Forza Italian Football is pleased to bring its readers a regular new feature – Il Mister. Our experts will endeavour to show you all the methods and tactical secrets employed by Serie A’s best football coaches.
Anyone who follows basketball will have been familiar with the term ‘pressing’ for far longer than the average football supporter. ‘Full court press’ and ‘half court press’ are common phrases which commentators have used for years. In football, however, fans have only recently begun to hear the terminology. The act of pressing is a defensive tactic where its sole aim is to suffocate the space around the man with the ball, in the hope that he rushes his pass and loses possession or panics and gives the ball away to the defending team by failing to keep control. Pressing is often confused with pressure. You pressure the player but press the space, although it is critical that both are employed if the tactic is to be successful. Pressure can be effected by a single player, but pressing is a team effort.
It sounds simple but its execution takes huge stamina and excellent organisation as players must be very tight and compact to allow for synchronised movements. Furthermore, a coach can decide in what area of the pitch he wants his team to press and when. Due to the physical nature of this tactic, it’s impossible to press for 90 minutes, which is why you might see teams employ the pressing strategy very high up the pitch when they are at their most fresh and energy levels are high. As they begin to tire, so the team starts to drop back and defend deeper, only utilising the press as the opposition get closer to goal. This tactic is most evident with Walter Mazzarri’s Napoli team, as his team press high for the majority of the first half but defend and press much deeper for the final 45 minutes.
To initiate the press, the first thing a defending team must do is to put immediate pressure on the man with the ball. This is to slow down the attacking move and give his team mates the chance to organise themselves to close the space in and around the attacker. The defending team is hoping to either force the attacker to pass backwards or sideways – therefore becoming less of a threat – but if he does try to pass forward, to be close enough to intercept.
In our first image, the Napoli players start to squeeze the space around the AC Milan player, allowing only a pass to be made sideways or back. Note how many Napoli shirts are in and around that small area of the pitch making the space that the Rossoneri have to play the ball as tight as possible. This greatly increases the chance of ‘stealing’ the possession.
The defending team will organise itself depending on where the ball is. Again, looking at the same image, if the ball is passed back to the man to the right of the AC Milan player in possession, the defending team must shuffle across accordingly, filling the newly created gaps. These adjustments need to be made every time the ball is moved on and now we can start to understand just how much stamina is needed to maintain this stifling tactic on your opponent.
As the ball gets closer to your goal, so the pressure element becomes more important and any lapse could result in conceding a goal. In our next image, we can see that the Roma player has time to cross the ball, as the pressure from the first Inter defender is too weak. Note in the penalty box the huge circled space, the defenders do not have time to drop back and cover this area due to the lack of pressure on the cross. 
Subsequently a Roma midfielder breaks into the box and heads the ball into the net, exploting the unguarded space left by the defence. Bizarrely, it may not have been absolutely crucial to stop the cross being executed. The Inter defence would have been just as effective in dealing with the attack if the Roma player had been slowed down before he was able to make his pass into the area, allowing the defenders those critical split seconds to drop back and cover the open space and potentially clear the ball away from goal.
All Serie A coaches will use the tactic of pressure and pressing as their first line of defence when trying to win back the ball. It allows a team to increase its chances of regaining possession without resorting to risky tackles. It takes away the thing that all players want when they are on the ball…time. And without time, a player is more likely to make a mistake. However, if poorly executed it will give clever teams the opportunity to score and make the most of the gaps that are not properly covered.
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