Jürgen Klopp took over at Borussia Dortmund in 2008 with the club recently out of financial trouble and Bayern Munich spending several times as much on wages. He won the Bundesliga in 2011 and again in 2012, the second time with a record points total, and reached the 2013 European Cup final.
The idea
Counter-pressing: the six seconds after losing the ball are the six seconds the opposition is most disorganised, so that is when you attack them. Rather than retreating into shape, Dortmund swarmed the ball carrier immediately and tried to win possession in the area they had just lost it.
Klopp’s own framing was that the best playmaker was a good counter-press, because a turnover thirty yards from goal creates a chance that no pass has to be threaded to produce.
What it demands
Extreme fitness, a squad young enough to sustain it, and a tolerance for conceding when the press is beaten. Dortmund had all three, and lost the last of them when Bayern bought Mario Götze and then Robert Lewandowski.
Almost every side in Europe now presses in some version of this. What has not been widely replicated is doing it for four seasons with the eighth-largest budget in your own league.
