The 2 Faces of Busquets : Spain VS Barça

How & When To Provide The Right Tactical Context To A Player ?

Busquets played a key role in helping the Spanish national team reach the Nations League finale, showing a level superior to what he offers at Barça. Here are some statistics :

Source : @DirectoGoal (translated)

Granted, it’s a very small sample. But the same thing happened during the 2021 Euro. And one cannot take such a frequent discrepancy as just a random occurence without trying to understand why Busquets’ latest performances for Barça were disappointing.

PACE & POWER

This seems to be the most common criticism towards Busquets : “He’s not fast & strong enough to play as a DM for Barça”.

• IMHO, this is focusing on the symptoms (a DM having huge distances to cover, continuous sprints and countless defensive duels to play, as it happened vs Atletico de Madrid) rather the real causes (ineffective collective positioning, large distances between players and a lack of intensity & synchronization when pressing).

• Also, this is putting an exaggerated level of focus on the defensive side of things. As Cruyff said when he used Guardiola as a DM : if a team’s goal is to have 80% of ball possession, then 80% of the focus should be put on the midfielder’s technical abilities on the ball.

• It is also counter-intuitive to suddenly expect those attributes from Busquets. Was he faster & stronger when he was at his prime ? Were those the attributes that made him succeed throughout the years ?
  

THEN WHAT CHANGED ???

It would be a lie to pretend that Busquets’ level didn’t drop in the last couple seasons. But football is a team sport and no individual performance can be analyzed separately from the collective context that generates it.

Busquets has always been a “system player”. But now, the accuracy of his passes is increasingly dependant on his teammates being correctly positioned. The effectiveness of his pressures is increasingly dependent on his close teammates following suit. His stamina is increasingly dependent on the team's capacity to consistently keep ball possession and reduce the distances he has to cover.

What I mean is, his capacity to solve situations all by himself slightly decreased and he is now more dependant on the system around him.

HOW TO BUILD A CONTEXT FOR BUSQUETS

Guardiola packed the midfield, offering him countless passing options at all times & bodies to help in defensive duties. Luis Enrique used Dani Alves in a more central role, almost as an inverted full-back. Valverde did it by positioning Rakitic in a double pivot to provide cover. Last season, Koeman used a back 3 that enabled Busquets to play higher on the pitch. Different coaches used different formulas.

Busquets under Valverde (2018)

BUSQUETS IS THE SYSTEM AND THE SYSTEM IS BUSQUETS

But it wouldn’t make sense to build a context for a specific player if that context is not beneficial for the whole team, right ? It just happens that what’s good for Busquets is also what’s good for Barça :

A compact block with shorter distances between players, a controlled tempo that enables said block to attack & counter-press as a unit, keeping ball possession in the opponent’s half, using wide wingers to stretch the opponent’s block & create spaces down the central lanes, with players offering passing options between the opponent’s lines : that’s a system where Busquets would thrive… and also the very definition of positional play !!!

Xavi himself said so in an interview :

“In a team block that’s positioned high, that presses; Busquets is fundamental. The way he reads the game tactically, the way he recovers the ball… And on top of that he creates goal scoring opportunities, plays passes between the lines, knows which spaces to attack. If he’s forced to defend wide spaces, he will obviously look bad...”

Cruyff also said something similar : Defending is all about managing spaces.

ONE LAST THING…

To end this post, let’s talk about Piqué. There’s one worrying habit in Piqué’s defensive behavior these last 2 seasons : his tendency to push the defensive line deeper during defensive transitions.

Whether he doesn't trust his ability to win 1v1 duels or his teammates’ capacity to keep a high line & play the offside trap effectively... I don't know the exact reason, but it’s been happening too regularly.

You may ask : then why shouldn’t we also provide the right context for Piqué ? Well, that would mean making the team stay in a deep or mid-block, whereas Barça’s goal is to keep a high defensive line and “defend by going forward” (as Bielsa says). Contrary to Busquets, Piqué’s evolution as a player calls for a system that contradicts Barça’s traditional model of play.

And that may be one of the reasons behind the issues mentioned earlier : the lack of collective synchronization when pressing. When the midfielders counter-press, their back has to be protected. And if the back 4 doesn’t adjust its height accordingly, a no man's land appears : a space between the defensive & midfield lines where opponents receive the ball and move it with relative ease.

It’s all about the context.

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