Copa America 2015: Tactical trends to look out for

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The era in which international football sparks or otherwise influences tactical innovation has passed. These days team tactics are complicated and intricate enough that they cannot be properly executed by a team that trains together maybe half a dozen times a year. Hence, the tactics game is often left to the club level, where a team can be molded and players selected for their suitability for a certain system. International teams naturally lack such luxuries.

There are exceptions, of course. The Netherlands team of the 1970s introduced the world to Total Football, and more recently Spain used tiki taka to dominate the sport for half a decade before losing their throne to Germany’s space invaders last summer. In all three instances, though, the core of the international team shared a club that had embraced the corresponding style (Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, respectively). That’s a pretty significant advantage for an international team and it’s been reflected in at least the last two World Cups.

There’s no such team in this summer’s Copa América, and perhaps that’s for the best. Instead we’ll be witness to a more basic but no less entertaining version of the game, one in which teams are more often defined by the efforts of an individual than they are by a tactical system. Especially for the majority of teams that can’t boast the pedigree of, say, Brazil, building your team’s collective efforts around the abilities of one, or maybe two, exceptional individuals is simply more practical. Even as talented a side as Argentina hitched their fate to Lionel Messi in last year’s World Cup, and the tiny Barcelona forward dragged them all the way to the finals.

Argentine will no doubt try to replicate that success this Copa. They’ll face stiff competition from the likes of Neymar’s Brazil, James Rodriguez’s Colombia and the partnership of Arturo Vidal and Alexis Sanchez for hosts Chile. Not every side is graced with a talisman, of course, but even then you’re bound to see team efforts orbiting around a central player, most likely a striker or attacking midfielder. Think Venezuela’s striker Salomón Rondón or Ecuador’s Enner Valencia.