High pressure, short pass penetration and flexible full-backs, these are the branding that Tenhach has made on this team since he took charge of Ajax in 2017, which can clearly see the influence of Spanish and German football on his tactical thinking for more than a decade, and he also inherits the tradition of Dutch football focusing on fast movement and improvisation of position on the field.
After joining Manchester United, this will certainly be the tactical style he pursues.
From the tenghach player era to coaching, the Netherlands and Germany are naturally the cornerstone of their tactics, he initially coached at the Forward Eagles, then as a reserve coach at Bayern, intersected with Guardiola and has a deep understanding of German football.
In terms of formation choice, Ajax has always been "forever 433", but Tenghach is more flexible, and his main formation is between 4231 and 433: the defensive line is four defenders, and there will be two central defenders in the middle, Mexican Ederson Alvarez and Hope Star Herafenberg, forming a back-back double axis, behind the forward center Alai, arranging three position-changing attackers to win the organizers, Tadić, Anthony and Boguys.
Full-backs assist a lot, like strikers, so it's hard for Blind and Mazlawi to define their positions as pure full-backs, more like wing-backs, and Blind often retreats defensively, forming a triple-back with Martinez and Thimbaugh.
With a 4-0 win over Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League group stage, Tenhach's formation is well worth analyzing – the flank attacks the aisles, giving way to Blind and Mazlawi, while Tadic and Anthony will continue to receive the middle. These two full-backs, in the Tenhach system, are perhaps the most important changes at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends. In the six group games of the Champions League, Blind and Mazlawi are the third and fourth most touched players in the team, and Blind's versatility is often reflected in the three roles of wing-back, left-centre-back and organisational back.
The heavy use of short pass penetration in the attack is in line with Ajax's tradition of focusing on the player's foot skills, and such short passes, Tenghach's requirements, often make the stadium "tilted" (Dutch celebrity Joel commented). He will concentrate his forces on the side of the court, through a large number of short passes infiltrated, players repeatedly multi-directional running position, to tear up the defense line, triggering the opponent's defensive system imbalance, and then through blinders such as Blind, Tadić, the ball is quickly transmitted to the other side that has exposed the defensive loopholes, to form a shooting opportunity.
Such high-frequency, quick short passes, onslaught on one side, and then quickly steered, are typical of Dutch football.
According to Opta Champions League statistics, among the Champions League teams this season, short passes in the whole team's passing sequence, Ajax ranked fourth, before which were Miner Donetsk, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea, the proportion of short passes was basically the same as that of Manchester City and Barcelona.
At present, there are almost no European coaches who do not require the team to be high-pressure, and the same is true for Tenhach. This may be the biggest difficulty for him to transform the current Manchester United team - Lonnick is a German high-pressure mentor, but he can't let the current complex Manchester United play a coherent team of high pressure. In the game of Ajax, once the ball is lost, the immediate team pressure is an instinctive requirement of Tenhach to the whole team, even if the player loses his tactical position for a while, he must immediately exert pressure on the ball holder, and the playing style is extremely aggressive.
Such tactical discipline will naturally cause some loopholes in its own defensive system, but this is the integration of attack and defense pursued by the team's high pressure, quickly regaining the ball and attacking on the spot.
In opta Champions League statistics, Ajax allowed the opponent to pass the ball in the defensive stage, the lowest number of passes for the Champions League top 32 teams: after each loss of the ball, only an average of 7.4 passes were given to the opponent, and the second and fourth in this list were all teams with high pressure and German style; Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Chelsea.
The highly aggressive counter-pressing, the unavoidable consequence, is the high turnover rate, and to some extent, this is Klopp's favorite concept of "chaos manufacturing".
As a result, Ajax is in third place on the list of average errors per game in this season's Champions League, chasing Bayern and Chelsea, averaging 12.5 times per game.
There is no doubt that Ajax's game, full of offensive enthusiasm, attack and defense conversion speed is extremely fast, always putting pressure on the opponent, both Liverpool-style tight pressure, but also in the lead of the attack, with some Manchester City short pass penetration and high-frequency cross-positioning characteristics, but also continues the Dutch football is good at using the width of the stadium to transfer the tradition. Even if Ajax this season is out early in the Champions League, the game's viewing and tactical thinking are the reasons why Tenhach attaches importance to European football.
Such football requires a compound player with multiple positional capabilities such as Manchester United's old Player Blind to reflect the modern all-attack and all-defense style. Now Manchester United, how many people can adapt to Tenhach's tactical requirements will be a topic worth pondering in the next six months.