Lack of width is one of the sticks Jesse Marsch has been beaten with since he arrived at Leeds United, but he insists one of the game’s most successful coaches follows the same principle. Pep Guardiola, winner of 10 European top flight titles and two Champions League crowns, is a proponent of narrow attacks, according to Marsch.
Marsch’s defence of this key pillar of his philosophy comes after a photo emerged of seven keys to the game pinned to the Leeds dressing room wall. One of the points read: “minimal width, vertical, counter-press.”
“Even one of the things that comes out was this thing that was up in our dressing room and then went out on Twitter, and some people reacted to minimum width,” said Marsch. “That's actually a Pep Guardiola principle.
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“It's something we still talk about with the way we do things and what we do in possession. How we want to be vertical in attack and then how we want to also make sure we're managing counter-pressing when we lose it.
“There's obviously little things you pick up. Even from a set-piece perspective [there’s] some things teams do I just flat out steal. That's what being a manager is.
“For me, it's part imagination, part innovation and part thievery. Then how to do it in a way that fits exactly what you want to be and what you want your team to do.”
Speaking in his pre-match press conference ahead of Saturday’s Accrington Stanley trip, Marsch was pushed on why he choose to favour narrow attacks, shunning the flanks. It all comes down to controlling an opponent’s space, he said.
“It's always about controlling the space of the opponent,” he said. “Whether you have the ball or whether you don't have the ball, you want to be compact so you can manage moments of transition.
“If you're open, you can't manage transition because when you lose balls, or when you win balls, you can't be vertical enough and then you either have to get into defensive phase, if you lose it, or you have to get into build-up phase if you win it because you don't have enough options to either attack vertically or defend vertically and, ultimately, that's what we're trying to do.
“We're trying to manage spaces within the match so we're very aggressive and effective in attacking transition and we're very clear on how to win the ball back quickly and protect ourselves from vertical transition from the opponent.”
Marsch even admits he sometimes takes the principle to extremes by joking about the absence of a goal on the touchlines out wide. He wants everything to be geared towards bearing down on the white thing in the middle of the byline.
“We always have width, it's just a matter of how wide and where we want to play with the ball and what we want to do when we win or lose the ball,” he said. “I joke often and say the goal is not on the touchline.
“The goal is in the middle on the end line and so when we win balls, we don't want to run to the corner. We want to run to the middle of the pitch where the goal is and that's how you score goals.
“Even now, I feel like, lately, we’re more effective in both aspects of defending transition and attacking transition. That will be key for us to continue to manage matches and to continue to get results.”
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