What makes the last 16 of the Qatar World Cup so fascinating is that no two teams seem to play the same way
DOHA, Qatar—When the dust settled on the first two weeks of the World Cup on Friday night, after 48 matches across eight groups, only half of the 32 teams at the tournament were left standing.
Or at least they used to. For a decade, soccer was defined by Spain’s death-by-a-thousand-passes magic, its imitators, and the teams trying to cook up antidotes. The game was converging on just a couple of styles exemplified by the top clubs in Europe. Both Spain and Argentina have learned that the hard way. Spain only took one win from its three matches so far and lost 2-1 to Japan on Thursday night despite completing more than 1,000 passes to Japan’s 234. Argentina, meanwhile, contrived to lose its opening match against Saudi Arabia.Cody Gakpo of the Netherlands puts pressure on the opposition.
England has been the most effective counter-pressing team, with 31 high turnovers, including Rashford’s dispossession of Wales defender Ben Davies, which led directly to England’s second goal.Sebastian El-Saqqa/Zuma Press There was a time when teams could construct their entire approach around direct attacks like these. In the 1990s, Norway climbed to No. 2 in the FIFA rankings, reached two successive World Cups and recorded back-to-back wins over Brazil thanks to a policy of crashing the box at every available opportunity.
But in the past decade, as Spain’s passing-oriented possession game took hold, parking the bus—or defending in a “low block” as it’s sometimes known—went from a rudimentary tactic to something altogether more sophisticated. Teams got better at using the ball when they won it back and countered more intelligently. Though he initially used the term to denigrate opposing coaches for their lack of ambition, Mourinho himself went on to become one of the most celebrated bus-parkers in world soccer.
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