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uefa euro 2012
What makes the Spanish national
football team so dominant right
now?
Hung Lee, Cultural Anthropologist & Startup Recruiter
They have invented a new way of playing the game.
Tiki-taka isn't just a pleasing-to-the-eye brand of attacking
football, it is so radical an evolution of the possession
game that it's turned into a revolutionary way to play it.
Here are a few key concepts about this Spanish team that
most commentators — at least english pundits — don't seem
to understand.
1. spain defends By keeping the Ball.
The defensive statistics of this Spanish team are incredible —
they conceded only one goal in euro 2012 and only a total of
six across the last three major tournaments — that's nineteen
tournament games in total. This is an unheard of achievement
that even the most renowned defensive sides in history have
not come close to. And yet Spain has very few genuinely destructive
players, or even players whose primary role in the
team is to defend — to tackle, to head, to block. The Spanish
have simply worked out that there is only one ball on the
pitch, and if you have it, then only your team can score. And
so they have ball players throughout the side, even to the extent
of playing six midfielders, and defenders who were once
midfielders, in defensive positions. They do not carry a single
player who cannot play with the ball to his feet and be part of
a network that can be trusted to circulate the ball and utterly
dominate possession. Spain regularly 'out possesses' their opponents
at unheard of ratios as high as 60–70%. This means
that the opposition routinely has less than half the game to
score and win.
2. spain does not play the contested Ball.
An english commentator exclaimed during the recent tourna-
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