When defense ruled the world
Written by Matteo Ciaramella
Football has long ceased to be a mere game. The romantic, ludic aura that surrounded it during its infancy has been mercilessly pushed out by something bigger and stronger, a feeling that cannot be tamed nor ignored: the desire to win at all costs.
In a discussion of football tactics, one can never overlook the famous (and sometimes infamous) Catenaccio system. The anti-football itself, Catenaccio is known as the true veneration of defense. Italians took this style of play to unprecedented heights and extracted every useful bit from it across four decades, from the 1940s to the 1970s. Its major exponents – Nereo Rocco’s Milan and Helenio Herrera’s Inter – conquered 4 combined European Cups in the 1960s alone with Catenaccio at the core of their systems.
Ever since then, despite Italy’s shift from this tactic, the country and its football system have been perennially associated with it. When it comes to defending, the universal belief is that “Italians do it better”, and Catenaccio is the main reason behind this thought.
Like Italians often do, they romanticized Catenaccio’s origins to the point that the system seems to have come out of a movie. Legend has it that during a morning walk on the Amalfi Coast, then Salernitana coach Gipo Viani discerned a fisherman in the distance, trying to catch some prey. Despite the seemingly ordinary practice unfolding before his eyes, Viani was left astounded by the fisherman’s technique. In essence, he coupled two nets in one row, and followed them up with another net right behind them. This way, the residual fish that miraculously escaped the merciless threads of the first two nets would inevitably end up in the third one, rewarding the fisherman with better results. Surrounded by the refreshing maritime breeze, Viani’s brain lit up, and he came up with what would eventually become known as the ‘libero’ position.
Free – this is what libero means in Italian. A free defender, exonerated of all instructions and tasks, who would act as a warden behind the main defensive line, and get rid of any situations that got past them. The libero had no obligations other than to act as a buffer zone between the other defenders and the goalkeeper, which in hindsight revolutionized the game completely.
In the 1950s, seeing coaches set their teams up with 5 or 4 attackers was extremely common. This translated to an era of football characterized by high scoring games and ultra-offensive playing style In turn, standard defenses were made up of 3 players, as opposed to the 4 or 5 we are accustomed to today. So, in order to add a libero to the three-man defense, Viani had to remove one of the inside forwards and severely hinder his team’s offensive output, so that they could maximize their defensive prowess.
As beautiful as this anecdote is, it is highly unlikely that it is true. The real origin story is, in fact, a lot more dull. Catenaccio, despite being Italian through and through, has some distant connections to 1930s Swiss football, more specifically Servette FC and coach Karl Rappan. During that era, the standard formation was an all-out attack 2-3-5 formation, providing offensive spectacle. Seeing as his side was semi-professional yet constantly battling it out with pros, Rappan needed a new strategy to make up for the lack of football abilities in his players. He could not afford to appeal to the crowds that wanted attacking football, so he shifted his approach to form a then-inconceivably defensive formation: the 4-3-3. Four defenders was unheard of in the ‘30s, and moving two wide attackers to the defensive line was considered some serious out-of-the-box thinking. The now four-man defense worked just like it does today. You had your full-backs working against the opposing wingers and the two center-backs covering the middle. One of them would occasionally step out and try to halt the opponent’s attack, while the other one stayed right behind, covering for him in case a residual player would miraculously escape the merciless line of defenders and start running towards the goal. Remind you of anything?
Rappan’s ‘reserve’ defender staying behind to pick up any danger that filtered through is most likely what really inspired Gipo Viani to come up with the ‘libero’ position, as he became the very first man to deliberately play an extra player behind the defensive line. The new system made its debut in the 1946-1947 season and earned Salernitana their first promotion to Serie A in nearly 20 years. Little did Viani know that he had just changed football forever.
Teams around the country started to take notice of the effectiveness of the libero position and the Catenaccio system. Modena – a painfully unremarkable squad – managed to finish third in Serie A during that same 1946-1947 season thanks to the unprecedented protection provided by the Catenaccio system. The aforementioned Nereo Rocco, prior to bringing over this system to giants AC Milan, also used Catenaccio during his stints with smaller clubs. With his hometown team Triestina, he achieved 3 consecutive and unlikely top 10 Serie A finishes, while at Padova, he shocked the Italian peninsula and led his boys to a top-flight 3rd place in 1957-1958. Catenaccio suited underdog teams perfectly. Made up of players who fell behind in athletic and technical abilities, this playing style allowed for characteristics such as determination and grit to emerge more easily.
The Padova and Triestina successes are great stories and show the true power that good Catenaccio held. A powerful tactic that made the most of a team’s discipline and structure, with patient defending behind the ball and sudden counter attacks to score goals. While it may not have been much of a spectacle, opponents could only do so much when playing against Catenaccio teams. Eventually, when the system ended up in the hands of big clubs with star players, this strategy peaked and reached global status.
Upon his move to AC Milan in 1961, Nereo Rocco could not resist the opportunity to take Catenaccio to new heights, and conquer Italy, Europe, and the world. By combining his lethal system with an elite team – including legends Josè Altafini, Gianni Rivera, Cesare Maldini, Kurt Hamrin, and Karl-Heinz Schnellinger – the coach brought two Scudettos, three Coppa Italias, two European Cups, two European Cup Winners’ Cups, and an Intercontinental Cup.
On the other side of ‘Il Naviglio’, Catenaccio worked just as well with Helenio Herrera’s Inter. Another admirer of the Catenaccio system, Herrera relied on extra defense to win games, usually in the form of beloved center back and captain Armando Picchi. As the last defender, the one that teammates fell back on, the one that protected the goal, and the one that oversaw everything from his deep position, the libero had no option but to be the team’s leader. Picchi embodied this concept perfectly, which drew comparisons to his cross-town counterpart and AC Milan captain, Cesare Maldini – another amazing executioner of the libero role, aided by his charismatic personality. Both players were often anointed “coaches on the field”, while Herrera and Rocco frequently were compared for their playing styles and success. With these key similarities in mind, AC Milan and Inter played the 1960s as two sides of the same coin during what became Catenaccio’s best and last decade.
After Italy’s Euro ‘68 win and AC Milan’s 1969’s European Cup triumph, Catenaccio started approaching its dying days. It is important to know that another big component of the system was man-to-man marking, as Italian teams suffocated their opponents by having their back 3 or back 4 constantly follow the main offensive threats and giving them no space to work with. However, with the advent of totaalvoetbal in the Netherlands – where players could take on any position on the pitch when in possession – Catenaccio found itself being directly opposed, and ultimately defeated. Man-to-man marking became impossible against possession-driven teams such as Ajax or the dominant Netherlands national team. The players shifted constantly, playing as an ever-rotating unit, and the mechanical marking instructions dictated by Catenaccio simply could not keep up.
By the mid 1970s, Catenaccio was nearly extinct. It has occasionally come back to life to haunt offensive players, like when Greece employed behind-the-ball defending, heavy marking and a libero in their legendary 2004 Euro run. For the most part, however, the overly defensive approach has caught up with the Catenaccio system, as the world realized that a perfect attack beats a perfect defense, and Italian football moved onto a new system: the zona mista.
References
http://www.calcioromantico.com/a-spasso-nel-tempo/linter-di-foni-e-lo-scandoloso-catenaccio/