Death of gegenpressing

Last night against Villa, Liverpool were once again unable to hold on and control the game, conceding two late goals to squander the lead. This inability has cost them a trophy-filled final season under Klopp; more broadly, it has cost them many trophies during the Klopp era.

And as Klopp leaves the stage, so does gegenpressing.

Gegenpressing elements have become so integrated in almost every tactical model today, that gegenpressing itself is no longer a viable standalone system.

Paradoxically, thus, the more popular gegenpressing became, the less viable it became. And I would argue it has reached its natural evolutionary end.

When he arrived on the scene, Klopp represented a breath of fresh tactical air, masterful in articulating and executing on his "heavy-metal football" vision. Was he the first to employ gegenpressing? Of course not, not even the first in the Bundesliga.

But Klopp was the most radical and prominent gegenpressing evangelist, basing his entire gameplay on this notion of winning the ball as soon as possible and attacking unsettled defenses.

Because that's what it was, at its core: an attempt to distrupt teams before they had a chance to build their attack, and then to attack them before they had a chance to organize their defense.

It was the perfect, extreme antidote to Pep's patient possession model which ruled Spanish, European and international football for years.

Where Pep sought control with the ball until he manipulated space to attack, Klopp's model embraced chaos and speed. It exploited possession systems at their most vulnerable at the time - 1st stage build up and rest defense.

High block pressing was not prominent at the time, and in turn, 1st stage build up wasn't nearly as elaborate as today. It was an innocent time before progression patterns, press baiting and other mechanisms.

And similarly, rest defense, even in top teams, was not nearly as good as it is today. They just didn't get hit by opposition as much after losing the ball, thus they did not care for it as much.

What followed for the past decade was a fascinating interplay of two approaches, especially after Klopp and Pep both joined the PL. It was tactical evolution at its finest.

Slowly, two styles also started copying from each other to stay ahead. Guardiola added elements of directness while Klopp was trying to add elements of control.

His last Liverpool teams, while still direct, were not nearly as vertical as his first. And yet, Klopp couldn't find ways to fully tame the beast he was nurturing.

Season after season, Liverpool were able to break defenses through speed & verticality, but they were also getting often exposed at the back, unable to see games through. And now we're seeing the same thing at Manchester United under Erik Ten Hag.

Instead of solving progression and creating final 3rd patterns, the idea is to catch teams when they are most vulnerable and hit them with devastating speed & well-times switches.

With a system that's much less systematic than Klopp's, relying on individual traits rather than structure, it's been a complete disaster. Add a few important injuries to that, and the whole thing imploded quickly.

But I would argue it's not just a problem of execution; in 2024, gegenpressing is a problem of vision, too. Opponents have adapted, coming up with ways to bypass Liverpool's menacing front press & to break their rest defense.

Even relatively average teams are trying to use press baiting, for example, or formation variations to play through presses, dropping DMs into backline, inverting or pushing FBs forward.

Even average teams now have ball-playing keepers, making it harder for heavy-metal pressers to regain the ball.

Gegenpressing as a tactic, a part of the system, is still very potent. Almost every top team uses it today, in some way or another, trying to compress the field and win the ball back as soon as possible.

But gegenpressing as a standalone game model, it turns out, is now a fairly low ceiling model. When done correctly, it can be devastating and exciting; most of the time, though, it's not sustainable at the top level.

United should be worried that, once again, we've managed to catch the tail end of a tactical system, as the game marches on into new territory.