Nacho Ferrer

The Spaniards’ approach to the beautiful game is not just a matter of radical short passing combinations, or very skilled players, or organized teams during the defensive phase. It is all that and much more.

For many years, in Spain we have been strongly influenced by at least a dozen different football cultures and we have been lucky to learn from all of them, resulting in the creation of our own way of understanding the game. It would be better to say ‘our own several ways of understanding the game’, because Spanish football includes Rafa Benítez, Julen Lopetegui, Pep Guardiola, Marcelino García-Toral, Ernesto Valverde, Roberto Martínez, Unai Emery, Luis Enrique at the same time… and many others whose coaching personality may be night and day, but who always keep three guidelines in common: passion for coaching, deep understanding of the game and excellence in professional performance.

This book firstly analyses what we could call a ‘hybrid’ tactical approach, one of those many ways of understanding the game, and later lays out another combined idea, this time looking at the grassroots level and the management of football academies, as a summary of the best practices of the Spanish elite clubs, above all in training methodologies.