You’ll Never Press Alone: How Teams are Pressing the Right Buttons Out of Possession
By: John Ogundele
Tags: Football, Tactics In Football, Soccer

Picture a rainy night in Stoke, or Burnley if Barclays Premier League Heritage means nothing to you. You’ve just received a pass from your keeper on the half-turn only to be greeted by the man Martin Tyler has christened the ‘Ultimate Pressing Machine’.

Roberto Firminio is homing in on your position and has generously gifted you a split-second to check your options. A glance to your left catches Mo Salah blocking the view of your full-back. Looking over to your right you see Sadio Mane breathing down the neck of your partner at centre-back. You have little choice but to ask your keeper for a refund and return the ball to him. If you weren’t sure you have just experienced a press.

Pressing has become a hallmark of the modern game, one which Jonathan Wilson states has led to its ‘compression’. Increased pressure has compressed both the space and time players now have on the ball.

No-one quite knows when ‘closing down’ gave way to ‘pressing’ in the lexicon of English football commentary but the invention of pressing itself can be traced back to Soviet Ukraine.

Viktor Maslov would be the unlikely revolutionary responsible for introducing it to the game with his Dynamo Kyiv side in the early sixties. Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan side would use pressing to great acclaim in the eighties before it arrived in Germany in the nineties.

The Pressing Button on a Calculator

We may be living in the age of pressing, but football is also very much in the age of analytics. How exactly then do you quantify pressing in a sport where data analysts are attempting to enter almost everything into a spreadsheet?

Passes allowed per opponent defensive action (PPDA) provides a measure of how intensely a team presses the opposition. PPDA counts the number of times a team attempts a tackle or interception against the number of passes attempted by their opponents. The lower the PPDA number the more intensely a team is trying to win the ball. PPDA provides a single figure to assess and compare pressure intensity.

It is possible, for example, to compare pressing intensity across Europe’s top leagues. The Spanish La Liga in the 2019/20 season had an average PPDA of 9.94 compared to France’s Ligue 1 average of 11.80. The Spanish top-flight based on these two numbers has a higher pressing intensity than the French.

To understand the quality, not simply the volume, of a press we must look elsewhere. We can use how often a turnover of possession results from pressuring the ball to understand how effective a team’s pressing is. Brighton, Leeds United and Liverpool, top the Premier League this season (2020/21) with turnover rates of 33.7%, 33.3%, and 33.0%, respectively.

How Do You Like Your Press in the Morning?

One of the most successful teams of the 21st century, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, included pressing in their tactical plan. Whilst the subjects of the 2018 ‘Take the Ball, Pass the Ball’ documentary virtually immortalised the ‘tiki-taka’ style of possession they were relentless and organized pressers without the ball. Like Luis Van Gaal at Barcelona and Ajax, Guardiola insisted that if the ball wasn’t won back in five seconds his players should reset to their defensive shape.

Guardiola spoke of the five-second rule as a method of remedying his side’s defensive weaknesses — at least in the traditional sense. Jurgen Klopp and Borussia Dortmund also had a strong pressing philosophy. Klopp’s favoured press, however, differed in type and intent.

Gegenpressing, translated roughly to counter-pressing, was popularised by Dortmund and involves the team that has just lost possession immediately pressing the opposition in a co-ordinated manner. The aim is to prevent the opposition from launching a counterattack from the transition — the moments between being in and out of possession.

Gegenpressing was in Klopp’s view an attacking tactic aimed at making opposition teams most vulnerable when transitioning into attack. It allows teams to build attacks from advanced positions. The importance of this to Klopp is clear from his statement that ‘no playmaker in the world can be as good as a good gengenpressing situation’.

The directness of a press is also worth considering for any manager setting up their team. Mikel Arteta when playing his side in a 3–4–3 earlier in the season, as opposed to his more recent preferences of a 4–3–3 or 4–2–3–1, used a more indirect approach.

When out of possession Arsenal tucked their two wide forwards inside to block off access to the midfield and the number 9, or central striker, fell back into the space between the lines. This proved effective in their 1–0 away win at Old Trafford where United defenders were regularly shepherded towards their own goal.

When the Gunners employed a more direct and intense approach as measured by a low average PPDA of 9 against Wolves they were less successful. With quality lacking in these all-out pressures Wolves were able to cut them open more than once. This provides a golden opportunity — that will be well-taken — to clear up that while individual players can apply (intense) pressure, only multiple co-ordinated pressures can produce an effective press.

Physical Stress and Feeling the Pressure

Pressing because it relies on constant movement from forwards and midfielders requires extremely high levels of fitness. Perhaps it’s no surprise that pressing didn’t appear before footballers played the sport full-time and could lean on nutrition and physical conditioning expertise.

With physical fitness such a key part of pressing it’s worthwhile to see how the extra physical demands of a truncated season are affecting elite teams in this area. The 2020/21 Premier League season has a ramp-packed schedule of 380 games in 253 days compared to 281 days of the last regular season (2018/19) — a difference of a month.

The select few playing in Europe had to grit teeth throughout Champions League and Europa League group stages wrapped up in no less than 50 days. A group stage 42 days shorter than in 2018/19. This is on top of a brief pre-season that was squeezed between a rock and a hard place.

The result has been that every team that played in the English top-flight last season (2019/2020), except Aston Villa, has reduced their pressing intensity in the middle and final thirds of the pitch. Of teams playing in Europe’s major leagues, Chelsea and Marseille have eased up on their pressing intensity the most. Chelsea has gone from applying pressure to one in every three opposition touches to one in every five.

The physical demands of back-to-back games this season as well as of pressing itself mean that clubs and individual players especially are starting to feel the pressure.

High and Dry: No Man Left In-Behind

One of the tactical consequences of intense pressing in the opposition third is the need for a high defensive line. This is because a high line allows a side to remain compact when pressing deep and breaking up build-up play.

Bayern Munich under the management of Hansi Flick has opted for an ultra-aggressive high line. This is a high-risk strategy as it leaves Bayern vulnerable to long balls sailed over the heads of virtually their whole side which speedy attackers can latch on to.

This strategy did as it turned out pay its fair share of rewards for Flick’s side who stormed through to a Champion’s League title. The road to European success was marked by knockout stages that had the flavour of an international tournament thanks to a global Panenka.

Fielding Diamonds Under Pressure

The rise of pressing has been coupled with the rise of press-resistance as a must-have. Being press-resistant means being able to retain the ball under high pressure from the opposition. Press-resistant players are therefore key to the build-up play and counter-attacking transitions of their teams.

Analysing Premier League rosters based on data from Sportlogiq, we can attempt to identify a handful of highly press-resistant players. Manchester City’s Rodri attempts the most passes under pressure per 90 minutes. These 85.8 passes represent 70% of all the passes he makes. Both Jordan Henderson and Paul Pogba attempt the next best number of passes under pressure at 50.4 and 50.1 respectively.

Pogba, however, makes 82% of his passes under pressure — the highest ratio in the league. He likely attracts pressure because of his passing range and technique — see his first-time lofted 25-yard assist to Anthony Martial against Sheffield United.

Arsenal’s Mohamed Elneny, statistics will attest, has proven himself the best ball retainer in the division completing 93 passes under pressure per 90 minutes. It may be useful to note that he wins this accolade on the back of plenty of short sideways or backward passes.

Forward, line-breaking passes may be of greater value to fans and coaches alike. Rodri in this regard finds himself leading the pack — yet again — with 11 line-breaking passes per 90 minutes with the highest completion rate of 88%.

Diamonds may be formed under pressure but managers on the lookout for press-resistant gems in the transfer market and academies will hope they can also break through it.