Top 10 incredible tactical innovations that revolutionised football

#9 The Guardiola Philosophy (Manchester City)

Pep Guardiola's Manchester City played some swashbuckling football last season

The swashbuckling brand of football that Manchester City executed on the pitch and the beauty that it emanated surely won't be forgotten for a long time. It is nothing short of injustice to know that with such beautiful football, the Citizens couldn't lift the Champions League title, albeit they did dominate the English top-tier like never before.

Guardiola's success at the Etihad is down to three main tactical tweaks: a renovated midfield setup, the false full-backs and sweeper keeper.

The Spanish tactician used a three-man midfield consisting of Fernandinho, David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne. It's the use of the latter two for which Guardiola needs to be lauded.

Knowing that Silva and De Bruyne were natural No.10s, he used them in deeper roles, giving the team a plethora of creativity in the centre. Playmakers aren't much useful while defending but Guardiola efficiently managed to instil tactical and defensive discipline in both Silva and De Bruyne, a factor that helped the team in their domineering style of play in the Premier League.

Next comes the Spaniard's use of false full-backs, a tactic he used sparsely at Barcelona but densely at Bayern Munich. In this strategy, Guardiola instructed his full-backs Walker and Delph or Zinchenko to move into the half-spaces(closer to the pivot) and create extra passing lanes so as to confuse the opposition midfielders and draw them out of their position to create spaces. The use of false fullbacks also helped in ball retention and nullifying or guarding the counter-attacks by crowding the midfield.

The third and the final tweak behind City's success was the use of Ederson as a sweeper keeper. Instead of ordering him to kick the ball aimlessly, Guardiola used the Brazilian shot-stopper's ball distribution abilities to a devastating effect - as an extra attacking threat. The fact that Ederson misplaced only 2 of his 624 short passes and had the best long pass accuracy(50.9%) amongst EPL goalkeepers shows how he was used as a useful means of build-up play from the back.

The bald-headed genius does deserve an applause for his brilliance, doesn't he?