Daniel Farke is attempting a complete paradigm shift at Borussia. It can’t go smoothly in such a short time – but it’s not just a nice idea, it’s also an alternative to the usual monotony of the Bundesliga.
Quite often it is not the good moments that drive a development – but the bad ones. Of course, hardly anyone wants to hear or read that, especially not in professional football. It’s all about results, that’s the currency and it has given Borussia Mönchengladbach a decent rating so far.
Borussia is in the middle of the table with 16 points after eleven match days, four victories, some brilliantly achieved, face three defeats after the 1: 3 against Frankfurt at the weekend. The overall impression is currently being overshadowed by all sorts of debates about expectations in the environment and perhaps also within the team.
That may be understandable after two rather meager and ultimately lost years, after all, Mönchengladbach had tasted one or the other success before and would like that feeling back as soon as possible. Because almost everything has to be turned inside out at Borussia, because the squad can’t keep up with those of other clubs and because it’s up to coach Daniel Farke to implement a new, old game idea, the upheaval simply takes time.
Borussia Mönchengladbach: risky manoeuvre
But this realization still doesn’t seem to have reached everyone. In any case, Farke went into a 16-minute monologue at the press conference before the Frankfurt game and after being eliminated in the cup at Darmstadt 98. It was emotional and quite stirring, but above all the coach wanted to explain his point of view and also appealed for more balanced media reporting.
“We try to see dangers everywhere and to nag about many things where there is actually relatively little to nag about. That’s a bit typically German,” said Farke, among other things. And further: “If we were to do what we are doing here at a club in England, they would carry us through the stadium on their hands.”
It was also a risky maneuver that Farke and sports director Roland Virkus attempted. To appear so emotionally so early in the season and to get the supporters back on track was at least unusual. And all too often you will not be able to use this effect.
Farke also spoke at the press conference of an “incredibly stable season”, but the defeat against Frankfurt was the second drop in performance after the 1: 5 against newly promoted Bremen at the beginning of the month. The performance in Darmstadt in the cup was okay for long stretches, but there too many sequences showed how much work the coach still has to do.
Borussia Mönchengladbach: Farke tries to restart completely
After all, Daniel Farke and the sporting management of Borussia are trying to do nothing less than a complete break in style and are thus taking a rather contrary path in the pressing-counterpressing league. This is a bold approach that currently has little reward.
Union Berlin is still at the top. A team that has not had a single chance to score from free play in the games against the penultimate and bottom of the table when they are tied or behind. Eintracht Frankfurt is at the top, as is Mainz with its very physical football. A good two-thirds of the league is committed to it.
Farke and his team deliberately set a counterpoint. Which is all the more remarkable because the mantra of pressing and counter-pressing has also been taught in Gladbach for the past three years. And that’s obviously not that easy to get out of the heads of some players and parts of the environment.
Borussia Mönchengladbach: Learn quickly from mistakes
The last games showed how difficult and sometimes tough this paradigm shift can be. Werder Bremen crushed Borussia with many comparatively simple man orientations, Frankfurt took advantage of Gladbach’s impatience in their own ball possession. But Farke’s idea is based on a patient development game in deep zones, if possible with a majority, in order to then move up in the transition area and threaten the opponent’s last line.
That is the basic idea when in possession of the ball, which should also prepare for the moments when the ball is lost: This is the only way for the team to find the desired counter-pressing, to be able to move up and be assigned again and to put pressure on the ball immediately if the opponent gains possession of the ball.
In this respect, moments from the last two games provided a few nice examples of what is still wrong. In Frankfurt, the counter-attack protection did not work several times because individual players were too impatient when assessing the risk of vertical deep balls. The result was not only a loss of the ball, but also a fanned out Gladbach team that had too few chances to intervene decisively in the fast passes from Frankfurt.
The decisive goal in Darmstadt came after an unfortunate long shot by keeper Tobias Sippel. More calm on the ball, a short pass and the appropriate pass could have resolved the situation cleanly. The opponent quickly gained possession of the ball and scored more than two stops.
Borussia Mönchengladbach: It takes patience and trust
It will be exciting to see if and how Farke and his coaching team will succeed in the transformation away from the behavior they have learned over the years and towards a very controlled football that is focused on possession and positional play. No other club in the league dares such a blatant change of course. Lucien Favre not only made this dominant type of football socially acceptable in Mönchengladbach, but also achieved impressive success with it.
But Favre also needed a certain amount of time for this. And after the past few years of patching up a squad that has been put together accordingly, it’s not getting any easier for Farke. Especially since some players are currently missing due to injuries, which would go very well with the ideas of the new coach. Borussia Mönchengladbach will have to be patient and have faith in their coach. Then something extraordinary could actually arise there again.
Borussia Mönchengladbach: The games until the World Cup break
