In football (soccer), Total Football is a system where a player who moves out of his or her position is replaced by another from his or her team, thus retaining their intended organizational structure. In this fluid system no footballer is fixed in his or her 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. Many believe the foundations of Total Football originally stem from the Push and run style of play.

The foundations for Total Football were laid by Jack Reynolds, who was the manager of Ajax Amsterdam 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 is known today as "Total Football" (Totaalvoetbal, in Dutch), using it in his training for the Ajax squad and the Netherlands national team in the 1970s. A pupil of Michels, Johan Cruyff, who played in both the Ajax and Dutch national teams under him later exported the system to teams such as FC Barcelona. 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. It is no coincidence that Ernst Happel, a talented Austrian player in the 1940's and 50's was coach in the Netherlands in the late 1960's and early 70's. He introduced a kind of toughness at ADO and Feyenoord that was lacking before in the Dutch way of playing.

Competing Philosophies

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Football (soccer) tactics and skills

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