Carlos Alberto Torres’s fourth goal against Italy in the 1970 World Cup final; Argentina midfielder Esteban Cambiasso’s strike against Serbia and Montenegro in the 2006
World Cup; Argentina’s second goal by Angel Di Maria against France in the 2022 World Cup final.
Each of the three goals has its own beauty and also epitomises how football has evolved over the years. The 1970 goal was a culmination of a breathtaking sequence involving nine Brazilian players and a rocket-like first-time shot by the Brazil captain. Cambiasso’s was a hallmark of smooth, sumptuous 24-pass magic that left the Serbian defence rattled and clueless.
Di Maria’s strike was how quickly a team can go on the offensive from its own defence. A textbook counter-attack. Not a single player other than Lionel Messi had more than one touch. “Angel (Di Maria) appeared on the other side totally unmarked, which is more or less what we were looking for,” coach Lionel Scaloni dissected the goal to FifaPlus six months later.
The 1970 World Cup in Mexico was a landmark tournament in many ways. It was Mario Zagallo’s revolutionary idea that changed the very dynamics of football. In an era when football was all about rigid positional structures, Zagallo orchestrated a paradigm shift. Full-backs ascending, midfielders and forwards seamlessly interchanging... it was tactical evolution that redefined traditional roles. Zagallo imbued each player with a specific role that harmonised with the collective symphony. “He was a master tactician,” Carlos Alberto had told The Telegraph during his visit to Calcutta in December 2013.
Four years later, the world watched in awe as Rinus Michel and Johan Cruyff scripted a memorable tournament. It was christened ‘Total Football’ where the players interchange positions without giving an iota of idea to the rival team. That idea was later implemented, albeit with minor changes, by Cruyff in Barcelona and influenced coach Pep Guardiola during his trophy-laden stay at the Spanish club.
Clubs’ way of playing is often followed by the national team too. For example, Enzo Bearzot had followed the Juventus style in the successful 1982 World Cup campaign, Vicente del Bosque was inspired by Barcelona’s tiki-taka style in 2010, and Germany coach Joachim Low took a leaf out of Guardiola’s possession-based positional play in Bayern Munich in 2014.
The way Germany dismantled Brazil during the 7-1 semi-final rout was actually an ode to how Guardiola visualised the game. Guardiola’s concept of inverted full-backs also saw a seismic change in football. The way he used Philipp Lahm in Bayern, Low followed that in the German national team to bring mind-blowing results.
“By inverting traditional full-backs into central areas, you suddenly have five or more players around
the ball in the final third, including the midfielders who are joining in, while your wide forwards pin the defensive line. The back four becomes a back three plus a pivot. It’s deceptive. Defenders set up against a 4-3-3 formation have to deal with a 3-2-5 shape. The transition is the weapon,” Emami East Bengal’s women’s team coach
Anthony Andrews explained from Margao.
Pressing is another thing that has gained a lot of currency from the days of Guardiola’s Barca. But he had the advantage of training sessions week in and week out. We have seen Paris Saint-Germain taking it a notch higher when they concede a throw-in from dead-ball situations. They have players and coordination to press the opponents in their own half.
“In modern football, systems are above individual talent. Obviously, the team with better players and a greater commitment to collective work will have a better chance of winning. The clearest example is Paris Saint-Germain,” former India coach Manolo Marquez put forward his view from Barcelona.
“Football is becoming increasingly focused on tactical and physical improvement. As a result, teams are better prepared, and pressing to recover the ball as close as possible to the opponent’s penalty area has become one of the most effective weapons,” he added.
But then, if you have a rare talent in your team, you build a team around that player. Zagallo had Pele in 1970, Carlos Bilardo in 1986 had someone called Diego Maradona, and Scaloni had Lionel Messi in 2022.
Argentina coach of 1986, Bilardo, believed in ruthless, win-at-all-costs pragmatism. For him, defence was the best way to attack, and the smartest thing he did was to get big-bodied players who could act as cover for Maradona.
It was diametrically opposite to how Cesar Luis
Menotti — the man who gave Argentina their first World Cup in 1978 — looked at football. But both gave results. Menotti’s was more attack-oriented, he was very much inspired by Pakistan’s delightfully brilliant hockey style — double attack and triangular passing.
A few months before the football World Cup, Pakistan were in Buenos Aires for the hockey World Cup and Menotti had watched the team win the trophy. In his hour of glory, Menotti did not forget to pay tribute to the Pakistan hockey team. “Menotti said our style of hockey inspired him to build a champion team,” former Pakistan hockey star Islahuddin Siddiqui had told this paper, a couple of days after the Argentine coach’s demise in May, 2024.
Tactical brainwave also proves decisive. For example, Scaloni’s decision to use Di Maria on the left wing is hailed as one of the best tactical moves in the history of the World Cup. Nobody had a clue that Di Maria would be on the left, taking on Jules Kounde.
First, Di Maria forced Ousmane Dembele to feintly touch him inside the box and win a penalty. Then came that second goal.
“The idea was not to
mark Dembele, but to have a go at Kounde,” Scaloni had told FifaPlus.
True. Decisions like
these change the course of history. Ask any Argentine supporter, and the person will vouch for it.