Is De Zerbi the new Guardiola?

“One of the most influential managers in the last 20 years. There is no team playing the way they play – unique.” Those are Pep Guardiola’s words on Roberto de Zerbi.

Why is it that the Brighton manager is getting such high praise from one of the modern coaching greats?
It all comes down to his team’s playing style that is not only “unique” but incredibly effective. It’s allowed the Seagulls to get results that add up to more than the sum of their parts and you can see how it could be a blueprint for the game to evolve towards.

To explain the de Zerbi revolution, let’s go back to the days when Guardiola was revolutionising football himself.

Guardiola drove the tactical trends with the tiki taka system at Barcelona, where patience in possession was taken to a new level. The success of this approach was highlighted at the time with UEFA Champions League triumphs in 2009 and 2011 with Spain’s FIFA World Cup win sandwiched in between.
This was later countered in Germany with gegenpress: a system of advanced players pressuring defending players to create scoring chances from turnovers of possession. This approach was at its peak when there was an all-German Champions League final in 2013, followed by the national team’s World Cup triumph the next year.

From that point on, modern tactics have been a balance between possession and forward-pressing and the world has been waiting for the new approach to take football to its next evolutionary stage.

Enter de Zerbi, who is using a system of prolonged possession in defence with the goal being to entice the opposition to press and over-commit numbers in attacking possession. Then his team strikes by passing through the press in an organised surge of players making themselves available in front of the ball.

So far in de Zerbi’s early managerial career, the signs are good that this is indeed an approach that challenges the tactical status quo that most modern coaches have developed.

Brighton’s visit to Manchester City on Saturday (live on Showmax Pro, courtesy of SuperSport) should be a fascinating test of how this new approach fares against the acclaimed coaching of Guardiola.

Guardiola’s managerial journey started with tiki taka before adapting to the forward-pressing developments in the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich.

At Manchester City, he’s created a team combining both approaches and has even introduced an element similar to De Zerbi, where he uses advanced defenders on the ball to draw in attackers (his use of John Stones being the best example of this).

City have spent the international break licking their wounds after back-to-back defeats in the Premier League and will no doubt have used the extra preparation time to hone their approach of nullifying De Zerbi’s Brighton.

There is more at play than simply the Premier League points on offer in this game. A good result for Guardiola could serve as confirmation that he’s still the dominant tactical mind in the game. A good result for De Zerbi could signify a changing of the guard.

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