Jamie Hamilton

Episode 4: Identity Crisis The 3rd Circle · Episode

Episode 4: Identity Crisis
Available now.
Listen, download and subscribe via the links below.
Anyone can be part of The 3rd Circle 🤝

Spotify:
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Apple:
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@martinrafelt.bsky.social

What has The White Stripe's 'Seven Nation Army' got to do with Positional Play?
And, is it the greatest guitar riff ever?
What links the ideas of Carlo Ancelotti and Carl Jung?
Is Antonio Conte a radical futurist?
This, and much more, in the latest episode of The 3rd Circle.

It remains wild to me how Pep is credited with so many tactical innovations that he simply wasn’t the first person to do. Or second or third. I get that Richards is a City stan and not the greatest football brain but it’s really revisionist nonsense

Episode 2: Equilibrium Podcast Episode · The 3rd Circle · 17/02/2025 · 1h 20m

Apple:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Spotify:
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🔬The 3rd Circle Podcast - New Episode
Episode 2: Equilibrium is now available via the links in the post below.
@martinrafelt.bsky.social and I lurch wildly from concept to concept as we struggle to maintain balance during our latest venture into The 3rd Circle...

🚨🎙️The 3rd Circle Podcast

Episode 1: In The Beginning, There Was Now is available now on Apple Podcasts.

In this first full length episode, Martin and I sketch out some of the currents and forces that have shaped the game's recent tactical history...

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…

The 3rd Circle

🚨🎙️The 3rd Circle podcast IS HERE!!
I team up with @martinrafelt.bsky.social to explore the outer limits of the tactics-sphere.
This is Episode Zero: Arrival
Anyone can be a part of The 3rd Circle, so click the link and join us on this new footballing adventure...
shows.acast.com/the-3rd-circle

Top stuff from @thepuristfootball.bsky.social
The best video tactics content around.

Iraola: “We have to prepare [positional] patterns, but we cannot just prioritise them. If you can see that you don't have a teammate ahead, forget about the pattern, just drive the ball and try to force things to happen. I want him to attack first.”

Dean Huijsen:

Lots of central options, could attack the box directly…

…instinctively shuffles the ball wide.

It’s interesting to consider to what degree the extreme Positionism of Conte helped Inzaghi implement his looser approach.
The same base formation but radically increased autonomy for players to interpret concepts/movements/rotations etc.
RDZ/Hurzeler perhaps a similar case?

By abandoning traditional notions of positional structure teams can challenge man-markers more radically.
Just how far are the defenders willing to travel with their marks?
I think there are big advantages to be gained with more extreme density and movements in the ball-zone.

In his recent article @jamiemkemp.bsky.social noted how Racing Santander's tendency to swarm together around the ball can cause confusion for defensive marking schemes.
www.lapausa.digital/p/racing-hav...

Enjoyed this on the rise of man2man defence in Germany.
In addition to positional rotations/tweaks and overloading build-ups described by Bergas I think Relationist proposals offer very relevant attacking solutions vs man2man defence.
See Toni Gagliardi's writing on this.

"Actors in the system follow simple rules, and improbable structures emerge from lower-level activities..."

Obviously humans aren't termites or ants, birds or fish. But processes by which groups of individual agents achieve highly complex, functional behaviour patterns by paying attention to a few simple environmental cues/triggers is extremely relevant to football tactics/coaching.

"We [humans] are so dependent on centralized control of complex functions that it is sometimes impossible for us to understand how the same task could be accomplished by a distributed, noncentralized system".

This is interesting. In this article for FotMob after last year's MLS Cup final, l compared Wilfried Nancy's Columbus Crew to Roberto De Zerbi's Brighton and Fernando Diniz's Fluminense www.fotmob.com/en-GB/topnew.... The "mix between position and relation" quote aligns with this.

5 teams/coaches (no order) to keep an eye on if you’re interested in Relationism.

Different methods but all with significant degrees of ball orientation in attack.

-Malmö (Rydström)
-Cruzeiro (Diniz)
-Racing Santander (Jose Alberto)
-Columbus Crew (Nancy)
-Sydney FC (Talay)

Racing have Segunda in a stranglehold José Alberto's side look different to your typical league leader, but their unique identity is what's helping to sustain their position.

"It’s not that Racing can’t keep the ball — it’s that they won’t. As soon as they find their window to advance the play or make the forward pass that opens things up, they don’t hesitate." @lapausa.bsky.social

Sounds like my kind of team.

www.lapausa.digital/p/racing-hav...

Love this quote from Wilfried Nancy on his style of play