u/Window_Professional

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They reduce every win or loss to the tactical genius of a manager. After every game they come out with tactical breakdowns explaining what the losing coach should have done and why the winning coach is apparently a mastermind.

Of course, the guy who wins is always a genius.

For these people, individual quality almost seems irrelevant. According to them, if some players performs at a high level, it’s mostly because of the manager’s tactical system and brilliance.

They never seriously consider physical condition, confidence, mentality, momentum, luck or most importantly individual ability which is still the biggest factor in football.

Football has a thousand unpredictable variables, and tactics are one of the less important aspects compared to player quality.

Even Pep Guardiola has always said his football is simple: stay in the positions he tells you to stay in and run like crazy. He’s also repeatedly said that to play his football you need elite players, and that the players themselves make the real difference more than the coach does.

But for the tacticos on YouTube and X, apparently everything is tactics.

Guardiola had probably the strongest squad of the last 10 years.

If not in the starting XI, then definitely in the overall 22-man squad.

And beyond all the world-class players he managed, the guy also wasted quite a lot of talent. Every manager wastes talent to some extent, but from a so-called genius like him, I honestly expected much more.

Take Benjamin Mendy for example.

At AS Monaco he looked like a huge talent at left-back. I’m not saying he was as good as Nuno Mendes is today, but when Manchester City signed Mendy and Liverpool signed Robertson, most people considered Mendy the clearly bigger talent.

Gabriel Jesus was supposed to be the heir to Sergio Agüero. But Jesus never really became more than just a decent player.

Leroy Sané played some of his best football at City, but even then he never truly reached his full potential.

Jack Grealish was a delightful, expressive player at Aston Villa, only to become more of a system player at City.

Riyad Mahrez spent a lot of time on the bench.

And Joao Cancelo after great seasons at Inter Milan and Juventus, plus an excellent year at City, Guardiola pushed him out while preferring someone like Rico Lewis.

As much as I love Guardiola and consider him a revolutionary, the guy had the habit of thinking too much and being too unpragmatic.

Brazil and France aren't Morocco and Ecuador, so why aren't we seeing this level from Gabriel and Saliba?

Aside from the fact that every time I watch Arsenal, I notice that is difficult to score against them, not because of Saliba and Gabriel, but because they're very physical and organized team. They play with four defenders(Cb). Depending on the match, two or three defensive midfielders and wingers who defend.

Doku is nowhere near a truly great dribbler. Before the rise of the “pace merchants” , nobody would have ever put him in that category. In the eras of Roberto Baggio, Michael Laudrup, Ronaldo Nazário, Rivaldo, or Ronaldinho, Doku would simply have been called what he is: a pace merchant.

He’s basically a player with mediocre close control but elite acceleration over the first few meters, who can mainly beat defenders out wide using explosiveness. A Kingsley Coman with a better bag of feints. Coman himself was mostly about knocking the ball down the line and sprinting after it. Or think of a less technical but more explosive early-phase version of Rafael Leao. Leao is ten times better in tight spaces.

The fact that people compare Doku’s dribbling to Lamine Yamal is insanity. Yamal has phenomenal close control and ball-carrying ability. He can glide through tight spaces and come out still fully in control of the ball. But honestly, I don’t even want to bring Yamal into this discussion.

Vinícius, Barcola, Luis Díaz, Doue, Kvaratskhelia, Dembele, Michael Olise, Antonio Nusa, Jamal Musiala, and many others are clearly superior dribblers.

Doku also has genuinely poor ball carrying in open space.

You can see it every time he beats the first man centrally: he can’t actually run at top speed with the ball under control because his carrying technique isn’t that good. Ironically, even his teammate Matheus Nunes has noticeably cleaner ball carrying.

In tight spaces Doku is mediocre. There’s a reason he almost never plays through central areas or comes inside consistently to combine with teammates, his close control isn’t good enough for that role.

Even his teammate Rayan Cherki is a far better dribbler technically. Doku could never score a goal like Cherki’s against Arsenal because his control in tight situations is simply too limited.

And the moment he comes up against either an athletic or intelligent fullback, he disappears from the pitch and all his limitations become obvious.

In fact, smart fullbacks will simply allow him to sprint down the line while protecting the box and cutting off the dangerous angles exactly what TAA did to him months ago.

In this current PSG side, I’m not even sure Doku would be ahead of Ibrahim Mbaye in the hierarchy. They’re basically the same type of player.

Manchester City went from players like Sané, Sterling, and Mahrez to Doku, Sávio, and Semenyo.

The past doesn’t matter. A smart coach should realize that Mbappé, with his limited sometimes outright sloppy technique, destroys France’s attacking fluidity and makes life even harder for an already weak midfield.

This should be France’s starting XI:

Defense

Maignan

Gusto – Upamecano – Saliba – Theo

Midfield

Tchouaméni – WZE

Doué

Attack

Olise – Dembélé – Barcola

And honestly, Cherki should go too. The guy is insanely overrated. He spends most of the game walking around, then pulls off one flashy move and people start calling him a generational talent.

Doué is better. Much more dynamic, just as technical and creative, but far better off the ball.

Doué was originally developed as a midfielder. With him, Tchouaméni and WZE, you’d finally have a balanced midfield with athleticism, intensity, and actual control of the game.

Then you have a fluid front three that complements the midfield perfectly.

Barcola gives you off-ball movement, cleaner technique than Mbappé, and much more defensive work rate.

Olise and Dembélé can do everything: create, combine, beat defenders, move between the lines. They give France far more attacking fluidity than a system built entirely around Mbappé.

There’s this pretty common idea that the “ideal number 9” has to be a Haaland-type striker: tall, strong, physically dominant.

From there, you get people saying Álvarez “can’t be a 9” because he’s too small, or Dembélé “isn’t a 9” because he doesn’t stay in the box and isn’t strong in the air.

And then there are those who argue that someone like Osimhen, despite his horrible technique, is a better 9 simply because he’s physically strong(he is not even that strong) and he is tall.

Modern football is moving in a different direction. The game is played more and more on the ground, with strikers who take part in the build-up. A number 9 who just stays in the box without linking play or participating in the buildup will always end up being a limited player, especially against well-organized teams.

I was thinking about this and I remembered those games against Dortmund where PSG kept hitting the post, but Mbappé’s performance was honestly disgusting. He constantly lost the ball and created problems for his own team with terrible touches, failed dribbles, and missed simple passes.

Now he’s gone to Real Madrid and the same issues are showing up again. At PSG, every time they lost possession, the midfield had to cover huge spaces and run for him, but Ruiz and Vitinha are not exactly Kanté-type players. That’s why Luis Enrique eventually moved him from the wing into a pure number 9 role: to reduce the amount of touches and limit the damage in buildup.

But that created another problem PSG ended up with almost zero central or between-the-lines play. All the creativity had to come from the flanks, especially because they didn’t really have a true number 10.

At Real Madrid the issue feels even more pronounced. The midfield isn’t particularly technical, and while Vinícius is a good creator, he’s not really a playmaker. So the overall ball movement and buildup often look absolutely horrendous.

I genuinely wonder how people watch football. Sometimes it feels like some of you only read stats sheets.

In my previous post, everyone was shocked when I said Mbappé has technical flaws.

But he always had them. Back at Monaco they were even more obvious. Maybe some of you don’t remember because you were kids, but in France he was constantly criticized for his technical ability. Over time, playing next to Neymar helped him improve a lot because he couldn’t even function properly as a left winger with how poor his close control used to be.

He improved massively with time, but he still never come close to the natural technical level of Kvaratskhelia, let alone Neymar, who is on an entirely different planet technically. In his early years Mbappé couldn’t even curl the ball properly. Step by step he developed a good shot.

But he was never an elite technical player. Even today his first touch can be really poor, which is one of the reasons why he doesn’t work naturally as a false 9 with Vinícius. Even his dribbling is often overrated. The stats might tell you he’s a great dribbler, but if you actually watch the matches, a huge part of it is athleticism.

He doesn’t dribble like Luis Díaz or Désiré Doué. He doesn’t have that same precision or manipulation of the ball. If you can’t see that, I can’t help you.

Mbappé and Vinícius are both heavily athleticism-dependent players.

Vinícius is the better dribbler, but even his technique isn’t exceptional compared to the very best left wingers. He’s nowhere near the technique of Désiré Doué for example. Doué genuinely looks more “Brazilian” than Vinícius. His ball manipulation, first touch, and shooting technique are easly better.

Vinícius also has a very inconsistent shot. Sometimes he absolutely smashes horrible attempts into the stands.

As great players as they are, Vinícius and Mbappé are technically far from Real Madrid's standard. Of the older Real Madrid forwards, like Benzema, Higuain, CR7, Di Maria, James, Ozil, and Bale, only Bale has a worse technique.

A while ago, Enrique said he would never coach a PSG team with Mbappé, Messi and Neymar together because they were basically three useless off-ball players.

And honestly, I don’t think he was ever truly a fan of Mbappé either.

Mbappé is a player without a clear position.

He’s a poor number 9 because he can’t play with his back to goal like Haaland or Lewandowski. He simply doesn’t have the physical profile for it.

But he also can’t play as a false 9 like Dembélé or Benzema because he’s not technically good enough. His first touch is often terrible, he’s not a playmaker, and he can’t facilitate the game like Benzema, Kane or Dembélé.

The only role that really suits him is second striker / left winger, with elite playmakers behind him creating for him.

But even there, there are players who are better in possession and link-up play like Kvaratskhelia, Vinicius or Luis Díaz.

Mbappé will never truly work at Madrid alongside Vinicius. And even if Vinicius leaves, Mbappé would still need a technical number 9 next to him to get the best out of him.

And before people bring up his performances for France: international football is not a good benchmark for this discussion. The level of organization, tactical structure and intensity in the Champions League is much higher than in international tournaments. National teams barely train together compared to elite club sides.

In general, Real Madrid would need to raise the overall technical level of the squad just to compensate for Mbappé’s obvious technical limitations.

It’s not only about pressing or defending. His first touch is often awful, his dribbling can look messy, and his overall technique is not clean at all.

He’s an elite goalscorer, but his mediocre technical level hurts the team’s fluidity.

More skilled for sure.

I remember the years when Neymar was emerging; Lucas was considered just a step below, and some considered him a better prospect because he was more athletic. Then Lucas went to Paris. Under Ancelotti he seemed promising, while Blanc, on the other hand, was a mediocre coach who always limited him. I'm sure that in this era full of limited system players, he would be considered one of the best in the world. No player today has that athletic and technical prowess in attack.