these players has harmonized with Alonzo's positional play typically the hardest part of a system like this is not just taking your own decisions but being aware of your teammate's decisions and adapting to those a simple example is the relationship between Vitz and Grimaldo if one drifts out wide the other goes into the half space so they're not occupying the same Zone however in these quick passing webs players are making much more complex decisions in the blink of an eye in this example four players are involved and every single movement in and out of space is recognized it starts with cunu passing and moving inside vacating a space that Hoffman drops to fill frong then moves inside and recognizing this the who was going there checks his run so they don't occupy the same space Hoffman again passes and fills the empty space and finally as cunu carries the ball v stays back occupying the space the center back has vacated and the result of all this rotation slicing straight through their opponent's block being able to communicate like this through a shared footballing language is what I call game intelligence and with enough of it players will find Solutions on the fly without needing the coach to change the system the players become to a certain degree self-organizing based on a set of principles which is why Grimaldo isn't stuck to the touchline but can position himself intuitively and why Vitz ends up all over the place each player's game intelligence is respected and given priority which sort of takes us back to the beginning the idea that this team isn't just a set of instructions issued from the top but a symbiosis of coach principls and players there was a kind of plot armor around this lusen season no matter how improbable the situation they found a way many would attribute that that's a luck but luck is rarely this consistent an alternative explanation is not luck but belief belief in the way that they play Leverkusen never Panic there's no knee-jerk reaction to adversity they stay composed and their football becomes no less precise in its execution and that's a result of the clear consistent messages the players received all season long those of discipline control and patience the question is where do those messages come from of course it comes from the coaching staff but is there more to it Granite Jaca has talked a lot about his relationship with Alonzo how their communication is very open direct and precise and you can tell Jaca has a lot of respect for his manager he explains that despite everything he's achieved Alonzo wants to learn he tries to get advice from us players and we do from him and we learn things every day I enjoy it more when I have a coach who's willing to listen on and off the pitch and as a result a player like Shaka doesn't just hear and regurgitate Alonzo's message he's actively invested in it believes in it as much as his coach does so when Alonzo can't be there for parts of training or crucially on the pitch those same messages are still being infused and when they don't just come from above but within shaped by the players they become much more powerful no wonder they have an unwavering belief in themselves so perhaps the lesson here is that leadership isn't just preaching your gospel but empowering those that you lead taking the final decision but getting there through collaboration and learning what's frightening is that this Collective still has so much more to learn and inevitably they'll be tested against the established powers that be which is why as much as I've loved watching lus in the season and they deserve their glorious chapter in history I can't help but feel that the story has only just begun thanks so much for watching each of these YouTube videos comes with a short bonus podcast exclusively for my patreon members this time I discuss whether Alonzo's tactics are likely to be widely adopted and the potential for an even bigger tactical Revolution on the horizon thanks so much to all my current members you're really helping to support the channel and improve the quality of these videos I hope you all enjoyed this one and I hope to see you in the next one until then oh [Music]