People said the “tiki-taka” brand of football under Pep Guardiola can only be played with the type of players that Barcelona possessed such like Messi, Xavi and Inesta but after Guardiola took charge of Bayern Munich, he is able to mould them into playing this brand of football even with different group of players. This shows that how influential a coach can have on a team with their ideas, philosophy and tactics.
There is a saying “tactics and players come hand in hand”. A team can have 11 world class players on the field but without the right tactics from the coach, it still won’t able to yield the desirable results on the pitch. This explained why United won the league by 11 points last season under Alex Ferguson but now they are struggling at 7th place under Moyes even with the same group of players.
Below is the illustration on the difference between Bayern Munich ( vs Manchester City )and United (vs Fulham). From these pictures, you will understand why United are so one dimensional and predictable.
The distance between the players is too large to play any short one quick passing or combination play to open up the defence. From this snapshots, there is only 2 options, pass it wide or a long ball forward. This is why United racked up 81 crosses against Fulham as it was the result of *the players positioning and the team set-up *which did not afforded any other options.
The distance and the relation between the Bayern’s players are short & they creating triangles for quick combination passing to move the attacking phase forward. That is why they are able to keep the game flowing and the options created from the triangles enabled them to attack from different directions which made them unpredictable.
There is no one in the middle to create a triangle with the 2 players on the left channel and there was a big gap in between line with no United players taking advantage or dropping deep to drag defenders away. The 4 circled red United players were waiting in the box for a cross. As a result, there was only 1 option; pass it wide and cross.
There are 3 Bayern players making themselves available to build up the attack by creating triangles with the player on the ball.
Van Persie and Rooney (circled red) are too close together playing high up the pitch. Rooney should drop into the hole to create triangles and to drag opposition defender out of their position to create space. As a result, there is only 1 option, pass it wide and cross.
The positioning of Bayern players during attacking phase; they were cohesive and moving in relation to each other.
There is no one in between the line from United. The midfield staying deep and the forwards pushing high up the pitch.
The positioning of each Bayern players in relations to each other were good with a lot of triangles to keep the passing move to break through the Man City Defence.
A picture tells a thousand words; this summed up the tactical woe of David Moyes.