Team structure helps cope with moneybags

Until Luis Enrique re-engineered FC Barcelona into a treble winning outfit, Atletico Madrid boss Diego Simeone was world football’s premier coach. The Argentine took his team to within minutes of a Champions League title, won a Europa League and Primera Liga title by building teams with the best team structure.
Simeone’s philosophy is simple. You cannot lose a football match if your team has a superior team structure. Whilst rivals like Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester United dismantle opponents by managing possession, he is the undisputed master of managing space.

Every summer Atletico Madrid lose key players. Diego Costa, Luis Felipe and Thibaut Courtois left last summer. This season Madrid’s less glamorous club have lost Mario Madzukic and could lose 25-goal French winger Antoine Griezman. In brief, Atletico Madrid is a selling club like Tottenham or Ajax Amsterdam but that has not stopped them from morphing into European football heavyweights because they have a coach who is on top of his game. It is the best resource constrained teams can do.
Only Unai Emery’s back-to-back Europa League winners Seville come close to similarly punching above their weight. While Valencia’s Nuno Espirito Santo is brewing a team of similar ilk, it is hard to think of any other teams with such wonderful team structures. There certainly aren’t any English Premiership sides capable of playing such intensive, structured football that suffocates opposition teams.

Last season, Simeone made a joke of Carlo Ancelotti’s expensively assembled Real Madrid side, winning four out of seven derbies because his team play structured intensive football whereas Los Blancos’ flamboyant President Florentino Perez would be hard-pressed to say what his team’s philosophy is. Rafa Benitez, a counter-attacking coach who has a reputation of being a Cup specialist is the new man in the hot seat. So I can’t see how he is going to be afforded the time to create a philosophy for the 10-time European champions. On the contrary, I can wager a decent meal on the fact that Valencia are going to make a splash in Europe.

Throughout the years; most certainly since Pep Guardiola fine-tuned the tiki taka passing game first preached by Johan Cruyff in the early 90s, I had not seen a team give FC Barcelona as much hard time at the Nou Camp as Nuno Espirito’s Black Breasts did last season. They did the same to Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu, knocking the sails out of their title challenge.
Now ask yourself how many English Premier League sides can outplay both Real Madrid and Barcelona in front of their own fans. The answer is simple – NONE. It is not hard to know why. Coaches of EPL teams are no longer introducing cutting edge techniques. When Manchester United won the 2008 Champions League in Moscow, three English teams reached the semi-final. Matter of fact, between 2005-2010, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and United were regulars in the final stages of Europe’s premier club competition.

Their energetic, quick transition game was helped by the fact they also had four of the world’s six premier coaches. Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, Arsene Wenger’s terminal decline, Rafa Benitez’s failure to find a permanent address and Jose Mourinho’s inability to re-invent his style has allowed new kids on the block to steal the thunder from them. Europe’s 10 richest clubs are; in no particular order - Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Juventus and Paris St Germain. Some of these clubs are the regulars in CL semi-finals. But they aren’t the teams with the best coaches.

If you ask me to name the world’s top 10 coaches today, I would be hard pressed to include any three from the EPL. Coaches that deliver silverware and punch above their weights by using shoestring budgets to build well structured teams are my best. Thus, my top coaches in the season 2014-15 are: 1-Luis Enrique, 2-Diego Simeone , 3-Nuno Espirito Santo, 4-Unai Emery, 5-Maxmilliano Allegri, 6-Jose Mourinho, 7-Laurent Blanc, 8-Pep Guardiola, 9-Julen Lopetegui 10-Ronald Koeman.

Contrary to the general perception that money buys titles, I believe it is more important to have a thinking coach. Barcelona are a rich club. However, Enrique is my number one because he re-invented Lionel Messi by moving him wide, brought in the right players - Claudio Bravo and Marco Andre ter Stegen for Valdes, Luis Suarez for Alexis Sanchez and Ivan Rakitic for Cesc Fabregas. Without dismantling tiki taka, he introduced long passes, increased the speed at which Blagruana arrive in the opposition penalty box and strengthened the defense.
Enrique embodies the future of football innovation along with Simeone, Emery and Espirito Santo.
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