Originally Posted by
Lantern
I don't know what BMac means when he uses the term (probably what you said), but I can answer the question about what it means in soccer terms -- written about it in plenty of essays over the years. From a pure tactical perspective, it was simply demanding that every player had the capacity to play every position at any time as required -- prior to that term, more conventional teams like England etc. had very static positions, a defender was a defender etc., and when you remember that soccer and rugby has shared roots, you see where that tendency comes from.
However, some soccer nations, notably Hungary, and then Brazil, had already been taking positional fluidity to new heights with attacking full-backs etc. in the 1960s and 70s.
"Total football" was taking that fluidity to the next level -- its invention as a term is generally credited to Rinus Michels as coach of Ajax and the Dutch team in the early 70s, but it was also developed at the same time by Valeriy Lobanovski of Dinamo Kyiv and Russia, which were both great, tactically advanced teams back in the day. It starts from the point of 'systems' theory, where the constant combination and recombination of the energy of 11 elements in real-time beats a static interpretation of energy -- so even though it looked a little bit like the fluid football of the Brazilians, it was a lot more systematic (the Brazilians played instinctively and systems covered for them, whereas Total Football was a commitment to a very, very developed system, with expression allowed within it).
In everyday speak, it just means that instead of starting with a 'formation' or with a 'position', every player starts with the ability to solve problems as a group, and they constantly adjust according to that. In reality, it wasn't a totally fluid system, but they did end up with a LOT more goalscoring defenders. If you watch the first half of the 1974 World Cup final (which they ended up losing), you'll see an amazing display of interchanging and passing, which the more rigid West Germans couldn't get close to. They just didn't actually score, unfortunately.
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Some thoughts: The reality is, in footy, we have been practicing some tenets of Total Football for a long time anyway -- a lot of AFL players can play both forward and back as required, and we've had plenty of half-back flankers kicking goals on the run. However, if BMac intends it to be a tactical development, this bodes well for us -- after all, the zone and the press were developed in soccer as positional responses to Inter Milan's catenaccio (essentially an uberflood), just as it has happened in our game, and one of the tactical responses to the zone (and early press) in soccer was Total Football.
Everyone knows that the current Barcelona team is the most tactically sophisticated team in the history of soccer. Well, their footballing philosophy descends directly from that Cruyff Total Football team.. Cruyff played at Barca for years and was their director of football as well, and Michels also coached there, and they have had a massive Dutch influence over the years, especially at academy level. Barca's version of total football is far, far more developed though -- it incorporates a wide range of tactical developments, INCLUDING the press, and yes, they are so systemically dynamic that teams struggle to defend against them.
As a short-term tactical 'development', Total Football for AFL is well and fine, but the reality is, as it is for Barcelona -- truly mature tactical development takes YEARS. This is where AFL tactical development will eventually end up; after the tactical upheaval of the last 10 years (I call 1996, the year Rocket introduced the flood, 'year zero' of footy's postmodern era), where we have packed a lot of evolution into a short time after a century of stagnation, we'll end up with an entire palatte of stuff to choose from. In stockmarket parlance, tactical innovation in AFL still a growth stock, and anyone who can bring in some fully developed tactical innovation from another sport is going to get some short-term advantage and be able to sneak a flag before the game moves past you again. In five to ten years, this rate of innovation will slow down (a mature stock), and we'll only see incremental rather than revolutionary growth. At this point, teams will have to eke out marginal improvements and returns (maximise dividends) to gain advantages.
Hope I didn't bore anyone.