It’s forbidden to take risks!

Risks in football are a topic that has been debated over the last few years. In events on last season, the draw between Arsenal and Manchester City and a speech by Milly Lacombe about “Guardiolism” have highlighted a discussion in football: what’s now considered the best football in the world is a play style with few risks. But is this a good thing for football? Is there someone to blame?

Before discussing, let’s contextualize what we’re talking about. Imagine a footballer passing to the left wing, the winger controls the ball, receives it in a situation where the opposing full-back is marking him, with a corridor to be explored behind this defender. He carries the ball deep and is blocked. Instead of risking a dribble, he prefers to turn the ball to tactically open up space.

Is this wrong? No, but shows a fact: the player chose not to take risks. A risky dribble, a risky shot from a tight angle, a one-two in the defensive field, a breakaway pass, breaking the deffensive lines, in the build-up. Day by day, I personally see this happening less. And, when it does happen, is under less risky conditions.

Why are they risking less?

This answer seems obvious at first glance: if you take fewer risks, you make fewer mistakes. If you make fewer mistakes, you have a better chance of winning. And football is also about winning. The narratives and the prizes are based on the logic of competitiveness in having a winner, and it has always been this way, but teams in previous phases of this sport didn’t necessarily take fewer risks.

The technological, technical, physical and tactical evolution of football is an unquestionable truth, but not all evolution brings only benefits, because neither football nor life is this simple: “it has improved or has gotten worse”. This evolution has brought many positive points for the professionalization and balance of competitions, but on the other hand, it brings problems in other areas.

This is because the world still consumes football based on narratives and ready-made answers: “Guardiola won, Spain won, European football is tactically superior and what we do in South America is wrong”. This has already been emphasized in several texts by other colleagues about how some tools have been universalized and what was narratively considered superior has been copied and reproduced.

Positional play, positional attack, zonal deffense, tactical periodization, tiki taka, overvaluation of tactical responses, overvaluation of statistics… these tools were imported from different places around the world as more evolved and correct, superior and more modern responses.

There is nothing wrong with these tools bythemselves, but they all have advantages and disadvantages in practice, some more than others and, of course, always depending on the contexts in which they’re inserted. But the main points they have in common are: a narrative of superior modernity; they provide the coach with more control over the football dynamics, over the player and more standardization of individualities; and, most importantly: they minimize errors more than other tools.

This doesn’t mean that Guardiola and his teams are wrong for doing this, after all, Doku and Foden take risks and do it well. It’s just one of the many ways to score and win, but if they are applied blindly and out of context, it’ll generate automatisms and impositions on all different types of players and teams.

How does this relate to risk? The match and the player end up conditioned to avoid mistakes. Some are so conditioned by standardization that they become afraid of making mistakes. They get 95% of their passes right in games, but they’re all safe passes, while a player like Ganso or Özil gets that or more right by always trying something out of the ordinary.

And what’s good about taking risks?

In a football that is becoming increasingly tactical and standardized, a risky dribble, a risky pass, a risky play or even an idea can partially destroy what is well structured. When a risk is successful, the structure is shaken up or down. It’s a mental impact, then a tactical one.

Playing by counterattacks has its pros and cons;
Playing entirely in the opponent’s half has its pros and cons;
Functional (relationism) and positional play has its pros and cons;
A style with more success and fewer risks has its pros and cons;
Everything in football has its pros and cons, including risk.

It’s just another way of scoring goals and winning, a priori, and it’s no better or worse than any other. Diniz’s Fluminense, for example, had a very risky style of play. Philosophically, he works on the player’s self-confidence mentality to take risks to make big gains. Like “no risk no gain”.

The build-up in “Dinizismo” is risky, the team will end up making mistakes, but many players technically and mentally enhanced their characteristics and managed to live a peak at the beginning of 2023 and become Libertadores champions for the first time in the team’s history.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that every coach who is an adept of a functional play (relationism) agrees with the philosophy of taking more risks in football, after all, the “appositional” attack is just another tool, but it conditions greater freedom and autonomy even in the way it’s structured on the field, therefore, greater self-confidence (something that can be built in any scenario).

See, for example, this speech by Grêmio’s coach Renato Gaúcho — who uses the functional play in his team — about Diniz’s style of play at Fluminense:

“I’m totally against his style of play. It’s Russian roulette. He plays beautifully, everyone applauds. If he makes a mistake, it’s a goal. I don’t take that risk, I never will. The way his team plays, the opponent will always set a trap to steal the ball. This has happened a lot and they have conceded goals or been threatened. He did it and it worked, it’s beautiful. If he makes a mistake, he loses the game.”

When says it, Renato is talking much more about Diniz’s build-up phase, known as the most risky in Brazil and perhaps in the entire world, which takes the player’s breath away. This is because Fernando Diniz is a little more extreme, but this allows him to “improve the player, improve the person.”, as he loves to say.

And that’s the philosophy behind giving more freedom to take risks. To err is human, every player will make mistakes. Some players will make more mistakes and others less. Not every team in the world will have the structural and technical conditions and the ability to have a Guardiola in charge to be so efficient in getting things “right”.

Mistakes are also a double-edged sword. You can feel more confident knowing that if you make a mistake, you can get the ball back and try again. At the same time, you can make a mistake and feel down. But in football, and in life, we make more mistakes than we make successes.

So helping players deal with mistakes in a healthy way and trying to take more risks, doing what they believe in, brings the athlete more human.

When we talk about dehumanization and inhibiting risk, that’s it. For a contextualized football, where each individual is respected as a human being and not as a reproducer of numbers, victories and titles. For more risks in football.

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Follow me on X/Twitter for more football content: (@marcusarboes)

If you’re not familiar with the terms used to classify football playing styles “positional and functional/relationism”, I recommend reading this: WHAT IS RELATIONISM?. Recognising Patterns in Football’s… | by Jamie Hamilton | Medium