The Big Book of Buildups, Day 4: Circulation

Nobody knows how the buildup ends, only that it does. Somewhere between one box and the other we decide the buildup is over now, thanks for coming, time to move along to another phase called something vague like “progression” or “established possession.” What’s the difference? Who knows! Fixing the precise end of the buildup is like trying to pinpoint when December rain turns to sleet or snow or that old meteorologist’s copout “wintry mix.”

Just look at the various styles of buildup we’ve talked about in this series. Rotation and pass-and-move patterns try to get a player facing forward on the ball between the defense’s lines, so you might figure that’s the logical end of the buildup. But then you’ve got switches, which don’t go through the defense at all, they go over and around it. Where do those buildups end? Facing play outside the block isn’t the same as inside it; you need some movement up the open flank after the switch to drive the defense back and tilt the balance of power to the attack.

When Opta’s analysts tried to define phases of play algorithmically a couple years ago, they set the end of the buildup at the halfway line. At the time that struck me as arbitrary, a shortcut around all the off-ball complexity that doesn’t show up in event data. But as I reviewed games for this project, I kept cutting clips of a fourth kind of buildup, different from the three we’ve covered so far. These buildups didn’t go over, through, or around the defense. They stayed in front of it, nudging the lines back little by little, swinging the ball sideline to sideline, rocking the game to sleep, until at some point the defense was no longer pressing forward to win the ball but leaning back to protect its goal. Sure enough, that shift tended to happen when the center backs got up around the halfway line.

Now, if you were an alien learning about soccer for the first time via subscription newsletter, this slow fourth kind of buildup might seem bad. Isn’t the whole idea to get the ball past defenders, not to let them stay organized goalside? How are you supposed to score without breaking lines? But as a human who’s watched actual soccer in the last decade, you know controlled buildups are almost always the hallmark of a good team. Breaking the press is one way to win the buildup, but backing the opponent up against its box can be better.

The reason good teams build slow isn’t that long possessions are likely to break down the defense on the first try; it’s that they set you up to play transition defense in the opponent’s half, which is even more dangerous than a linebreaking pass as a means to disorganize the opponent and kick the ball into the goal. For teams with the talent and training to play it, the slow possession game’s got the best odds in the casino.

But if you’re looking to push your center backs up around the halfway line, it changes some things about how you build up. For starters, you become more cautious in your pass selection: a slow-build team like Manchester City is happy to pass through the press if given the right opening, but it’s got to be a pretty juicy opportunity to justify the risk. They’re also going to be extra careful about their own possession structure, whose spacing is key to both working the ball forward safely and winning it back after a turnover. Each step of the buildup should be just aggressive enough to brush the defense back but not enough to risk losing shape or the ball. It’s like watching a middle school bully spend his lunch hour making the shy kid flinch.

The name of the game in these slow buildups isn’t penetration—it’s circulation.

It’s almost not worth trying to identify principles for how teams circulate, because the specific tactics depend on the defense’s shape and pressing triggers, and the generalities are, like, “hey, maybe two-touch passing is good!” In most cases it helps to establish a wide base (future letter idea: why is five the optimal number of soccer players to fill the width of a soccer pitch?) and to do some midfield rotations to free passing options on the second line. But more than anything what makes teams good at circulating is, you know, having good players. The difference between a controlled buildup and a dangerous turnover is so often technical: comfort under pressure, a good first touch, quick short passes played to the correct foot. Why else would only good teams build slow?

I spent a fair amount of time in my video review for this letter trying to pin down exactly which actions push defenses backwards. The one that captured my interest is the weak side carry I highlighted Rodri doing in the video. It’s kind of the kiddie version of a lateral switch: ball goes one way, defensive midfielder lingers on the opposite side, then when play swings back he’s in position to receive in a slightly advanced position and carry it diagonally past the first line of the press, forcing the defense to retreat as it recovers from its horizontal shift. Easy, right? What makes it so effective for teams like City and Dortmund is that players with the on-ball quality of Rodri or Jude Bellingham don’t mind drawing defenders in close before they turn around and kick the ball back to a center back. Defenses will try to jump that backpass, but because the ballcarrier dragged bodies to him, the center back can almost always knock it sideways to a free man on the other side of the back line. Eat up the space over there, push the defense back a few more yards, recycle, rinse, repeat.

Circulation isn’t sexy, I know, but maybe because Queen’s Gambit has me on one of my every-five-years chess kicks I was taken by that untouchable little L-shaped backpass motif after the carry. It reminded me of a knight dancing out of reach of advancing pawns. Then I remembered that chess has the exact same problem that was bugging me at the start of this letter. Like soccer analysts talking about phases of possession, chess players talk about an opening, middlegame, and endgame, but nobody knows exactly when one turns into the other. You’ve seen the simple patterns at the start of play so many times you can memorize them, but the longer things go on, the more complicated the position gets. Play long enough and pretty soon you’re in uncharted territory with nothing but positional principles and tactical intuition to guide you. And that, it seems to me, is the moment you’ve left the buildup behind. ❧

Thanks for being a space space space socio. I know I owe you guys a couple letters, so I'll probably sprinkle some extras in here and there around the holidays. If there's any particular topic or team you'd like to see explored, hop in the comments or shoot me a message and I'll figure out a way to work it into the schedule. Have a great weekend!

Further reading:

• Tom Worville, Phases of Play: An Introduction (StatsPro)

Image: Maya Lin, Storm King Wavefield (photo by Sherman Clarke)