In football (soccer), Total Football is a system where a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining their intended organisational structure. In this fluid system no footballer is fixed in their intended outfield role; anyone can be successively an attacker, a midfielder and a defender. Total Football depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team to succeed.

The foundations for Total Football were laid by Jack Reynolds , who was the manager of Ajax for 33 years in the early 20th century. Rinus Michels, who played under Reynolds, later went on to become manager of Ajax himself and refined the concept into what today is known as "Total Football", using it in his training for the Ajax Amsterdam squad and the Netherlands national team in the 1970s. The term Total Football is also used to describe the effective, dominating play of West German football in the 1970s. The ill-fated Austrian "Wunderteam " of the 1930s is also credited in some circles as being the first national team to play Total Football.

Competing Philosophies

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