FootBiz newsletter #184: System over self - this World Cup's lesson for football

There is a small town in the Rioja region of Spain called Haro, which is most famous for its annual wine festival.

In the early 2010s, if you had strolled into one of the cafés off Calle Ventilla, you would have found a thoughtful, unemployed man having his breakfast there every day, wondering what his next step in life was.

Then one day while flicking through one of Spain’s national newspapers, Luis De La Fuente saw an advert for a youth coach position at the RFEF, Spain’s football federation.

That right there was the first step towards this World Cup.

De La Fuente got that job in 2013 with the backing of Iñaki Saez, one of the architects of Spain’s footballing revolution, and never left. He is now Spain’s most successful-ever coach.

Mind you, for a long time that wouldn’t have been difficult.

20 years ago, this was a team that had never made it beyond the quarter-finals and had failed to qualify for five consecutive major tournaments from 1966 to 1978.

Now they are the most successful team of the 21st century.

Saez is not a man you hear a lot about but his victories with the Spanish U-19 and U-21 teams at the turn of the century (two European Championships and a World one) plus others won by Juan Santisteban’s youth sides really began this revolution in Spanish football and came from leaning into the type of footballer Spain produces and trying to accentuate their strengths. Spain produced intelligent players who could follow instruction, who understood tactics and boasted technical ability — particularly passing — that would allow them to compete if it was maximised. Rodri, now a Ballon d’Or, Golden Ball and World Cup-winning captain, is probably the best example.

Spain had always produced players capable of this football but had not built them the system and the structure within which they could have success. At this point there was still, as we see in many other nations, a desire to be more like them - the outsiders who are winning. Copy them and we will be better.

Starting in the youth teams and progressing a new philosophy through the ranks, Spanish football broke through properly with its own style in 2008, winning the Euros under Luis Aragones. That team passed you to death.

Consider what was happening in football at that time, where the elite club game was getting more and more physical, where defensive football was producing trophies (the pomp of Rafa Benitez, Jose Mourinho) and yet this Spanish team of undersized dancers simply waltzed around their opponents in a way that had never been done. Positional play, technical excellence, defending by keeping possession. These were the hallmarks.

They demonstrated the importance of system over self.

Watching the World Cup final, the Spanish system and its identity was clear as day. Even a novice watching that game could tell you that Spain strangles you like an anaconda by retaining the ball and trusting their shape.

That is more than a decade’s work engrained in their brains and their feet. Mikel Merino has played under De La Fuente since he was a kid. Fabian Ruiz too. Unai Simon and others to differing degrees as well.

In the end, Spain’s second World Cup win was a victory for systems installed on the pitch and off it.

De La Fuente rose through the RFEF’s coaching structure at their headquarters in Las Rozas, just outside Madrid. He coached some of these World Cup winners from the age of 12. Not only does he know them and their capabilities but they know him and the Spanish system, how to play it. Football becomes easier when it is automated, and players who have played under Pep Guardiola have spoken of how his system is so good because it makes the decision for you.

Guardiola’s Barcelona rose in parallel with the Spanish national team, a symbiotic relationship that has elevated this nation to the top of world football. La Masia, the finest footballing school on Earth, provided eight of this winning squad and is the home of the world’s most successful coaching system, long established and with a distinct philosophy that marks it out from the world.

Conversely, Argentina’s entire campaign — understandably, I would say — was not about system but about self.

Equally, to compare Argentina with the infrastructure Spain has would be quite simply unfair. Decades of corruption under Julio Grondona siphoned tens of millions, if not more, away from the development of Argentine football and has done irreparable damage.

Add to that the allegations that Chiqui Tapia’s current administration at the AFA are continuing to bleed money away and you realise their players have no system to lean on.

What they did have is the best player to have ever played football.

The first decade of Lionel Messi’s international career was spent trying to figure out how to get the best out of a player better than anyone else on the planet… without success.

Eventually they got there, winning the Copa America, but with every orbit around the sun, the intense pressure of maximising his talent before he retired became even more overbearing. The result was this almost cultish self-indulgence that exposed itself on Sunday in New Jersey, a sense of divine right that collided pretty harshly with reality.

Quite frankly, their actions and behaviour were a disgrace. The football was abysmal. Yet they nearly pulled it off, winning the only way they knew how given their fundamental disadvantages against Spain (everything) and their only advantage (Messi).

The system will not always win, but it gives you a better chance of being there every time.

In terms of footballing infrastructure and (particularly) youth development, three countries currently stand in a tier of their own.

France, with its vaunted National Football Institute (INF) at Clairefontaine has long been the standard.

England, with its investment in St George’s Park and the installation of ‘England DNA’ under Dan Ashworth, sought to copy the Clairefontaine model with their own twist. In the decade since, England has won the U-17 World Cup, the U-19 Euros twice, the U-20 World Cup and the U-21 Euros twice while also having their best run of tournament finishes at senior level.

Spain’s process has been their own, not inspired or borrowing particularly from outside, and has been even more successful.

The three countries have all put in place a structure that ensures a conveyor belt of talent rolls through, but just as importantly it also ensures there is continuity and shape. The players know the system, they know each other and they know the coaches.

Some might disagree that these three national programmes sit above their international competition but increasingly the evidence is being seen on the pitch.

In the last few seasons, England, France and Spain have all had representatives in the last four of each edition of the Champions League. They were all in the last four of the European Championships a couple of summers ago and again at the last four of this World Cup. They will again be among the favourites in 2028 at the Euros (held in the UK) and then again at the 2030 World Cup, to be held on three different continents but principally on Spanish soil.

The structures and systems put into place take time to install (and longer to bear fruit) but now that they are, it is difficult to see a way for these nations to take a step back. You cannot say that for Argentina, whose success is built partly on sand and partly on the back of a cosmic miracle that happened to be born there.

In hiring Lionel Scaloni, they truly did benefit from promoting an internal candidate from the association, and he’s much better tactically than many people realised. He was also only hired because they didn’t have the money to get any of their top targets.

Spain, meanwhile, decisively went to De La Fuente as part of their concerted strategy. It was one of a number of reasons their victory ended up feeling quite symbolic.

Part of that was also them battering the ugly face of Argentina, with their repeated aggressions, thin skins and capacity to be outraged by everything but ashamed of nothing.

Argentina’s approach felt like anti-football and Spain’s efforts were of football trying to conquer it.

What a fitting analogy for a month where the excitement on the pitch was constantly wrestling with the disgraces happening off it.

The hydration/ad breaks were an affront to the sport’s very fabric, the half-time show a joke, then you have a sitting president intervening in a refereeing decision, a referee being denied entry then accused of terrorism and countless other things that made you feel… sad, disappointed or any number of ways about what is being done to the game, and in particular the World Cup, which has long been football’s crown jewel.

In particular, Gianni Infantino could do with prioritising system over self. By eroding the trust in the organisation he leads, he weakens the game as a whole. For many, the organisation responsible for the administration of global football is now perceived as a money-grabbing, corrupt enterprise. Even if they have done nothing wrong, the widespread perception that they have is hard to fix, and has real long-term effects.

If you only care about the short-term, like being elected, then of course that is less of a concern. Changing the rules over term limits to allow yourself to run again? Self over system.

Every four years, a World Cup ends and idiot columnists like me draw sweeping conclusions from the result of a single match in a low-scoring, high-variance tournament between some international teams.

I’ll save you that.

But I’ll bet every penny I’ll ever earn that building the best structure and systems is the most likely way to win over time in football.

Obviously when it comes to those who run the global game, the unfortunate reality is that they have already won.

It’s not just the last month that makes me say that, it’s not just the last year, it’s just the reality now — those who run global football have virtually unchecked powers and answer to no-one.

I would like to believe that football will ultimately triumph. But even after watching a World Cup final where exactly that happened, the bigger picture overwhelms.

A cheery note for me to bow out on. Thanks for reading!