I'm Joe Devine and welcome to Whiteboard Football Extra.

In this series of short podcasts, we'll be talking to the writers of our videos, taking a more in-depth look at the topics they choose to discuss.

We'll also be engaging with user comments, so if after watching a video you have follow-up questions,

we have an opportunity to answer them.

From Heleneo Herrera to Tony Poulis. Defending is often seen as quite dull, but when

you take a closer look at the complexities of defensive systems, you'll find artistry on par with the attacking game.

Today, I'm joined by Alex Stewart to take a deeper look at the differences between zonal and man marking.

Alex, in the video you mentioned Gianni Brera and his quote,

The Perfect Game of Football would end nil-nil.

Can you expand on that a little bit and perhaps why he would have said that?

Yeah, so Brera was an Italian football journalist and considered to be one of the

finest pros stylists writing about football.

He wrote largely about Italian football in the 60s when Catanaccio was popularized by the

interteam of Heleneo Herrera.

Now, Catanaccio wasn't invented by Herrera. It was developed from a Swiss system,

which was called the Verru, invented by an Austrian coach, Carl Rappen. Essentially, Catanaccio,

developing from the Veru, was a system that deployed three solid man markers

uh in defense with a libero and it allowed teams to nullify the opposition defensively um herrera

then used a very very um aggressive attacking left wing back for Chetty to push forward and give the side width on the left-hand side.

But the game was predicated on locking down the opposition.

Italian football developed its reputation for being very defensive on this basis, and it was

a system that Brera really admired.

...