The saddest four words in football that a player can say is “Am I allowed to?” That question comes from the fear of the reprimanding voice of generations of coaches. Their voice echoes in the heads of the players, afraid to make their own decisions.

Southampton manager Will Still when asked how you get winning culture back into a club (video):

I stopped a drill the other day and it was like, we just lost the ball. I said, “You know, why are we losing it in there?”

[player] “I don’t know.”

“Okay, where’s the space? That space is over there. It’s like, so why are you not playing over there?”

[player] “Am I allowed to?”

Wow. And then you realize that it’s a psychological thing that no one actually notices.

And people expect when you walk in, the club spent a bit of money, be an unbelievable team. It doesn’t quite work like that.

“Am I allowed to?” That is the reflex that is being taught. Look to the coach for the solution no matter how obvious the answer is. The player needs permission to play an open pass. What are we doing?

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca was asked about when and how he gives his players “freedom” — in the same way some of his predecessors did, like Manuel Pellegrini, under whom he played under at Málaga (video):

We do everything to allow players in the way we want to play, to allow players to have more time when they receive the ball, more space.

How do you balance giving players “freedom” within positional play?:

It’s not true. This is the big thing for me, the big mistake that people still think and still say. It’s not true because, as I said, we try to give players more space, more time to show freedom when they receive the ball, but if the freedom for you is that you can move everywhere, that is no freedom, that is chaos. Yes, I give you freedom, you can do what you want in that position when you receive the ball, and if everyone starts to move everywhere, you can prepare how you have to defend while you are attacking because now you can be right. If you want the freedom, you can move right, you can move left, you can move forward, back, this is not freedom for me, this is chaos. I also love to give players freedom, but in the right position because, at the end, it’s about team balance, it’s not about one player keeping the structure. I still think that the positional idea, positional game, gives the players a better picture, better space, better solution.

This whole quote is the essence of “defending with the ball.” It is defensive football masquerading as attacking football. You have the ball, you maintain more possession, and therefore the other team can’t score because the ball is in the opposition’s half, the opposition doesn’t have the ball, or the ball is turned over only in areas where you have the advantage in transition. The attacking team can point to high possession stats, field tilt, or wins to justify playing that way, but it’s usually not an attractive brand of football. It can be very boring, but unfortunately they’re not paid to be entertaining. Enzo Maresca’s stance shouldn’t be surprising though because he is Italian. Italian’s live and breathe defense.

Enzo says that the player gains “freedom” when they receive the ball, but do they actually? Think back to that Will Still quote. The player says “Am I allowed to?” when he has the ball at his feet, in the space the manager carefully curated for him, and he needs to be told where to play the next pass. The player needs to be told because he is afraid of being reprimanded for playing “the wrong pass or dribble,” the wrong pass or dribble that the coach determined was wrong, or the loud voices of prior coaches. Is that “freedom?” The player is not looking for the open man, he is looking to execute the expected action.

In positional play, as it is described, players aren’t in charge of coming up with the solution, they are there to execute. If players are individuals “at the wrong time” the attack falls apart because they didn’t execute the play. Individualism within positional play is faked. “You can be an individual when I say so” is what is being communicated to the players. If you don’t comply, you are benched, and that is the fear.

It does feel sort of elitist to say positional play is the only solution because no matter how you play, you have the better players, you should win in a number of ways. There are other ways to win games that involve fostering an environment that gives players more “freedom” off the ball in possession. There are different ways of looking at football.

Hungary over the international break is an example of a team that embrace organization through a shared of understanding of angles, the diagonal in particular, and relationships between the players to know where they need to be in relation to the ball and their teammates rather than sticking to specific zones or swapping zones. Objectively it is not chaos.

In recent history, not many have tried playing the way Hungary play with a team of Chelsea’s quality. Argentina did and they won the World Cup. If you want to find innovative ways of promoting freedom in open play, look at Hungary and listen to the South Americans. If they spoke English predominantly, took over teams with bigger budgets, and won, more people would be copying them because it’s a brand of football that is exciting. It produces play that is predictably unpredictable. It’s unpredictable for the opposition and the viewer but not for the team, that’s why it has the potential to work.

Positional play isn’t bad and it can be entertaining, but it has produced a lot of bad habits for players that go against their natural instincts. See the open man, play the pass. The managers who want to delve into the practices of the innovators will need to go to battle with decades of previous coaches that etched those bad habits into the minds of the players. That is the real challenge, and why strict positional play is the easier choice.