Tiki Taka - Where Does it Stand Today?

     In recent years, this revolutionary system has come under some very heavy criticism. As more and more teams figure out ways to work against it. many claim that Tiki Taka is dead, and that those who still attempt to use it should move on and try out a new system. What many people do not understand is that Tiki Taka using teams have moved on, but not to new styles of play. They moved on to new and reformed versions of Tiki Taka. Once a strategy is figured out, there is no need to throw it away entirely. You can always revise your tactics to accomplish the same goal. When you think about it, it is kind of like exploring a language and its dialects. Say you learned how to speak Italian, it is a fair assumption that you will be able to hold a conversation with anyone who lives in Italy. However, people from different regions in Italy have created their own dialects of the language, making it their own. They have reformed the old to create something entirely new while still being the same language. This is exactly what has happened with Tiki Taka over the years. In the beginning, it was rare to see a pass lobbed in the air to someone across the field. Most passes were over short distances on the ground to a teammate nearby. Nowadays you will see passes that extend the entire width of the field in order to keep the defense moving around to create gaps for penetrating passes, a different way of accomplishing an old goal. Now don't take this as me saying that ground passes are now obsolete in Tiki Taka, because they are still very much essential. Now I understand that there will be those from now on that will always believe that Tiki Taka is dead and won't return for a good long while. And I'm quite sure that there are some out there that believe that it already is gone altogether, but it is not, and I don't believe that it ever truly will be. It will continue to change and reform until it may be difficult to recognize as the Tiki Taka that I know today. No matter how much it changes, there will always be a base set of fundamentals that will forever remain present. This then presents a new question about Tiki Taka, do you know it well enough to still see it?