Italian tactician Roberto De Zerbi has turned Brighton into one of the most effective sides in Europe and the analysis of the victory over Manchester United also takes in his inspiration from the NBA. ‘Football is not what I thought it was,’ confessed one of his players.
The former Benevento, Sassuolo and Shakhtar Donetsk coach has been on the Brighton and Hove Albion bench for precisely one year, since he was drafted in when Chelsea poached Graham Potter.
In that time, he earned results including a 4-1 victory over Chelsea, 3-0 against Liverpool, beat Arsenal and Manchester United twice.
His style of play is back in the headlines after yesterday’s 3-1 Premier League triumph at Old Trafford, where after a difficult start De Zerbi moved his centre-backs a little wider, neutralising the Manchester United press and changing the balance of the game.
Multiple commentators and writers noted how De Zerbi ‘out-witted’ his Manchester United counterpart Erik ten Hag.
De Zerbi’s style has always been compared to that of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, but Sky Sport Italia note that his inspiration goes much further back to the 1990s and 2000s in basketball.
Specifically, it was a tactic used by Tex Winter and Phil Jackson at the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers, the ‘Triple Post-Offense.’
It involves continually creating triangles between players, so the ball is moved quickly and constantly, making the most of movement off the ball.
This was also explained by Brighton player Lewis Dunk to the Telegraph.
“If I am being honest, the first couple of weeks were horrendous … I wouldn’t say horrendous, they were baffling,” said Dunk.
“I see football in a completely different way, I picture it in a different way and that is the biggest thing. Football is not what I thought it was. Just how we play now. The idea of what I did before, I thought it made sense. But when you learn something completely different, you believe in it and this makes sense. You think ‘why didn’t I know this?’ and ‘why didn’t I do this before?’”
This kind of style requires a great deal of focus in training and rigorous movement off the ball, which has to be drilled into the players.
“All our games now are about pressure, playing with opposition teams when they’re pressing high and pressing low. When to pass the ball, the timing of that and the timing of movement. Before, I didn’t really know about that. It’s all about the finer details,” added Dunk.
“It’s rehearsed – don’t worry about that. We rehearse it every day. That is our training. I couldn’t play this position, but now know every position on the pitch and where they should be. The time they should move and what angles they should give.
“We practise it that much that we know every scenario. One presses from this angle and one presses from that angle. We know where the ball should go to reach past the pressure. We know it inside out and do a lot of hours on it.”