Counterpressing is a fitness bet you must afford

Winning the ball back immediately is excellent football and an expensive habit that thin squads cannot sustain to May.

The first six weeks are glorious. A side that swarms the ball the instant it loses possession looks unplayable, wins matches by three, and everyone writes about the coach. Then February arrives and the same team is drawing at home to opponents they beat comfortably in September, and the explanation offered is a loss of confidence.

It is not confidence. It is that counterpressing is bought with a specific physical currency, and the currency runs out.

The action itself is short but brutal. Two or three players accelerate maximally over ten metres, decelerate, change direction, and do it again if the first attempt fails. Repeated across a match that might be fifty such efforts, most of them concentrated in the players furthest forward. It is the accumulation that matters, and the accumulation lands on a small group because the press is led by the same forwards and attacking midfielders every week.

So the strategy has a hidden entry requirement, which is a squad deep enough that those roles can be rotated without the system degrading. Clubs that have it can press all season. Clubs that do not are effectively borrowing performance from March at a very high interest rate, and the bill comes due exactly when the season is decided.

I would still recommend it over the alternative for most sides, with a condition. Press selectively by zone. Counterpressing in the opponent's third, where a turnover leads directly to a chance and the distances are short, is the highest-return version of the action. Counterpressing in your own half is mostly a way to get tired for a marginal gain, because even if you win it there you are forty metres from goal with everyone behind the ball.

The other thing worth saying is that the press degrades quietly rather than obviously. It does not stop; it just gets a half second slower, and half a second is the whole margin. The video looks similar. The results do not.

If you want to know whether a pressing side is in trouble, do not watch the pressing. Watch the second effort, the one after the first press is beaten. That is what disappears first, and it disappears weeks before anybody says anything about it.