By Daily Sports on May 30, 2017

There’s an eternal struggle between free flowing football and stale defensive soccer that continues to elicit debates on which is preferable. And on Saturday at the Wembley stadium in London a big case was made for the former when Arsenal dominated and beat Chelsea in a pulsating FA cup final game.

It seems to come in seasons. At times thrilling possession-based attacking football is the vogue as exemplified by Pep Guadiorla’s Barcelona that conquered club football for about half a decade. At other times it seems a stale passée as teams succeed in constructing reactive tactics rich with almost 90 minutes deep defending and swift counter attacking football to neutralise their more technically gifted and proactive opponents to win games and tournaments.

Just a week ago, Manchester United coached by the master of the dark art of deep defending (a tactic that has won him many big cups) deployed a negative come-break-us down approach to win the Europa cup against their more enterprising, perhaps naive, opponents Ajax.

Ajax dominated the match for large phases, eliciting some twitches amongst the United fans, but when world record signing Paul Pogba’s deflected shot sailed into the Ajax goal in the early minutes of the first half, there arose a sense of déjà vu as United sat back and waited to finish the job in the second half in another moment of rare attack. Defensive organisation at the expense of enterprising attacking football won in the Swedish night and young upcoming coaches would have been wondering if this negative direction wasn’t the way to go.

On Saturday at Wembley, Arsenal served a reminder that attacking football, taking the initiative to the opponents and playing brilliant passing football could win big cups beyond the odd league wins.

With the pacy Danny Wellbeck leading the attack and Mezut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez flourishing between the channels of Chelsea's defence in Arsenal’s new 3-4-2-1 formation, Arsenal mixed a high tempo early pressing game with crisp passing moves to confound Chelsea as they deservedly won 2-1.

To be fair, Chelsea under manager Antonio Conte isn’t a boring defensive minded manager. He has creative players in Eden Hazard, Pedro and Diego Costa who simply faced an in-form Arsenal team on the day. It is an irony nonetheless that he was bested in his 3-man defensive style he introduced this season which was adopted in the latter stages of the league campaign by Arsenal.

Arsenal’s manager remarked years ago: “Football is an art, like dancing is an art – but only when it’s well done does it become an art.” He has no doubt been a master of fashioning out entertainment high tempo football from his sides over the years but question marks hovered around his ability to match the toughest and biggest of sides and win something major in the current time with his favoured pass and move style of football. Beating the newly crowned premier league champions Chelsea so emphatically by playing them off the Wembley park last Saturday was an emphatic answer not just for Wenger but for the true art of beautiful attacking and possession-based football.

IHEANACHO’S RUMOURED LOAN MOVE AWAY FROM MAN CITY

What shall we make of the heavily reported likelihood of Super Eagles attacker, Kelechi Ihanacho’s loan move away from Manchester City to West Ham? Many might feel that it will do him a lot of good to be in a place where he could get regular game time and references have been made about Victor Moses’ several loan moves that have resulted to him coming back to Chelsea and becoming a mainstay in the Barclay’s Premier League triumph this season.

Iheanacho can certainly learn from the perseverance and, of course, the resolve to keep working hard that his Eagles colleague has shown in his career. Iheanacho is quite likely not in City’s coach Pep Guardiorla’s immediate plans as the highly successful coach plots a serious assault on major titles next season for City after a barren first season. But he is young enough to move on loan to play regularly and learn more and hopefully he can become a big part of City’s future or perhaps that of another big club.

Source Daily Sports

Posted May 30, 2017

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