Borussia Dortmund have been amazing to say the least, in the first half of the 2015-16 season. It’s only half a season, yet Dortmund have scored a whopping 85 goals in all competitions which, astonishingly, is seven more than they managed all of last season.
New head coach Thomas Tuchel has changed the commonly used ‘Gegenpressing’ philosophy of Dortmund, which was used by Jurgen Klopp. Tuchel’s new game model of positional play (translated from the Spanish juego de posición) makes them unique in a league dominated by pressing and counterattacking teams.
Positional play focuses on generating numerical superiority through set patterns of movement, proper spacing and connections among attackers and an emphasis on ball retention and circulation. It’s a broad way of describing a choreographed system of play that every coach tweaks to his needs.
While, Jurgen Klopp’s Dortmund used to play out from the back and were much more direct, Tuchel focuses on not just having possession for the sake of it but to have purposeful possession and it comes naturally with the team boasting players like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Marco Reus and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who don’t just have the pace but also have the willingness to pose a threat in behind the defense.
