When you think of Spain’s brilliance at soccer, you don’t immediately think ofBilbao. But even Spanish provincial towns have a lot to celebrate nowadays. Wanderingaround the rainy northern port city last month, I was struck by all the red and whiteAthletic Bilbao flags hanging from windows. The local club had just knocked ManchesterUnited out of the Europa League with surprising ease. That was quite a feat. WhereasUnited has “fan stores” around the planet, Athletic seems to be run entirelyout of the quiet, glorious former ship-owner’s mansion a five-minute walk along theriver from Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum. And Athletic doesn’t recruit likeUnited. Not only does the club shun foreign players, but it hardly even recruits from therest of Spain. Athletic only fields men born and raised in Spain’s Basque country orexpatriate Basques. There’s no logical reason why Athletic should be one of five Spanish clubs tohave made the semifinals of the Europa League and ChampionsLeague, especially during a terrible Spanish recession. Nor is there any logic to thiscountry of just 46 million people being both reigning world and European champions. Andshould you think it’s just the fluke of a few geniuses being born in the samegeneration, Spain’s under-21 and under-19 national teams are reigning Europeanchampions, too. Spain is also about to knock much richer England off the top of theranking for club teams compiled by UEFA, the European soccer association. Somethingremarkable is going on here. Spain doesn’t just have the world’s best players;it also has the best system. What has happened is that the passing style introduced by the Dutchman Johan Cruijffat Barcelona in the 1970s and 1980s has gradually become a national style. This began inthe 1990s, when other Spanish clubs started looking to Cruijff’s “DreamTeam” for ideas. If Spain had a national style of play before then, it was the“furia roja” (the “red fury”), a game that was all passion andwillpower. Gradually, instead of treating soccer as a battle, the Spaniards came to treatit as a sort of chess. Their style became known as “tiki-taka,” a game ofshort passes. Today, even RealMadrid’s academy churns out tiki-taka players, and in youth soccer, they are amatch for Barcelona -- though getting into Real’s first team is a differentmatter.By the 2006 World Cup, Spain’s coach Luis Aragones -- for much ofhis career a merchant of counterattack -- made short passing the style of the nationalteam. It was during that tournament that the late Spanish TV commentator AndrésMontes popularized the phrase “tiki-taka.” No longer did Spain charge aroundsenselessly; now it controlled games. The Anglo-Spanish writer Jimmy Burns, in hisexcellent new book La Roja, reaches for a bullfighting metaphor: Spain’schange of style was “a change of identity from bull to torero.” The embodiment of tiki-taka is, of course, the little man. Albert Capellas, then youthcoordinator of the Masia, told me in 2009: “If he’s small or if he’stall, for us that is not important.” Just how revolutionary that simplestatement is becomes clear when you compare Spain to a country that still thinks sizematters: England. Leon Britton was for years a moustachioed journeyman midfielder withSwansea in the English lower divisions. He passed nicely, but at 1.68 meters, and slightwith it, he was considered too small for the top. This season, aged 29, in Swansea’sfirst year in the Premier League, Britton has finally been discovered. In one game hecompleted all 67 passes he attempted, and midway through the season he had the highestpass completion rate in Europe, just ahead of Xavi. Had Britton been Spanish,he would never have spent those years in the wastelands.Tiki-taka percolatedfrom Barcelona first to Spain’s national team and gradually to most Spanish clubs.Even in Spain’s second division you can now see defenders weaving intricate passesfrom their own penalty areas while their coaches try not to have heart attacks on thebench. Last summer Athletic Bilbao went the whole hog and imported one of the fathers oftiki-taka, the Argentine Marcelo Bielsa. Continue Reading

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