It's been a good week to talk about "space vs posession". There isn't one way of playing football as there isn't one way of playing chess. You can dominate the game in several ways, one of them being by controlling the space.

[THREAD]

"Many people believe that the team with more possession is the team that is more dominant, but that depends on the way you look at it. A team without the ball can still have control of the game. For some coaches, possession is more a matter of PR & mage."

- Jose Mourinho

If you anhilate your opponent's ball progression to the final third and allow them to play their pretty traingles and back passes in their own defensive third without pressing, then it's you who's in control of the game and dictate it, because you are allowing them the tiny bit..

..of freedom and restricting them from progression. The other team is pretty much helpless and is passing around the ball as they can't figure out any way out of this situation.

Then when you recover the ball, you can be quite efficient with it and hit on transitions.

Jose talked about it in his post Arsenal game presser too, "in the second half, we accept what they did to us. When they dropped Xhaka to build with a third man, we could go and press.

"But to go and press with one more man, we would open up spaces in our areas — why should we do that? So, have the ball, try to hurt us, but it will be very difficult for you because we defend very well and very comfortably".

Football can be played in different ways and there are several aspects to the game. The posession myth is mostly prevalent in maybe new fans or uninformed fans. A good team has to be good with the ball, without the ball, in defensive transition and in offensive transition.

Even the managers that defend the "juega de posesión" ideology have their teams set up for the other three phases of the game that are equally important.

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