Spain's morbid symptoms are generational, not philosophical

The haters are rushing to declare Spain’s ignominious collapse at the 2014 World Cup the funeral of the tiki-taka – the cerebral short-passing, progressive-possession philosophy of the game that has made FC Barcelona a European powerhouse. Barcelona’s philosophy and its core players have certainly been at the heart of Spain’s unprecedented dominance of the past six years of international football, being crowned European champions in 2008 and 2012, and world champions in 2010. And even though only four of the 14 players used against Chile by coach Vicente del Bosque against Chile were from Barcelona – and the most effective Barça player on the field was actually Chile’s star man, Alexis Sánchez – Spain’s sluggish, ponderous performance will be attributed to the national side having long ago been remade in the image of the Spanish league’s most successful club side of the past decade.

The influence of the Barcelona game over Spain’s national team is undoubted – and was never questioned when it provided the basis for an unprecedented sequence of international triumphs. It’s also true that Barcelona has at times been found out in recent years by teams willing to press them high up the pitch, or maintain their defensive shape until Barça turns over possession, and then rattle them with a high-speed counterattacking game. But all tactical models are eventually found out; that’s how they evolve. Yes, Real Madrid’s brilliant counterattacking thrashed Bayern Munich – coached by legendary Barça philosopher coach Pep Guardiola in last month’s Champion’s League final, but Bayern – playing their own version of Barça’s game – had also won the German Bundesliga in record time, and had crushed all comers in Europe before losing to Real.

Germany, at the World Cup, is expected to play a combination of Bayern’s Barça-influenced game and Borussia Dortmund’s more counterattacking style, depending on which players are available, but they’re unlikely to look anything like Spain.

The style will adapt and evolve – Barcelona’s house style is, in fact, the Catalan club’s own iteration of the Dutch “Total Voetbal” of the 1970s. Spain’s problem may lie more in the personnel on which it relied in Brazil, rather than simply the style in which they may or may not have been attempting to play. (The only period in which they dominated a game – the first half against the Dutch – they actually appeared to be mixing the tempo of the Barca tiki-taka possession game with balls over the top and between the defenders for the likes of Diego Costa to run onto.)

Spain largely relied on the same group of players that had taken it to glory four years ago – 16 of its 23-man squad had been in South Africa. Two years before that, many of them had won the Euros; two years ago they did the same. The seven Barça players in the squad had, over the same period, won the European Champions League twice, and Spain’s La Liga four times. The three Real Madrid players had won two league titles, and one Champion’s League crown. They have been winning things winter after winter, summer after summer, for eight years. If anything, Spain looked jaded.

The contrast in hunger and vitality between the rival sets of players in the Spain-Chile game was palpable. Andrés Iniesta aside, Spain simply failed to deliver the urgency and raise the momentum necessary to pressure their opponents into mistakes. And under the sustained pressure they faced from both Holland and Chile, some of the team’s longstanding weaknesses were found out. They’ve not produced a capable center-back to partner Sergio Ramos; some of the key Barça players who’ve been utterly brilliant when playing in a dominant team – thinking of the left-back Jordi Alba and the defensive midfielder Sergio Busquets found themselves uncomfortably exposed when forced onto the back foot. Xabi Alonso, too, was caught in possession too often, and the team’s midfield brain, 34-year-old Xavi, had a poor game against Holland and stayed on the bench in the Chile game. David Silva never seemed to gel with the style of the players around him, and the paucity of strikers emerging in Spain – which prompted the Spanish football authorities to naturalize Atlético Madrid’s Chelsea-bound Brazilian center-forward Diego Costa, although he proved ineffective throughout the tournament – left Del Bosque with no Plan B. No defenders these days shudder at the thought of facing Fernando Torres, who at age 30 has long ago lost that extra yard of pace and the goal-scoring confidence that made him one of the world’s most feared forwards. Thirty-two-year-old David Villa is headed for Major League Soccer in New York, which says it all.

Del Bosque, out of loyalty to the men who had achieved so much for him, relied on a group of players who collectively amounted to a spent force.

Some coaches made different decisions – England’s Roy Hodgson has gambled on a youthful squad as an investment in the future. But then, England haven’t won anything in 48 years, and there was no burden of expectations. France’s Didier Deschamps also gambled on younger players, but it was 14 years ago that France last won an international title. Spain were defending champions, and decision to stick with those who had done the job in South Africa is understandable. But there are plenty of young players in Spain who we didn’t see playing in Brazil who will come to the next World Cup unscarred by the traumas of their predecessors, and ready to play the sort of football that had us all shouting “Olé!” in South Africa four years ago.

The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously wrote that when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Spain’s 2014 World Cup was all morbid symptoms. Now, we await the rebirth.