Defensive football is just delaying the inevitable to me. The inevitable being that you’ll make a mistake. And then when you’re scored on, you scramble. I don’t like this negative, pessimistic way of approaching a game. That is a personal preference. 

When someone asks me why I like a team, my first thought is never, ‘How well does that team defend?’ It is, ‘How well do they attack?’ Defensive quality is an afterthought. I don’t even think about it until someone mentions it. I would never watch a game for entertainment purposes because that team defends well unless it is characters like Maldini and Gattuso sliding into tackles and getting in people’s faces.

The thing that distinguishes coaches for me is those that focus on defense and those that build around their defense.

Some people, like Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone, find a lot of beauty in defense. He builds his team around the defense:

I’ve always liked playing well. At Estudiantes de La Plata, where we won the championship, we played with Sosa, Pavone, Calderón, and Verón. At River we played with Ortega, Abreu, Falcao, Buonanotte, and Alexis Sánchez, all together.   If you ask me, what I like most is defending well. If you have players who play well and defend well, you are better than the rest.

You watch English football today, and the games end 4-4, 5-3, 6-2, or 5-1. It’s great for the fans. You watch the games; they come and go, but nobody defends. So I say: Stop, there’s something that someone isn’t doing. If we can improve it and get in line with the attackers, we’ll have something better.

I liked watching his teams this season and last, but I avoided him before because of the sacrifices he made in attack to accommodate a defense that is always solid. It can produce football that is unattractive due to how risk-averse the players become.

Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti recently spoke after Real Madrid’s struggles. He focuses on defense as a means to create more opportunities for the offense.

We had many chances. We lacked accuracy; we could score more. But this is not the problem. We don’t defend well. We need to be more compact. We lack solidity.

From June, in my post “Carlo with an RPG”, he said:

I spend a lot of time defensively, working with my team, working together. Offensively, I give some information, but not too much. What can I tell them?

I wasn’t fond of Ancelotti for many years because of how “hands off” he comes off when he talks about the game, but I’ve grown to appreciate his teams more because he does not make the same sacrifices Simeone makes. If anything, he will make the sacrifice in defense to allow his forwards to try things on their own. 

Then you go all the way to the other end of the spectrum with Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. He defends with the ball, a practice I don’t like. It produces matches that are efficient, which means if they maintain possession, they win more than they lose, but the matches can become quite boring because of how pragmatic, slow, and risk-averse the majority of the passing becomes.

As long as all three managers get results, the owners are happy, the board is content, and fans are satisfied. The inevitable remains, though: the opponent will likely score, and then you will have to score twice to win. I disagree with Simeone; I’d rather have a game that is open and free-flowing that ends 4-3 rather than a close 1-0 win with eighty percent of the match back defending in your own end.

If you have the advantage, attack.