we have the balance here freedom for y to attack and get into the box and obviously the rans of Torres behind Defenders that was a a big [Music] threat I am Rafa benit and I would like to talk about a little bit tactics or the formation that the 4231 I used to to use in uh my my teams you have to change depending on the teams but uh the main thing is you have an idea you have a formation and after is how you move your players around how you adapt the system depending on your
team or the other team so in this case a 42 31 unlik any system I will not talk about the keeper because some people say oh you have to talk about the keeper too she's always there you can play a low block middle or higher so if you come here obviously you go higher then you can you can go more or less like that or you can go higher if you want to press now that teams they are playing from the back then you can go a little bit higher and be more aggressive in your
pressing so then it's nearly a 442 so but if you go to three qus more or less is what I like to do okay this is not a rigid formation so the two holding midfielders are really important to protect the center backs but at the same time always I like one of them if we go to Valencia Baraka ala one of them has to be more offensive and one of them has to keep the position so if you do that imagine that you do that and you have AAR or you have Mist here not that
used to play like that and if you move AR here it's not two holding midfielders at the end of the day you have just one and then you can play depending on the the position is like a 43 three if you want you have pente here ret or Angulo this side oili so then you are talking about a team that is playing in attack like a 433 formation and in defense then you go back and then you have this situation then how you press against these center backs if they move the ball and you like
to press against a full back or the other full back so one way to do it is to come with the striker and to come with the second Striker and obviously everybody's suffing then you come like that I will put the strikers here okay and you come like that but the other way is you wait in a 442 formation and when they move the ball here then this one is closing the back pass and this one is coming against the holding Midfield so you can do it deeper you can do it in in the middle
or higher now with teams playing from the back a a lot of teams they come here and at the end of the day what happen so you play Four against four so they come here they play short and after they play long and then you play Four against four so a lot of teams they are doing that at the moment and for me and especially if you want to do a proper pressing you have to wait you have to wait and then look for this pass normally this pass or this pass no then if they
drop off a Midfield is fine they lose players if they play Between the Lines you have to be aggressive here but the main thing is wait for this pass that this the trigger and then you come one way or another way and then you come to press and you have to shuffle then when you have that people can see sometimes oh it's defensive it's not defensive it's well organized so the balance the balance is the key if you want to win games if you want to win trophies the balance is the key so balance when
you are attacking or balance when you are defending so what I said before at the beginning it doesn't matter the system the system could be a 442 or could be a 442 and it's a big difference it's the same system with a massive Gap in the middle 42 31 give you the possibility to commit the center backs and at the same time to work against the holding midfielder but the key role of every single player is crucial because if you don't have these players covering so if you come to press here you come to press
here you have a striker here and a player between the lines and they if they come to press here so this player will be free so if he's running they have to follow and this player will be free if you don't adjust this position if you adjust too much you have a big cap here so this player has to be inside if this player is white that is very common and there a big gap here if this player is waiting this player is free so then they link with this player and then it's when you
have [Music] problems for example in Valencia we used to play 42 31 know that I say before but when you are in a top side Napoli for example we were playing also 4231 so we have Iain we have in we have merens we have Kon we brought albiol georgino was the one that has to pass the ball so different um kind of players if you have time two or three years you can choose the right players the characteristic of the players if you have money you can choose the names that you want but if you
don't have money so you have to choose the characteristic of the players to play the way that you want to play so defending everybody has to work together is nearly for for to and if you want to do what I said before you have to press like that and attacking is really really important to commit this center backs this player has to be in between to get into the box he has to go against the full back he has to go against the full back so it's really important to be sure that the you go
here to situation One V one or overlaps all the time overlaps all the time then keep the players busy when you go to the white areas and you dribbling then he has to attack the near post you have to follow him he has to go in the middle he has to go to the back post and one of the midfielders the offensive midfielder in our case Baraka when we won the league he was getting into the box late so that is difficult to control for the midfielders so this runs uh late runs so but in
reality you have one Striker but you have one second strike coming the Winger in the other side and a midfielder and then again I will go to the key word balance you need to control here obviously they will be defending then you have to be sure that you keep the balance so when you see a team well organized here it's more difficult for them to play Counterattack and the key is to be sure that the these players are aware what is going on and then you can regain the second ball and sustain the attack if
you see Manchester City if you see Liverpool now what they have is they are always high but they keep the balance it's not easy to have a Counterattack against them because they press as soon as they give the ball away they press and they quite aggressive my time with Valencia was like that the team was very aggressive and we could play counter attack we could press we could change rotate players and still everybody knew what they had to do but we did it with Napoli and when we play for example Newcastle United some people has
a the the idea that we were playing five for one and it's not true because in the championship we play with Gail and D behind so we're playing 42 31 sometimes 442 but um in the championship and after the first year we were playing 42 31 so depending on the players you are more offensive or less offensive and some games when we were better than the other teams we were playing with three at the back with win backs and it was a 343 then you have Rondon you have aliron and you have a and with
Richie so we were quite offensive and quite aggressive with people in the wide areas with the midfielder Shelby and Hayden for example and then we were high on the pitch so depending on the on the teams you [Music] manage if we go to my time at Liverpool some people they they remember the names of some key players but not from the beginning until the end of my time at Liverpool so one of the key decisions in Liverpool was when we signed Torres when we signed Torres we move Gerard behind Torres because we could sign Marano
or Lucas Lea or Alonso Marano Alonso Lucas Lea so we have the balance here freedom for y to attack and get into the box and obviously the rans of Torres behind Defenders that was a a big threat so we have cow that was always working hard and then changing Wingers depending on the year but the the main thing was freedom for behind the striker Torres a front that he could run behind Defenders and he was a threat and two midfielders that they could pass the ball like Alonso or they could regain the ball like maano
or Lucas Lea we signed Lucas Lea when he was 19 years old and he was 10 years in in Liverpool so these players they were giving you balance and after you have Fabio you have even areloa so Glenn Johnson players that they could go forward and we were always a threat at the beginning was kager and hippia but later on we have a skirt also and Ager that AER was quite good on the ball and he was coming forward so key word balance keep the team well organized be sure that you can attack be sure
that you can press when you give the ball away or be sure that you can go back and stay organized and wait for your your trigger that could be this kind of passes [Music] if we talk about Valencia so key players ala Baraka a holding midfielder and an offensive midfielder very good get into the box we have AAR here and Mista or K and Mista and here K viente ruet andulo they were really good going forward Kuro was good overlapping really good going forward One V one vente was playing for Brighton he was amazing at
this time was a young player and he was pushing and pushing kilon Thal and here we have Carboni that was Carboni was playing when he was 41 last year so he was 37 when I I signed and he was going forward and forward all the time and after Fabio relio that they brought him here to Liverpool quality massive quality left foot it was amazing so you have quality here you have energy we brought Soko later on and then he came to Liverpool also energy in the middle and here you aala very strong very aggressive and
pelino or Marena any of them and jukic that he could play the ball so it was very Balan thing with kares and palop two keepers with experience and then um players that they could they could give information to the Defenders so the team was capable to play deep was capable to press really high was capable to play in the middle and you could change players and still you could win games so we were I remember games changing seven players and then still we were winning and our teams they used to be much better in the
second part of the season because little by little the players they were learning what they have to do and then the understanding between them was much better and the other teams they have up and downs and we could sustain or keep the level high one of the things that I like to do is um to coach the players and when I say to coach the players to make them think they need to understand these tactics so we could do the same uh interview as a training session for my players I could be talking about the
same thing so what you have to do when you have to press what you have to do if he goes to press or if he come to press here you have to cover because he will try to play with this player then this player or this player between the lines you have to cover you have to cover so how high you cover so there are teams so they were coaches that they like to play when they go to press here with a line of three in Italy it was a time that they were defending with
this player higher and for me I like to do like that so just to be sure that we protect each other and we have always one player covering so that is something that I like to do and I explain to my players why so then they know exactly and then if they made mistakes at least they know okay I made this mistake because I have to do this I have to do that so this balencia team was quite a strong balance and U the rotation the use of all the squad was a a key fact
in the in the the real at the end the two titles the two League titles and the Europa League of the WEA C at this [Music] time around 80% of our work is with the ball in the training sessions 20% without the ball 70% is something that we will do always and 30% depending on the other team so we know exactly which is our game plan and depending on the other team we adjust things to be sure that we exploit the weaknesses of the other team or we exploit our strengths so if you play against
Barcelona with a 433 at the beginning when I was a young coach they were playing three so Barcelona was playing with a diamond and three at the back do man to man Kuman was the the center back so they used to play like that and then you have to be aware of these runs of Bako at this time no so then later on with right heart they start playing 433 with this formation then so you have a problem who will defend this holding midfielder they have a problem because they have to defend your midfielders anyway
so if they keep the ball so normally you will be with these players they will be Pur and this player is free so you drop off one of your Strikers and then he has to be there or you drop off both and then you have the control of this space so it depends on the the how important is this player for them so if you do that like that then you will press here and then you will come like that so the same trigger will be this pass and you will be in this position the
movement the rest of the movements are similar you have to control the space and you have to keep your balance no that is the main thing if you are stronger than the other team so you have more possession more control then normally you will put your Wingers really high your Striker will be here you try to leave this player between the lines if they play with three to go to these Pockets try to go there and always for me it's one of the midfielders trying to go forward so they have to follow and the other
one stay here then they have to decide imagine that they play 433 they have to decide if he comes to press here so that means a space here or a space here so then it's a problem if it's a space here and they follow full back overlapping then going forward if he stays here is free if you come here so the same problem for him if he follows or if he follows if he follows run in behind if he stays this is a problem if they go and they have to control that so depending on
your team you can be higher no what I say we are better than the other team we go higher and they have to drop off they have to defend if they don't defend so you will find this spaces Pockets then with your second Striker going to these spaces if you drop off your Striker and is a space for your second Striker to run if they follow is also a space for your Winger to go inside no you can see a lot of gos now with Wingers coming [Music] inside the systems the position of the players
is fine it's necessary and important at the beginning but after it depends how you move your players and one of the thing that we we have is experience then depending on what is going on you see I'm taking my notes all the time so you analyze what is going on and then you make decisions changing players or changing positions or if you want to attack more for this side or the other side or more long balls or second balls or maybe just link and then play counter attack so all these kind of things during the
game are the difficult decision so the experience of the manager experience of your staff that they give you advice or they can see from the stands are crucial if you want to adjust things no final Istanbul 2005 we changed to three at the back because we couldn't control Kaka so imagine that we are here so they have two Strikers and after Kaka was here so they were playing 4312 and we didn't have control of this player and then we changed to three at the back to have control of these two Strikers and then we put
two midfielders to have the control of this space especially with d ham so that is one of the important things as a manager as a coach has to realize what is going on during the game and adjust it's not just one system it's how you move your players during the game [Music]
