I'm Joe Devine. Welcome to the TIFO football podcast. Recently on our YouTube channel, we've

covered a number of teams from La Liga in our Tactics Explained series. We've done that with the

assistance of La Liga journalist Simon Harrison, who's very familiar with the teams and has a great

knowledge of tactics in Spain. Today I spoke to him about

each of those teams that we've covered. That's Barcelona, Valencia, Real Betis and Villarreal. And also,

he gives us a promo of the Tactics Explained video that's out later this week on Las Palmas,

who are currently bottom of La Liga. Before we get started, I just want to remind listeners that our second podcast, This Football Life, has now launched. The first two episodes are live as we speak. For one, Josh spoke to Bruce Crobola, who was Liverpool legend and goalkeeper. He talks about his career in football, and also the time that he spent in the army. And for the second episode, Josh spoke

to Rob Swire, who was Manchester United's head physio under Sir Alex Ferguson for a couple of decades.

And that's also a fascinating listen. So please do go and give those two episodes listens.

Give the podcast a subscribe as well, that would really help us out. And thanks very much for downloading

this episode as well. Hope you enjoy. The obvious talking point with regards to Barcelona is their switch to a 4-4-2 under Ernesto Valverde.

Under Pep Guardiola, Barcelona became synonymous with the tic-tacca style and came to represent

the peak of attacking football in Europe somewhat.

So Valverde's more reserved and balanced system

seems an obvious departure from that. So Simon, is it completely different Barcelona or is it

merely a structural shift with similar philosophical touchstones? Well, I mean, there's been a fair

amount of different Barcelona's. I mean, it's easy to obviously look back all the

time to the Tickey Taka. That's sort of the golden era. That's when you saw the best of Barcelona, the best with Pep Guardiola, the best with so many star players at their peak. But, I mean, since then, you've since had Luis Sienrique, who did very well, who was almost, you know, a victim of his success.

He went with a 4-3-3, but it was very different to Tiki-Taka. It was more direct. When they're playing out from the back, they did it very quickly, and it made them really predictable. So now it's kind of, it's taken a shift from you had the Lewis-enrique, the direct 4-33. he then changed to a three-four-three, which then saw, which I think is ridiculous,

Georgie Alba kind of sitting on the bench for months at a time sort of thing. Now it's back to, I mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens in terms of when certain players are back fit and he's got a full complement and who he chooses to buy during the January window, but now it's very much more of this 4-4-2 or there's more of this almost 4-3-1-2 when you're in possession with Paolini, having a lot of licence to get forward. But it's a different Barcelona. I mean, you can say that the concepts in terms of they want control, they want to have a lot of the ball, those are things which I think will always be the case with Barcelona.

The one thing I suppose where Valverde could fall foul is the fact that they are quite risk-averse,

they are more balanced, they are a little bit more realistic. And obviously if this season,

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