Catenaccio

When one talks about strategy in the game of football, one football culture stands out- Italian football. The Italians are regarded as the masters of defensive strategy in football and much of their success, both at the international and at the club level is ascribed to the sheer discipline of these teams in perfectly executing a plan. One particular defensive strategy was made famous by Italian teams- Catenaccio. In Italian Catenaccio stands for door-bolt, implying a highly organized and effective backline defense which is intended to prevent goals.

The Strategy

The key innovation of Catenaccio was the introduction of the role of a Libero, or sweeper, a player positioned behind the line of three defenders. The sweeper's role was to recover loose balls, nullify the opponent's striker and double-mark when necessary. Man-marking, or each player of the team marking one particular opponent throughout the game, was central to this system. Another important innovation was the counter-attack, mainly based on long passes from the defence. The emphasis of this highly defensive strategy was on not conceding goals, rather than scoring them. Scoring goals was considered secondary and teams that adopted Catenaccio looked to attack the other team primarily through long passes from defense. This ensured that the team’s goal was secure before attacking the opponent. Widespread adoption of such a strategy by Italian clubs resulted in low-scoring games becoming the norm. The strategy was often criticized by non-Italian football fans. Games involving Italian teams were often very dull for spectators to watch with very little attacking football on display. Italian football became typecast as being defensive.

History

The system was made famous by Helenio Herrera, the legendary coach of the Italian club FC Internazionale in the 1960s (who used it to grind out 1 – 0 wins over opponents in their league games.

The Catenaccio was influenced by the verrou (also "doorbolt/chain" in French) system invented by Austrian coach Karl Rappan. As coach of Switzerland in the 1930s and 1940s, Rappan played a defensive sweeper called the verrouilleur, who was highly defensive and was positioned just ahead of the goalkeeper. In the 1950s, Nereo Rocco's Padova pioneered the system in Italy where it would be used again by the Internazionale team of the early 1960s.

Karl Rappan’s Verrou

Rappan's verrou system, proposed in 1932 when coach of Servette, was implemented with four fixed defenders, playing a strict man-to-man marking system, plus a playmaker in the middle of the field who played the ball together with two midfield wings.

Rocco's tactic, often referred to as the "real" Catenaccio, was shown first in 1947 with Triestina: the most common mode of operation was a 1-3-3-3 formation with a strictly defensive team approach. With Catenaccio, Triestina finished the Serie A tournament in a surprising second place. Some variations include 1-4-4-1 and 1-4-3-2 formations.

In Herrera's version in the 1960s, four man-marking defenders were tightly assigned to each opposing attacker while an extra sweeper would pick up any loose ball that escaped the coverage of the defenders. The emphasis of this system in Italian football spawned the rise of many top defenders such as Claudio Gentile and Gaetano Scirea in the 1970s, Giuseppe Bergomi and Franco Baresi in the 1980s and Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta, Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Nesta and many others in the 1990s and 2000s.

Total Football: The Antidote to Catenaccio

Total Football, invented by Rinus Michels in the 1970s, rendered Herrera's version of Catenaccio obsolete. In Total Football, no player is fixed in his nominal role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender. Man-marking alone was insufficient to cope with this fluid system. Coaches began to create a new tactical system that mixed man-marking with zonal defense. In 1972, Michels' Ajax defeated Herrera's Inter 2-0 in the European Cup Final and Dutch newspapers announced the "destruction of Catenaccio" at the hands of Total Football. In 1973, Ajax crushed Nereo Rocco's Milan 6-0 for the European Super Cup in a match that the defensive Milan system was totally undermined by Ajax.

In pure zonal defense, every midfielder and defender is given a particular zone on the field to cover. When a player moves outside his zone, his teammate expands his zone to cover the unmarked area. However, Catenaccio philosophy called for double-marking when dealing with strong players. Catenaccio evolved to counter Total Football with Zona Mista (Italian for "mixed zone") being created.

Typical Formation of Zona Mista

In Zona Mista there are four defenders.A sweeper is free to roam and assist other defenders. A fullback plays in both defensive and advanced position, typically on the left flank. The two stoppers, who started then to be called "centre back", mark their zones. In the midfield, there are defensive midfielder, centre midfielder and the playmaker (the number 10) and a winger who covers typically the right flank and sometimes acts as an additional striker. Zona Mista employs a two-pronged attack. A centre forward plays upfront. A second striker plays wide to the left (a derivation of Catenaccio's left winger) and drifts inside to act as a striker or to cover the playmaker when the playmaker drops into a defensive position.

The most famous example of Zona Mista was the Italian team playing in the 1982 FIFA World Cup Final. Classy and skillful Gaetano Scirea was the libero, the then 18-years old Giuseppe Bergomi the holding midfielder, and Fulvio Collovatti and tough tackling Claudio Gentile the centre backs. As the system required, Gentile who was normally a fullback extended his defensive cover wide to the right; sometimes Gentile and Orialli switched their roles (when Gentile man-marked Maradona) - Gentile as holding midfielder, Orialli - as right centre-back. Gabriele Oriali played right (often central, holding) midfielder, Marco Tardelli centre midfielder and Bruno Conti the playmaker. True to the call of his role, Conti played an instrumental role in Italy's win. He was a central figure in Italy's second goal that was scored by Tardelli and single-handedly created Italy's third goal by breaking down the right side from the half-way line and crossing to Alessandro Altobelli, who came on as an early substitute for the injured Francesco Graziani (left forward), to score from the top of the box. To complete the roster, Paolo Rossi played the other forward position and Antonio Cabrini was on the left wing as wingback.

Catenaccio Today

Over the years, the original Catenaccio has been slowly abandoned for other, more balanced tactical approaches; in particular, the increasing popularity gained by an attacking-based approach like Total Football has contributed to make Catenaccio a tactic of the past.

Real Catenaccio is no longer used in the modern football world. Two major characteristics of this style – man-to-man marking and the libero position – are no longer in use. What many consider Catenaccio is rather a hyper-defensive or retreat style of defending from teams, with rare forward movement. This hyper-defensive style is still commonly referred to as Catenaccio. Nowadays, Catenaccio is used mainly by weaker teams, in order to reduce any technical gap against stronger teams by showing a more physical approach to football. The slow disappearance of the role of sweepers in modern football has also contributed to the decline in its use.

The Catenaccio system is often criticised for reducing the quality of football games as a spectacle. In certain parts of Europe, it became synonymous with negative football since the focus is so much upon defending. Many journalists and coaches have called this syle of play "anti-football".

One frequent mistake is to define Catenaccio as any defensive tactical system used by a football team. This is actually untrue, because Catenaccio is just one of the possible defensive tactics which can be used. Nowadays, Catenaccio is used less and less by top teams, and generally only under particular circumstances, such as when suffering from a numerical inferiority following a sending off, or when needing to defend a marginal scoreline until the end of the match.

Omniscience: The Strategist's Secret Weapon

What makes a good strategist? In other words is there any one distinguishing attribute that defines a good strategist? As a student of strategic management, I have reflected along similar lines at length. If I have to associate one attribute with the ideal strategist, a quality expressed in the most superlative terms, it would have to be omniscience. The ideal strategist would be omniscient. But that would limit the set of ideal strategists to Gods- for who else can claim to be omniscient. However, even in an imperfect form, an understanding of as diverse a set of bodies of knowledge as possible would probably be the most important prerequisite for effective strategizing, especially from a management perspective.

From a business perspective a good strategist should be able to analyze a company’s financial ratios, understand the customer’s perspective, visualize the HR connotations of a decision to lay off workers-essentially have a reasonably good understanding of all functional areas of business. So, do all B-School grads make good strategists? After all, all of them can analyze financial ratios or understand the customer’s perspective. It is not merely an understanding of Finance or Marketing or HR that is important, it is the depth of understanding of these disparate functional areas that matters. Strategic decisions have serious long-term business implications for an organization. Thus, making an informed decision is vital. A strategist’s depth of understanding of all functional areas is important for him to correctly assess the outcome of any planned course of action.

Consider an FMCG firm that is considering the acquisition of a smaller firm in the same industry. Before taking this course of action, the large firm has to consider a range of issues. What value does the acquisition of the target firm add to the larger firm? Does it fill a gap in one of the FMCG major’s product line? How is the brand that the target firm represents perceived by the customers? How best to integrate the employees of the target firm into the larger firm? Should the FMCG major offer an all cash deal to the shareholders of the smaller firm or a combination of stock and cash? The range of issues can be endless but the situation highlights the disparate functional areas involved in making a decision. And the importance of the course of action to the company calls for a reasonable depth of understanding.

So, in order to become a good strategist one needs both breadth and depth of knowledge, in other words one has to tend towards the omniscient ideal. But short-cut loving B-School students needn’t be alarmed. Remember, execution eats strategy for breakfast. So, if you can’t strategize, learn to eat it with buttered toast and a glass of milk.