The expression of sports broadcasters and journalists “total football” sounds regularly as soon as the next World or European Championship starts, or when the participants of the decisive matches of the Champions League take to the field. But the true meaning of this sports term, which appeared more than 80 years ago, often remains incomprehensible to fans.
Instructions
Step 1
According to experts, total football is one of the many game schemes. It is based on a method called "interchangeability" or "universality". It means the ability of any of the team's players, with the exception of the goalkeeper's limited movement around the field, to change, if necessary, the initial position with any teammate.
Step 2
Playing in a similar manner, the center striker may well fulfill the functions of, for example, a wing midfielder. And the central defender, without prejudice to defense, is able to play on the attacking flank. As well as vice versa. Football players, therefore, are a kind of free artists, almost equally able to defend and attack well.
Step 3
And they do it on the field, changing playing positions and roles quite independently, being in constant motion and trying to keep the ball under control. The instructions of the coach, as well as the very interchangeability, the insurance of each other, the players work out in preliminary classes. The main necessary qualities are excellent physical fitness, running speed and playful thinking.
Step 4
The historians of world football are still arguing about who was the first to invent the tactical arrangement that made it possible to use total football. But the names of the coaches whose teams were able to achieve the greatest success with the help of such a system are precisely known. First on this list is Hugo Maisl, who coached the very strong Austrian national team in the early and mid-1930s. It is Maisl, a fan of British attacking football, who owns the famous phrase "The best defense is an attack."
Step 5
For its sensational successes at football stadiums, the national team of the homeland of composer Strauss even received the nickname "Wundertim" - "Wonder Team". Having spent 14 matches from April 1931 to December 1932, the Austrians did not suffer a single defeat in them. Having managed to defeat the national teams of Germany - 5: 0 and 6: 0, Belgium - 6: 1, Switzerland - 6: 0, Hungary - 8: 2, France - 4: 0, they became the leaders of the pre-war continental football.
Step 6
In the final of the unofficial European Championship-1932, Maisl's wards with a score of 4: 2 beat the future first champions of the planet Italians. By the way, it was the Italian national team that stopped the movement of the Austrians to the gold of the World Cup, the World Cup. Having beaten them 1: 0, not without scandal and the help of the Swedish referee Eklind in the semifinals of his home tournament-1934. Another great achievement of the "total" national team of Austria was the silver medal of the 1938 Olympics.
Step 7
But it was already the swan song "Wundertim", which so surprised the world with the first total football in history. By that time, she managed to lose not only the coach who died in 1937 and the captain of the team Matthias Sindelar, who died under unknown circumstances, but also other leading players. So, Franz Wagner, Karl Zischek and six more football players, against their will, were included in the national team of fascist Germany that had captured Austria and sent to the 1938 World Cup.
Step 8
By the way, the former footballer of the post-war Austrian national team Ernst Happel, brought up just on the ideas of Hugo Meisl, in the late 60s began to successfully apply total football in the Netherlands. But "Wundertim" No. 2 is still considered the Hungarian national team of the early 1950s, called the "Golden Team" for their successes. It was headed by local coach Gustav Shebesh, who instilled a total system of play and selected the appropriate players.
Step 9
From June 4, 1950 to July 4, 1954, the Golden Team from Budapest, in which Gyula Grošić, Jeno Buzanski, Gyula Lorant, Ferenc Puskas, Jozsef Bozik, Nandor Hidegkuti and other world football stars of those years shone, successfully played 34 matches. Having scored 31 victories in them and three in a draw. Among those whom the Hungarians won were the teams of England (6: 3 and 7: 1), Sweden (6: 0), Yugoslavia (2: 0), Italy (3: 0), Brazil (4: 2), Germany (8: 3).
Step 10
Led by Gustav Shebesh, the "total" Hungarians won the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki and reached the 1954 World Cup final. It was in it, with a 2: 3 defeat against West Germany, that the unique and unrepeated winning streak of the Hungarian national team was interrupted. After that, by the way, it resumed and continued for another 18 matches, finally ending only in 1956.
Step 11
The World Cup silver won 60 years ago was the last significant achievement of the Golden Team and the total football of Shebesh, which he renamed as “socialist”. The fate of the national team was negatively affected by the tragic events in Hungary in 1956 and the subsequent emigration of several leading players, including the best striker Ferenc Puskas, who left for Spain. And the coach himself was sent into an undeserved retirement.
Step 12
20 years later, the Netherlands national team showed its own version of total football with a pronounced emphasis on full control of the ball and constant meaningful movement of the players. It was headed by Rinus Michels, a student of British coach Jack Reynolds. The latter once coached the best Dutch club Ajax (Amsterdam) and managed to instill in this team, including Michels, the skills of a total style of play.
Step 13
But the Dutch, who showed the world such outstanding universal football masters as Rud Krol, Johan Neeskens and Johan Cruyff (Cruyff), failed to become the strongest in the world. In the final match of the 1974 championship with Germany, "A Clockwork Orange", as the Netherlands national team was called because of the orange uniform and almost non-stop movement across the field, won after a goal from Neeskens. However, in the end he also lost - 1: 2.
Step 14
Four years later, the Netherlands national team again reached the final, in which, according to the tradition of total football, they lost. This time in extra time Argentina - 1: 3. The Dutch also flashed their modern version of total football at the 2014 World Cup, where in the first round they defeated the then current world champions, the Spaniards - 5: 1. And in the game for the third place they easily outplayed the home team of the Brazilians - 3: 0.
Step 15
In the Soviet Union, the concept of total football was associated, first of all, with the name of the famous coach of Dynamo Kiev and the 1970-80 national team Valery Lobanovsky. His teams looked so perfectly "oiled" and "adjusted" that even the recognized favorites reckoned with them. And fans and experts sometimes called players like Oleg Blokhin, Vladimir Bessonov and Alexei Mikhailichenko "machines for gold mining."
Step 16
Dynamo Kiev, in particular, twice in its history won the European Cup Winners' Cup, defeated the world champions from Bayern Munich in the Super Cup, and reached the Champions League semifinals. And the USSR national team, led by Valery Lobanovsky and using the most important elements of total football, played in the final of the 1988 European Championship and the quarterfinal stage of the 1982 World Cup.
Step 17
In modern Russian football there is no total football in its classical sense. Neither individual teams nor the national team of our country show it. It was this circumstance that largely predetermined her unsuccessful performance at the World Cup in Brazil. There, the Russian team did not even make it out of the group, having failed to defeat rivals from South Korea, Belgium and Algeria.
