Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics (21 page)

One significant statistic does emerge from the article Reep published in the
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
, although, as it runs counter to his thesis, it goes unremarked. At the 1958 World Cup, 1.3 percent of all moves comprised seven or more passes, as opposed to 0.7 percent in his selection of English league games (across all divisions) for 1957-58. At the 1962 World Cup, it was 2.3 percent compared to 1.3 percent in league games the previous season, and in 1966, 2.6 percent compared to 1.2 percent. That would seem to lead to two conclusions (in as much as any meaningful conclusions can be drawn from such a small sample). Firstly, that long chains of passes became increasingly common between 1958 and 1962, and secondly that international football - at the time surely still the pinnacle of the game - was roughly twice as likely to produce long chains of passes as club football. If long, direct play really were superior, surely there would be more of it the higher the level? Given the percentage of long chains of passes went up between the World Cups in Chile and England, it is not even that that disparity can be dismissed on the grounds of climate and the greater need to retain possession in hot weather (although Reep, anyway, shows no awareness of the possible implications of such outside agencies).

That is not to say that direct football is wrong at all times, merely that fundamentalism in tactics tends to be as misguided as in any sphere. Tactics must rather be conditioned by circumstances and the players available. Reep’s apologists misinterpret the figures, but even if they had not, his method is so general as to be all but meaningless. Why would it follow that an approach suited to a Third Division match in Rotherham in December would be equally applicable to a World Cup game in Guadalajara in July? Part of the genius of the great tacticians is their ability to apply the right system at the right time. Even Alf Ramsey, adopting a more possession-based approach for the Mexico World Cup of 1970, acknowledged that.

Still, Reep’s statistics supported Cullis’s instincts, and - in the English league at least - the two enjoyed a fruitful working relationship. ‘It helped me modify and improve points of tactics which were either costing us goals or reducing our scoring potential,’ Cullis said. He was also much taken by Reep’s isolation of the Position of Maximum Opportunity (POMO), an area a short distance from goal towards the back post from which a striking percentage of goals were scored, and into which Reep encouraged wingers to run. ‘Reep’s recordings of the Hungary match showed in exact detail the principles which I believed to be true,’ Cullis said. ‘He was able to establish in black and white the facts for which I was forced to trust my memory where, inevitably, some would become lost or confused.’

Just as convinced that the 6-3 defeat to Hungary was illusory was Alf Ramsey, who played at right-back in that game, and scored England’s third goal from the penalty spot. He too noted how many of Hungary’s goals had come from long passes, and suggested, in a veiled criticism of Gil Merrick, the England goalkeeper, that they’d just had one of those days when every shot they took flew in. That is disingenuous, ignoring the fact that Hungary had thirty-five shots to England’s five, and the almost embarrassing ease with which Hungary kept possession from England in the second half, but it is intriguing. Perhaps it was simply a function of Ramsey’s blinkeredness when it came to foreigners (this, after all, was a man who once turned down the chance of watching
Sleeping Beauty
at the Bolshoi so as not to miss a screening of an Alf Garnett film at the British Embassy Club in Moscow), or perhaps, having developed as a player at a club whose style was not too far removed from that of the Hungarians, a side moreover in which forward players were encouraged to drop off to create space, he was simply not so awestruck as others by the technical and tactical mastery of his opponents. Ramsey, certainly, was not a man to be blinded by beauty.

Given he led England to their only success, it seems bizarre that the general assessment of him should be so ambivalent. While there are those who look back on 1966 - as others before them had looked back to Chapman, or to the 2-3-5 - and see it as the blueprint for all football to come, and there are those who seem somehow to blame Ramsey for having such devotees, as if it were his fault that, having been successful, others without the wit to evolve should seek to copy him. Even as England won the World Cup, respect for him was grudging. ‘His detractors would point to his dissection of the game as though it were a laboratory animal, arguing that it robbed football of its poetry, reduced it to a science,’ as his biographer Dave Bowler put it. ‘It’s an assessment he would not disagree with, one which he might well take as a compliment. For he saw football as a tactical exercise, a mental as much as a physical sport.’ Not that he cared, but it did not help Ramsey’s reputation that he was so wilfully cussed.

Ramsey was, at heart, a realist. That was apparent as soon as he took charge of Ipswich in August 1955. He may have approved of Rowe’s methods with Spurs, but he soon realised that push-and-run had no place at a Third Division South team of whom little was expected. He began with the simple things, and although his first game in charge was lost 2-0 to Torquay United, the reporter for the
East Anglian Daily Times
admitted himself impressed by the range of corners on display.

Results soon picked up, but it wasn’t until December that Ramsey made the switch that would set in motion a decade of evolution that ended in the World Cup. Jimmy Leadbetter was an inside-forward, a skilful, intelligent player whose major failing was his lack of pace. He had been signed in the summer by Ramsey’s predecessor Scott Duncan and, having played just once in Ramsey’s first four months in charge, was concerned for his future. Then, just before New Year, Ramsey asked Leadbetter to play on the left-wing. Leadbetter was worried he wasn’t fast enough, but Ramsey’s concern was more his use of the ball.

‘I was supposed to be the left-winger, but I wasn’t playing that game,’ Leadbetter said. ‘I was pulled back, collecting balls from defence - the other full-backs wouldn’t come that far out of defence to mark me, so I had space to move in. As I went further forward, I could draw the full-back out of position. He wouldn’t stay in the middle of the field marking nobody; he felt he had to come with me. That left a big gap on the left-hand side of the field. That was where [the centre-forward] Ted Phillips played. He needed space, but if you could give him that and the ball, it was in the back of the net.’

Promotion was won in 1957, and as the centre-forward Ray Crawford was signed from Portsmouth and the orthodox right-winger Roy Stephenson from Leicester City, Ramsey’s plan took shape. This was 4-2-4, but like the formation with which Brazil won the World Cup, it was 4-2-4 with a twist. Where Brazil had Mario Zagallo shuttling deep from a high position, Ipswich had Leadbetter, whose lack of pace meant he sat deep naturally. If anything, it resembled in shape more the skewed 4-3-3 Brazil would adopt in 1962 than the 4-2-4 of 1958, although the style was very different.

‘We believe in striking quickly from defence,’ Ramsey said. ‘A team is most vulnerable when it has just failed in attack. If I had to suggest an ideal number of passes, I would say three.’ Three, perhaps not coincidentally, was also Reep’s magic number, although there is no suggestion that the two ever met.

‘Alf’s idea was the less number of passes you take, the less chance there is of making a bad pass,’ Leadbetter said. ‘It’s better to make three, good, simple ones, because if you try to make ten, as sure as anything you’ll make a mess of one of them. You should be in a position to shoot with the third one. You could do that then because of the way teams played.’

The great weakness of the W-M was the pivot necessitated by the fact that there were only three defenders. If an attack came down the attacking side’s left, the right-back would move to close the winger down, with the centre-half picking up the centre-forward, and the left-back tucking behind him to cover - and, if playing against a 4-2-4 or another system with two central strikers, picking up the other centre-forward. ‘That was the only cover you got, so if you beat your full-back, your forwards had a good chance,’ Leadbetter explained.

Ipswich went up again in 1961 and, to the bewilderment of many, went on to win the title the following year, despite having spent only £30,000 assembling their squad, less than a third of what Tottenham paid to bring Jimmy Greaves back from Italy. Ipswich,
The Times
said ‘defy explanation - they do the simple things accurately and quickly; there are no frills about their play and no posing. They are not exciting; they do not make the pulses race… Maybe, after all, there is a virtue in the honest labourer.’

With little or no television coverage to expose the tactic, even the best defenders found it difficult to cope. ‘Leadbetter laid so deep, I didn’t know who the hell I was supposed to be marking,’ said the Fulham and England full-back George Cohen. ‘He pulled me out of position and started pumping the ball over me to Crawford and Phillips and they had two goals before we knew where we were… Substitute Phillips and Crawford for Hurst and Hunt and you have the England set-up.’

The next season, though, teams knew what to expect. Ipswich lost the Charity Shield 5-1 to Spurs as Bill Nicholson had his full-backs come inside to pick up the two centre-forwards, leaving the half-backs to deal with Leadbetter and Stephenson. Other teams did similarly and, by the end of October when Ramsey was appointed England manager, Ipswich had won just two of fifteen games.

Ramsey’s predecessor in the national job, Walter Winterbottom, had been hamstrung by having his team selected by a committee of which he was only part; Ramsey demanded absolute control. Without that, tactical experimentation was impossible: if a group of men was simply voting for the best player to fill each position, the positions had to be laid out in advance, without much regard for balance or the interaction between players, and in the past that had meant unthinking faith in the merits of the W-M. ‘People say Matthews, Finney, Carter and so on, they never needed a plan,’ Ramsey protested. ‘Well, I played with many of these players and I would say England’s team was good then, but it would have been many times better if we had also had a rigid plan.’

Outright control, though, was only granted from the following May, so Ramsey faced two games in which he worked with the committee. In the first, they selected a W-M, and England lost 5-2 to France in Paris. That persuaded the committee to follow Ramsey’s wishes and switch to a 4-2-4 and, although that brought a 2-1 home defeat to Scotland, he stuck with the formation for most of his early reign.

It was May 1964 and a post-season tour of South America that was to prove key to Ramsey’s tactical development. England had hammered the USA 10-0 in New York - some revenge for Ramsey, having played in the side beaten 1-0 by the USA in Belo Horizonte in 1950 - but, exhausted by the effects of travel and scheduled to play Brazil just three days later, they were thrashed 5-1 by Brazil in their first game of a four-team tournament. A draw against Portugal followed, but it was the third game, against Argentina, that was crucial. Argentina knew a draw would be enough for them to win the competition, and so, the days of
la nuestra
a distant memory, sat men behind the ball, content to spoil, hold possession and see out time. England, like ‘a bunch of yokels trying to puzzle their way out of a maze’, as Desmond Hackett put it in the
Daily Express
, were nonplussed. They dominated the play, but never looked like scoring and, caught on the break, lost 1-0. ‘We played 4-2-4 with Roberto Telch coming back, like Zagallo in 1962,’ said the Argentina captain José Ramos Delgado. ‘England had a great team with Moore, Charlton and Thompson, but we played intelligently. It’s true that England had much more possession, but only because we gave up a midfielder so he could defend against certain players.’

As far as some players were concerned, Hackett went on, ‘the triple lion badge of England could be three old tabby cats’. His reaction was typical: England may have been outwitted by disciplined opponents sticking to an intelligent plan, but the assumption was - as it so often had been, and would continue to be - that they hadn’t tried hard enough, that they hadn’t shown enough pride in the shirt. Brian James in the
Daily Mail
, while no less angry, came rather closer to a realistic assessment. ‘If you do not give a damn about the game, and are prepared to leave entertainment to music halls you can win anything,’ he wrote. ‘Argentina have simply taken logic and pushed it to the limit. Their policy lays down that, “if they do not score, we do not lose”… Only in their wildest moments of heady recklessness were they prepared to open out.’ Ramsey, of course, would rather have admitted to a love of Tchaikovsky than to having been influenced by Argentina, but he did acknowledge the ‘tremendous gap’ between the two South American giants and England. Significantly, the FA’s report on the triumph of 1966 made a point of noting how important the experience gained on that tour had been.

Over that summer, Ramsey rethought his strategy: system, he seems to have decided, was more important than personnel. Ramsey’s taciturn nature makes it hard to be sure, but it is not implausible to suggest that the two years that followed represent a carefully controlled evolution towards winning the World Cup.

The players he had been playing wide in a 4-2-4, Bobby Charlton and Peter Thompson, weren’t the kind to track back, and neither could Jimmy Greaves nor Johnny Byrne, the two centre-forwards, realistically have been asked to drop in. George Eastham, who commonly played as one of the central midfielders, was a converted inside-forward, and his partner Gordon Milne was no spoiler either. Ramsey realised that although 4-2-4 was a fine formation for beating lesser sides, it was unsuitable for playing stronger opponents, and could leave even a markedly better team vulnerable if it had an off day. In short, the problem came down to the fact that while 4-2-4 was potent when you had possession, it didn’t help you get the ball in the first place.