David Moyes is in the spotlight again, but this time, it’s because his seemingly antiquated tactics helped his side pull off an incredible upset. Real Sociedad beat Barcelona 1-0 on Sunday, the only goal a hysterical Jordi Alba own goal in the 2nd minute, allowing La Real to set up in the signature Moyes shell. The Blaugrana had no answer, no way to deal with Moyes’ approach.
Moyes built his reputation on games like this. Previously, he guided Everton to a consistent level of achievement they had no business obtaining based on their resources. His teams were competitive every year, and he even broke up the Premier League’s near-monopoly on Champions League places on one occasion during his tenure, finishing in the top four in 2005. But he did this using tactics that were largely considered boring, his teams were fairly one-dimensional, and most Evertonians weren’t particularly sad to see him go when he was named Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor at Manchester United.
His time at Old Trafford was a pretty spectacular failure, in which he made United look a lot like Everton. They weren’t truly awful and, given their average personnel, weren’t that bad defensively, but they lacked invention and struggled to score against teams that a club of United’s reputation is supposed to crush regularly.
In his current job, at La Real, Moyes is still the same manager. He hasn’t changed a bit, but old-school Moyes is something that’s very new to La Liga, and it had Barcelona baffled.
Real Sociedad set up with a flat midfield four in front of a flat defense, an attacking midfielder ahead of them to put pressure on Barcelona’s deepest midfielder (Sergio Busquets), and a goal-poacher to act as a counter-attacking threat. José Mourinho has seen it a dozen times at this point and Arsène Wenger much more than that, but to Luis Enrique, this was something original, and Barcelona couldn’t figure out how to break it down. Even with Moyes using midfield playmaker Xabi Prieto on the right and career attacking midfielder Sergio Canales in a defensive position, the Blaugrana couldn’t find any holes to exploit.
Anyone can find some success playing with two banks of four, someone man-marking the opponent’s regista and a goal-poacher. Real Sociedad’s success while using ill-suited personnel is evidence of that. But almost no one in Spain does it, and for whatever reason, Enrique wasn’t ready for Moyes’ standard Everton tactic.
There’s some precedent for British managers achieving immediate success abroad with what those who are familiar with them consider to be rudimentary tactics. In an interview for the print edition of The Blizzard, excerpted here by The Guardian, England manager Roy Hodgson talked about his experience in Sweden, where he managed to achieve success using a very basic 4-4-2 setup.
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Instead of playing with a team that was very spread out from one end of the field to the other, with a libero who stays in his penalty area and a centre-forward who never tracks back, we set up a system of zonal defence, a back four, people pushing up and, of course, getting the ball forward into the final area much more quickly.
This isn’t all that dissimilar to the brief period of time that Pep Guardiola got results with Barcelona playing a very odd 3-4-3 diamond shape with no wingbacks, or Marcelo Bielsa’s first season with Athletic Bilbao, when he guided them up the table with his brand of high-pressing, ultra-high tempo football. But there’s a post-script — Guardiola eventually abandoned the 3-4-3 altogether at Barca, while Bielsa crashed down to earth, finishing 10th and 12th before he was released.
Moyes’ base tactics for big games aren’t a gimmick, but they’re not impenetrable either. Every La Liga manager now has the knowledge that Moyes is willing to use the same tactics that he used in England — and they now have a game to study. He’ll have trouble pulling off this kind of result with any consistency, but for now, he can take pride in the fact that he fooled one of the biggest clubs in the world.
