Works Cited

Antuñano, Iraide Ibarretxe. "“Ttipi-ttapa ttipi-ttapa… korrika!!!” Motion and sound symbolism in basque." Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca" Julio de Urquijo" 40.1-2 (2011): 499-517.

Mathur, Anshul, and Rajesh Pillania. "Strategy lessons from the FIFA World Cup 2014." Strategic Direction 30.11 (2014): 1-3.

McVeigh, Paul. The Stupid Footballer is Dead: Insights Into the Mind of a Professional Footballer. A&C Black, 2013.

"Tiki Taka Football (The Barcelona Style of Play)." Soccer Training Info. Soccer Training Info, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.

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?

Tiki Taka - How can it be Ineffective?

     As with any strategy, over the years many coaches have had the chance to study its ins and outs and attempted to come up with counter strategies to render it useless. The most common counter to Tiki Taka is applying pressure. As a defender myself, my high school coach always told me that "pressure turns a great player into an average player." As a matter of fact, he could not be any more correct. Tiki Taka thrives on teamwork. If one player gets caught with the ball even for a second too long, the defending team can apply pressure which forces the ball possessor to focus less on getting the ball to his teammate and more on trying to protect it himself. Of course, applying pressure is not a flawless counter to Tiki Taka. Applying pressure generally means that defending players have to leave their positions in order to step up to the attacker. This creates gaps in the defense that the attacking team can exploit  if the pressured player succeeds in getting the ball to one of his teammates. Another counter strategy has come to be known as "Parking the Bus." This is a tactic where the defense and midfielders sit back in front of their goal in two organized lines, only breaking the lines if absolutely necessary. This forces the attacking team to more or less just pass the ball around outside the defenses zone and makes it very hard to find penetrating passes to create scoring opportunities. This, so far, has proven to be the most effective counter strategy to Tiki Taka. However, it is still not perfect.

Tiki Taka - How can it be Effective?

     To an inexperienced viewer, Tiki Taka may appear as nothing more than simply passing a ball around. However it is really much, much more than that. Behind the repeated simple looking passes lies a path to success. The main purpose of this system is to let the ball do more work than the players themselves. As the attacking team possesses the ball, they reserve their energy by only moving into open areas between the defenders. At the same time, the defenders continuously spend their energy chasing the ball around the field in a futile attempt to take the ball away. Once the defending team is tired out, the attacking team can begin making a series of penetrating passes into the defense in order to disorganize them over and over again. Eventually, the attacking team will find a point where a defender is constantly caught out of position and exploit that point as much as they can to score.

     How the system can be effective is not the only question that must be considered, you must also understand when it can be effective. The system is actually more effective when you have players with a shorter build. It makes them more agile and generally much quicker. This means that the player can more easily make their pass and immediately move to their next target space. This is not to say that larger players can not excel in this system, it has just seemed to fit more correctly with those who are smaller.  

Click the link to view the video
Barcelona Tiki Taka in action

Tiki Taka - What is it?

     Tiki Taka is a style of play in association football, characterised by short passing and movement, working the ball through various channels, and maintaining possession. The style is primarily associated with La Liga club FC Barcelona and the Spanish national team under managers Luis Aragonés and Vicente del Bosque. Barcelona's tiki-taka tradition has been credited with producing a generation of technically talented, often physically small players such as Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Cesc Fàbregas and Lionel Messi; players with excellent touch, vision and passing, who excel at maintaining possession. Raphael Honigstein describes the tiki-taka played by the Spanish national team at the 2010 FIFA World Cup as "a radical style that only evolved over the course of four years", arising from Spain's decision in 2006 that "they weren't physical and tough enough to outmuscle opponents, so instead wanted to concentrate on monopolising the ball."