AbouCuéllar
Author of A-M essays 📚
No, it's not, in today's football if you want to play well and build from the back it's an absolute must. As I noted this season, even lower table sides press to some extent and complicate your first part of the construction phase / 'salida del balón' from the back, you simply are not going to have success as a top 4 team without players who have some ability and composure against this, which Holding doesn't. There's a reason the first thing Tuchel did when getting into Chelsea was to re-install Rüdiger in the lineup (and Christensen), and why Pep plays always with such quality CBs on the ball. Even Liverpool needs these type of players for their style (van Dijk, Fabinho at CB, Matip, Gomez), and suffers without them (Kabak--and big surprise they've spent big on Konate!).Ball playing CB is the biggest crock of sh1t in football right now. People act like its some sort of game changing thing. center backs 9/10 pass to the nearest player for god sake
I recommend people watching the documentary on Netflix about Guardiola and Messi and Barça. There's an illustrative moment that tells us a lot about the recent history of football, where Guardiola has a meeting with Valdés upon being promoted to first team coach, and draws on the chalkboard two CBs wide of the penalty area and almost at the endline. He tells Valdés this is where I want the CBs to be when we are starting out from the back. Valdés thinks it's mad at first but then says, "well, they are going to have to really want the ball, and not be afraid of playing with it," and Guardiola says "exactly." This is where football has gone since Pep made this revolution in football, and there is no place for players of Holding's limitations in top 10 sides, certainly not as starters.