It was after a Champions League victory over Arsenal in 2015 that Pep Guardiola, then Bayern Munich manager, made clear his idea of a football utopia: ‘What I want, my desire, is to have 100 per cent possession.’
Bayern had only enjoyed 66 per cent that night in a 5-1 victory over Arsene Wenger‘s side but even that wasn’t enough to satisfy Guardiola’s unquenchable pursuit of perfection.
After all, as his idol Johan Cruyff once said, ‘if you play on possession, you don’t have to defend, because there’s only one ball.’
If the opponent doesn’t have it, bar calamity or self-sabotage, they can’t score.
It was this philosophy that Guardiola brought with him to Manchester City and the one that has since permeated every corner of the English game over the past decade. Who can forget that viral video of Rochdale, then in League One, scoring a sweeping team goal, playing out from the back, with the accompanying caption: ‘Right, so f****** ROCHDALE scored this goal and you’re telling me Pep Guardiola isn’t having an influence on English football?’
Only, now, the pendulum has swung the other way. Football embraced the possession obsession, then began to rebel against it and, at last, is thriving in the face of it.
Pep Guardiola made clear his idea of a football utopia: ‘What I want, my desire, is to have 100 per cent possession’ back in 2015
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Last season was the first since before Guardiola came to the Premier League that the average possession figure for winning matches dropped below 50 per cent and the first time it’s happened since Opta records began in 2003-04. That has fallen again across the first 60 games of this campaign.
Over the weekend, only two of the 10 sides that had more than 50 per cent possession came out on top (and one of those was Manchester City so does that really count anyway). Five teams won with less than half of it.
Coventry thumped Newcastle on Monday night with only 33 per cent of the ball. Earlier in the season, Chelsea beat Brighton with just 26 per cent.
Last season, too, was the first since 2005-06 that clubs won more matches (139) with less than 50 per cent of the ball than with more of it (137). The current count is 22 to 19 in their favour again.
Beyond that, the days of teams wanting to completely dominate possession are gone, too, for now. Probably because when they do, they don’t win as much as they once did.
Just three seasons ago, in 2023-24, there were 66 matches across the entire campaign in which a team had more than 70 per cent of the ball. Only 14 of them were by Guardiola’s City. In all, 12 different sides managed it and one of them was Luton. Fifty-five per cent of them went on to win.
Then, it stopped. In 2024-25, there were just 29 matches where a team had 70 per cent possession and only 11 of those teams won. Last season, it happened just 19 times and only six of them won.
By this point, even Guardiola knew the game had changed. In January last year, he famously remarked that ‘Today, modern football is the way Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool play. Modern football is not positional. You have to rise to the rhythm.’
But Premier League teams are winning games with less possession than ever before, including promoted side Hull, who are thriving in eighth place
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This season, teams boasting 60 per cent possession have won just 35 per cent of their matches. In 2023-24, it was 54 per cent. Teams with less than 30 per cent of the ball now win a third of their games. Five seasons ago, they won less than 10 per cent of them.
We’ve seen it creep in over recent seasons, as more sides like Bournemouth under Andoni Iraola, now Liverpool manager, embraced fast, direct football as an antidote to death by 1,000 passes. Teams are quicker, stronger, better at man-to-man pressing and able to harangue and harass outfits who previously felt they had the divine right to play out from the back.
When they did, they could punish them. As those possession numbers dropped, so too have those for counter attacks soared. According to Opta, this season is the highest on record (since 2006-07) for fast breaks, shots from fast breaks and goals from fast breaks. Teams soak up pressure and then strike.
Teams also now look to beat the press by going over the press. The average length of goalkeeper passes from open play is on the rise again as it dropped considerably during the Guardiola years.
Gone, too, are the days of promoted sides battling to win their place in the Premier League only to try to play like Guardiola when they get here. Vincent Kompany did it with Burnley and went straight back down, Russell Martin tippy-tapped an instant return to the Championship with Southampton.
Not anymore. Coventry, Ipswich and Hull are averaging the lowest possession of any three promoted teams since Opta records began, with the Sky Blues having 38 per cent of it and eighth-placed Hull the lowest of any side in the division on 32 per cent. Hull sit in the top 10 of the Premier League, having beaten Manchester United and taken a point off Chelsea, while Coventry are level on points with Michael Carrick’s side.
‘Sergej knows what it takes to win, and having the ball is not that important to him,’ one Hull dressing room source told Daily Mail Sport. ‘Anybody that knows the game knows there are different ways to win and he plays completely to the strengths of the players that he’s got.’
It’s not the only barometer for success, of course, with the current top three sides in the division also the top three for possession. The difference, though, is that it’s not the only way to win and teams will use whichever method is best. Pragmatism is thriving once again over principles. Teams no longer need to pretend to be something they are not.
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Possession does not remain the same throughout a game, of course, and forever fluctuates depending on who’s holding on to the lead, who’s chasing it and who is pushing for a winner. It is never as simple as saying that the less possession you have, by itself, makes you more likely to win.
Yet what does appear to be becoming clear is that some sides, even when chasing a goal, are content to give up more of the ball because they know they can create more chances when they do.
When Everton came from behind to draw against United, their possession dropped from 47 per cent in the first half to 44.5 per cent as they went searching for an equaliser. It did the same when they snatched a point against Bournemouth, dropping from 42 per cent until the opening goal to 40 per cent until they went level and 37 per cent in the 10 minutes before their stoppage-time equaliser.
Football is often cyclical and the trend has, for now, shifted the other way. In Guardiola’s old dream world, he longed for 100 per cent of the ball. In football’s latest cycle, it would be the wish of many to let him try.
