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Throughout this World Cup series on Dom’s Tactics Lab, I kept searching for countries that most closely resembled club teams. Spain were the obvious candidate with their principles in attack and defence that mirrored what top European squads do.
Argentina were another excellent example with a shared vocabulary and cultural embedding so deep that no one else could match it.
Spain and Argentina: Who Is The Actual Favourite?
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Jul 9
A couple of days ago, the defending world champions Argentina, led by the greatest player to have ever lived, had a scare. Egypt, the team no one thought would pose a genuine threat to Lionel Messi’s squad, went 2:0 up with just about 20 minutes left to play. But then, Lionel Scaloni made some changes, the team’s shape altered and Messi took it upon himself to make things happen. Three goals later, Argentina were in the quarterfinals.
Both of these teams were instant favourites in my eyes, even before including Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal into the equation. Throughout this series, we have been building towards this final and if you’ve read all my stuff, you know I’ve been telling you it would happen.
But of course, then came Didier Deschamps. They’ve earned at least a mention on Dom’s Tactics Lab. And let me just say that France are… different. France’s system is the only system at this World Cup that should not be working in the slightest. In fact, you could argue that France have no system at all. But that’s exactly what the system is and that’s exactly what made it among the best at the whole bloody tournament. Until they met Spain.
And De La Fuente is both a clear opposite of that but also a stylistic match for Les Blues. These are two distinct philosophies that went head to head; a force of nature vs a well-oiled machine, Kylian Mbappe vs Lamine Yamal, De La Fuente vs Deschamps. And there was only one winner.
On the other end, England came into their semifinal clash with Argentina with heads up and chests puffing. On paper, they should’ve been the better team. But… Argentina are a different beast entirely.
So today, I want to talk about what separated the winners from losers and why it was always going to be this specific confrontation that answered the summer's most interesting question.
Here is the difference between the would-be favourites from the actual favourites.
Ready to dive in?
I want to start with the losers of the night because I’ve ignored them this whole tournament. And you need to understand them so you can appreciate how bloody incredible a team must be to do to them what Spain have done the other day.
Of course, France are insane and this loss, while certainly painful and grounding for the would-be champions, does not take away from their quality. And as you’d expect, the secret to most of that lies in the attack. In fact, you could argue that France’s attack is the system itself.
I mean, have a look at this. France front four touches against Sweden: 248. France back four touches: 228. How does it happen that your frontline registers more touches than your backline? For comparison: Germany front four 187, back four 518. Brazil front four 204, back four 447. England front four 180, back four 293. It doesn’t matter if we look at more transitional or more possession-based teams, the backline generally sees more of the ball.
France’s four attackers are players who any club in the world would build an entire system to maximise touches for. At this tournament, all four were restricting their natural tendency. Four mavericks, one rule each. And it has produced 23 combined goal involvements, more than Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho for Brazil in 2002 when they won the whole bloody thing.
And this attack generally consists of four main pieces: Mbappe, Dembele, Olise and then either Desire Doue or Bradley Barcola. But regardless of who plays and in what structure Les Blues run out onto the pitch, the mechanism remains largely the same. Let’s look at them one by one. And I’ll get to the big guns at the end.
Olise is quite interesting to me because he is the guy who pulls the opposition on top of himself with a high volume of touches and being one of the first receivers from the frontline. If you look at his heatmap, he often covers the entire pitch, from the first phase to the last. I saw Beck call him The Nomad 10 and it really stuck with me because that’s exactly what he is: an information-gatherer for the rest of the attack.
Obviously, he is also a massive creative hub for the squad with five assists, creating that cognitive centre from which everything else radiates. Barcola himself described him perfectly.
‘He does everything on the pitch. He works hard defensively and with the ball, he does great passes, brings danger.’
Without naming the exact mechanism, Olise’s teammate does the heavy lifting in explaining it. The description does a great job of showing us the cognitive load-bearing of a player who pulls. And he’s the only pull player in the frontline, which makes him a key cog in the machine.
Both Barcola and Doue offer opposite forces on the pitch and are essentially interchangeable in terms of their role on the left. I’m not saying they are the same type of players but rather, they perform similar roles in the system and Deschamps can use either without disrupting the overall structure too much (or at all).
Dembele plays on the opposite flank and similarly to the former two, he is a push force and the width-holder on the right. What we must know about him is that he never competes with Olise for central space (until the semi final that is); when one wants to cut inside, the other is wide. At his best, of course, he is also a space-opener and together with Mbappe creates the highest-combining duo in the tournament.
And then finally, the Real Madrid superstar himself. Compared to Olise or even Dembele, Mbappe registers minimal touches but maximum directional threat. He’s not exactly a centre-forward, despite playing down the middle on paper, but rather more of a second striker who drifts, drops and receives facing play. What makes him a push player, though?
‘Playing with Olise is easy. He always has his head up, always trying to play forward, always sees my runs.’
Mbappe here is describing the pull player’s function from the push player’s perspective. He runs. Olise sees it.
The pull-push dynamic produced the most efficient attacking mechanism at this World Cup. I mean, 23 goal involvements from three players. Goals between the 60th and 75th minute in game after game, as opponents tired and the architecture ground them down.
Then Spain played them. And the mechanism, for the first time in seven weeks, had nothing to work with. Spain took what Deschamps had built and broke it into pieces almost effortlessly.
And now… destiny awaits.
This won’t be your usual tactical analysis of any game in particular.
It’s been two days since Spain dominated France and won 2:0 to advance to the World Cup final. And just last night, Argentina completed their comeback to send England packing. You’ve probably had your fill of standard match analysis. But on Dom’s Tactics Lab, we do things slightly differently.
So instead, today, we will pay homage to champagne football with a Barcelona core that booked a date with the greatest player to have ever lived in a dream final for every Culer and football fan on the planet.
Thank you for reading this far. Dom’s Tactics Lab has been growing since Day 1 and it’s all because of people who choose to support it. To say thank you, I’ve decreased the price of annual plans to £60 per year, which comes out to £5 a month. It’s the cost of your coffee. It may not mean much to most but it means the world to me! Thank you once again.
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