Di seguito, una breve continuazione dell’articolo sul Malmö di Henrik Rydström. Si tratta di una breve intervista con Theodor Olsson, assistente allenatore proprio nella squadra svedese. Per una migliore fruizione a livello internazionale, l’intervista viene proposta nella lingua in cui è stata fatta.

As a student of the game you are currently studying functional play: can you explain what this play is? What is relationism?

It’s a style of play where you put a lot of trust and emphasis in relations between the players. Not only at the pitch but also outside of the pitch.

The playing style relates more in relations according to ball, teammate and opponent in the moment on the field. More than predestined patterns and positions and fulfilling of those.

Do you think the word Functional is the more correct way to describe this approach? Or do you prefer terms as appositional, or role-driven?

Functional fits better I believe. That’s because we have different positions and put quite a lot of emphasis in those in different phases of the game. They will always be there, and every player have his role that is different to everybody else. So it’s not that our number 6 always has to accomplish this or that, we try to give a role that fits the playing style of the player together with his surroundings. So, the role can change quite a lot but we always have a role for the player that we expect him to fulfill in some way.

About Malmö: your point of reference in the offense is the ball. I’ve been studying this style for some months, looking at Spalletti’s Napoli, Diniz’s Fluminense, Scaloni’s Argentina and obviously Di blåe. How do you train players to create the links and the connection you utilize to move the ball up the field? How do you coach them to create proximity?

We doesn’t have time enough to go through this question with the respect its deserved. But what I can say is that we put a lot of work in the analysis room with discussions between coach and players and also players between each other. Small workshops where we put players that will work together on the pitch together to watch, think and discuss different solutions and situations. Then we train and almost all the time evaluate what we have done in training with clips the morning after.  

How do you train players to find not predefined and not spaces in between lines but rather spaces between bodies?

Don’t sure I understand the question perfect but what I can say is that we have the thought of the game as complex and then we try to train in a complex way. The trainings is very messy and a lot of things going on at the same time and try to make the players take action according to the different surroundings and opportunity the play is given to them. Rather than trying to replicate at predestined pattern again and again.

Your offensive structure is fluid but it doesn’t mean anarchy. It’s more like organized chaos…its’ right?

That is totally right! We have principles that we work after and sometimes it looks like anarchy but when you know the principles its more easy to see that theres a structure behind it. But we struggle with this everyday to not being too much structure and not too much chaos. The sweetspot is the interesting one because we doesn’t want to limiting the players creativity with structure but we know that they need structure to be creative. Complex is the word…

What do you ask defensively? A zonal or a man-to-man pressure?

 A mix! In Sweden historically the zonal approach has been very successful and we prefer that way of defending more if you have to choose. But we have man-man pressure in our game model as well.