by Dean Wed May 30, 2012 6:05 am
Brendan Rodgers:
“I wanted to be the best I possibly could,” he said. “I had a great education coming through the English FA, did courses with the Scottish FA but I also went out and travelled.
“I went to Spain, to Barcelona, Sevilla and Valencia. These are the best schools of football in the world, how they develop players. Then I spent time in Holland.
That was the ideology of football that I liked. I educated myself, watching, studying and learning. I knew my basic principles but because I had stopped playing early I had the time to go and learn from the very best. And the model was always Spain.”
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Rodgers, who landed his first top-level managerial position with Watford in November 2008 before a ill-fated six-month spell in charge at Reading a year later, said: “People talk about experience, but I was very fortunate to experience working with people like Mourinho and Scolari.
“Some managers will never get that in a lifetime. I also worked in the most successful era in Chelsea’s history. I experienced Champions League games and FA Cup finals. It’s not too early but, of course, the pressures are totally different.
“If that day ever comes, be it at 39, 49 or 59, it won’t be a case of me wondering whether I can work at that level. I have earned the respect of the biggest names in the game, both as a human being and as a coach.”
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"I like teams to control and dominate the ball, so the players are hungry for the ball," Rodgers says. "You'll see in some of our exercises this morning, a lot of our work is around the transition and getting the ball back very quickly. Because I believe if you give a bad player time, he can play. If you give a good player time, he can kill you. So our emphasis is based around our positioning both with and without the ball. And for us, when we press well, we pass well."
Winning the ball back quickly and high up the pitch was a key feature of Barcelona's approach under Pep Guardiola and, as Rodgers explains, is much more sophisticated than it may appear. "You cannot go on your own," he says. "You work on zonal pressure, so that when it is in your zone, you have the capacity to press. That ability to press immediately, within five or six seconds to get the ball, is important. But you also have to understand when you can't and what the triggers are then to go for it again because you can't run about like a madman.
"When I first came in I said to the players, we will push ourselves in every element of training, so it's reflective of the real game, so I don't have to go on about intensity all the time because that is an obligation," says Rodgers, who closely watches training all of the time. "This morning's session is based around football strength, small-space work, lots of options on the ball and covering the principles of our game, which are possession, transition, pass-think, pass-think, pass-think and the core ingredient of hard work."
They also get to perform for a manager who has a clear philosophy on how his team should play. Rodgers talks about four phases that underpin Swansea's approach when they have the ball. "There is the building and constructing from behind, the preparation through midfield, the creativity to arrive in the areas and then the taking of the goals. These are all areas that we have to continually improve on but that is the basis of our game and it doesn't change."
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One of the few criticisms levelled at Swansea this season is that they often keep the ball in their own half or in areas where they are not hurting the opposition, although that argument is flawed in several respects. Rodgers points out that, while the primary reason for possession will always be to penetrate, the simple fact is that, while Swansea have the ball, the opposition are unable to score. He also says that by "recycling" the ball for long periods his team are able to recover. "The only time we rest is when we have the ball," the 39-year-old says. "When we haven't got the ball is the moment for intense pressure to get the ball back. But you can't go for 90 minutes, so in order to recuperate and conserve energy, we'll do that sometimes by building our way through the game — our tiki-taka football, our small lending games to keep the ball.
"When we're stuck in the game, we go back to our default system, which is possession."
