From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up catenaccio in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Karl Rappan's verrou

Catenaccio is a tactical system in football with an emphasis on defence. In Italian, catenaccio means "door-bolt" and it means a highly organized and effective backline defense which is intended to prevent goals.

[edit] History

The system was made famous by Argentine trainer Helenio Herrera of Internazionale in the 1960s who used it to grind out 1 – 0 wins over opponents in their league games.^[1][2]

The Catenaccio was influenced by the verrou or "chain" system invented by Austrian coach Karl Rappan.^[3] As coach of Switzerland in the 1930s and 1940s, Rappan played a defensive sweeper called the verrouilleur, who was highly defensive and was positioned just ahead of the goalkeeper.^[4] In the 1950s, Nereo Rocco's Padova pioneered the system in Italy where it would be used again by the Internazionale team of the early 1960s.^[5][6]

Rappan's verrou system, proposed in 1932 when coach of Servette, was implemented with four fixed defenders, playing a strict man-to-man marking system, plus a playmaker in the middle of the field who played the ball together with two midfield wings.

Rocco's tactic, often referred to as the "real" Catenaccio, was shown first in 1947 with Triestina: the most common mode of operation was a 1-3-3-3 formation with a strictly defensive team approach. With catenaccio, Triestina finished the Serie A tournament in a surprising second place. Some variations include 1-4-4-1 and 1-4-3-2 formations.

The key innovation of Catenaccio was the introduction of the role of a libero, or sweeper, a player positioned behind the line of three defenders. The sweeper's role was to recover loose balls, nullify the opponent's striker and double-mark when necessary. Another important innovation was the counter-attack, mainly based on long passes from the defence.

In Herrera's version in the 1960s, four man-marking defenders were tightly assigned to each opposing attacker while an extra sweeper would pick up any loose ball that escaped the coverage of the defenders. The emphasis of this system in Italian spawned the rise of many top defenders such as Claudio Gentile and Gaetano Scirea in the 1970s, Giuseppe Bergomi and Franco Baresi in the 1980s and Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta and many others in the 1990s.

[edit] Zona Mista

Total Football, invented by Rinus Michels in the 1970s, rendered Herrera's version of Catenaccio obsolete. In Total Football, no player is fixed in his nominal role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender. Man-marking alone was insufficient to cope with this fluid system. Coaches began to create a new tactical system that mixed man-marking with zonal defense.

In pure zonal defense, every midfielder and defender is given a particular zone on the field to cover. When a player moves outside his zone, his teammate expands his zone to cover the unmarked area. However, Catenaccio philosophy called for double-marking when dealing with strong players. Zona Mista (Italian for "mixed zone") was created.

Typical formation of Zona Mista

In Zona Mista, there are four defenders. A sweeper is free to roam and assist other defenders. A fullback plays in both defensive and advanced position, typically on the left flank. The two stoppers, who started then to be called "centre back," mark their zones. In the midfield, there are defensive midfielder, centre midfielder and the playmaker (the number 10) and a winger who covers typically the right flank and sometimes acts as an additional striker. Zona Mista employs two-prong attack. A centre forward plays upfront. A second striker plays wide to the left (a derivation of Catenaccio's left winger) and drift inside to act as a striker or to cover the playmer when the playmaker drops into a defensive position.

The most famous example of Zona Mista was the Italian team playing in the final of the 1982 FIFA World Cup Final. Classy and skillful Gaetano Scirea was the libero, the then 18-years old Giuseppe Bergomi the left back, and Fulvio Collovati and tough tackling Claudio Gentile the centre backs. As the system required, Gentile who was not normally a fullback extended his defensive cover wide to the right. Gabriele Oriali played defensive midfielder, Marco Tardelli centre midfielder and Bruno Conti the playmaker. True to the call of his role, Conti played an instrumental role in Italy's win. He was a central figure in Italy's second goal that was scored by Tardelli and single-handedly created Italy's third goal by breaking down the right side from the half-way line and crossing to Alessandro Altobelli, who came on as an early substitute for the injured Francesco Graziani, to score from the top of the box. To complete the roster, Paolo Rossi played the other forward position and Antonio Cabrini was on the left wing.

[edit] Catenaccio today

Over the years, the original Catenaccio has been slowly abandoned for other, more balanced tactical approaches; in particular, the increasing popularity gained by an attacking-based approach like Total Football has contributed to make catenaccio a tactic of the past.

Real Catenaccio is no longer used in the modern football world. Two major characteristics of this style – man-to-man marking and the libero position – are no longer in use. What many consider Catenaccio is rather a hyper-defensive or retreat style of defending from teams, with rare forward movement. This hyper-defensive style is still commonly referred to as Catenaccio. Nowadays, Catenaccio is used mainly by weaker teams, in order to reduce any technical gap against stronger teams by showing a more physical approach to football. The slow disappearance of the role of sweepers in modern football has also contributed to the decline in its use.

The Catenaccio system is often criticized for reducing the quality of football games as a spectacle. In certain parts of Europe, it became synonymous with negative football since the focus is so much upon defending.

One frequent mistake is to define Catenaccio as any defensive tactical system used by a football team. This is actually untrue, because Catenaccio is just one of the possible defensive tactics which can be used. Nowadays, Catenaccio is used less and less by top teams, and generally only under particular circumstances, such as when suffering from a numerical inferiority following a sending off, or when needing to defend a marginal scoreline until the end of the match.

Catenaccio is often thought to be commonplace in Italian football; however, it is actually used infrequently by Italian Serie A teams, who instead prefer to apply some other, more modern, tactical systems, like 4-4-2 and others. This does not apply to the Italian national football team, however. Italy's previous coaches, Cesare Maldini and Giovanni Trapattoni, used the Catenaccio at international level, and both failed to reach the top. Italy, under Maldini, lost on penalties at the 1998 FIFA World Cup quarter-finals, while Trapattoni lost early in the second round at 2002 FIFA World Cup and lost at the UEFA Euro 2004 during the first round, although after this, Trapattoni would apply Catenaccio football successfully, securing a Portuguese Liga title with Benfica. However, Dino Zoff employed it to good use for Italy, securing a place in the European Championship Final in 2000, which Italy only lost on the "golden goal" rule.

However, German coach Otto Rehhagel used a similar system for his Greece national football team in the 2004 European Championship, and won the tournament as a result despite being cast as heavy underdogs.

When Italy was reduced to 10 men in the 50th minute of the 2006 FIFA World Cup 2nd round match against Australia, coach Marcello Lippi changed the Italian's formation to a defensive orientation which caused the British newspaper The Guardian to note that "the timidity of Italy's approach had made it seem that Helenio Herrera, the high priest of Catenaccio, had taken possession of the soul of Marcello Lippi."^[7] It should be noted, however, that the ten man team was playing with a 4-3-2 scheme, just a midfielder away from the regular 4-4-2.

After the 2006 World Cup, the media picked up the fact that modern football is becoming increasingly defensive: the number of goals scored in that World Cup was only 147 (an average of 2.297 per match), and the Golden Boot winner Miroslav Klose only scored five goals as opposed to the eight of the previous winner, Ronaldo. Additionally, the 2006 World Cup was the first not to feature any forwards in its official top three "Best Players".

[edit] See also

• Striker
• Football (soccer)
• Total Football
• Football tactics and skills
• Formation (football)

[edit] Notes

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (September 2009)

[edit] References

• Giulianotti, Richard, Football: A Sociology of the Global Game. London: Polity Press 2000. ISBN 0-745-61769-7
• Trapattoni, Giovanni, Coaching High Performance Soccer. Spring City, PA: Reedswain Inc. 2000. ISBN 1-890-94637-0

[edit] External links

• Italy - Germany FR 1982