The lone goal Chile gave up in the 20th minute of the Confederation Cup finals against Germany displayed the thin, stylistic line between suffocating opponents with pressure both with and without the ball, and a simple mistake leading to an easy tap in for an opponent. Playing out of the back, and less than a minute after Alexis Sanchez mis-hit a rebound on the other end, 30-year-old Celta Vigo defensive midfielder Marcelo Diaz lost possession to Timo Werner just outside their own box. Werner squared to his striking partner Lars Stindl, who walked the ball into the net past a helpless Claudio Bravo. 

The usual instinct in Diaz’s situation would have been to punt the ball to safety. But it’s a testament to how Chile played during the tournament - and the way they won two Copa America titles in the past two seasons - that risk is inherent in their direct style. Diaz is responsible for making sense out of his side’s madness. On Instagram after the game, he compared the pain of his mistake to his brother’s passing fourteen years earlier. But it is also a tenet of the positional play that influenced Chile that the coach assumes the risk and take responsibility for mistakes made in the build up. Arturo Vidal and Bravo absolved Diaz of any blame for the loss. Manager Juan Antonio Pizzi added that things can happen with how his side play. They out-possessed Germany 65-35 in the match. 

Ironically, the loss highlighted how far Pizzi has come in the 18 months since he took over the position. Previous manager Jorge Sampaoli’s success in winning the nation’s first ever senior trophy with his unique style turned the vacancy into an impossible situation for high profiled successors. Pizzi, the 47 year old Argentine who left Leon for Chile, was tasked by the Chilean FA to maintain the competitiveness of recent years.

Pizzi was the most pragmatic and traditional compared to Sampaoli and Marcelo Bielsa before him. This was not necessarily a compliment within the recent tradition of Chile bending the physics of space as far as it could go under the previous managers. He favored a conventional 4-2-3-1 formation featuring a target striker that Sampaoli and Bielsa never made room for. Although he previously managed in Chile, he also had to navigate egos. He left playmaker Jorge Valdivia off the Copa America Centenario roster last summer. The decision almost caused a player revolt to what Diaz admitted was already a “difficult dressing room”.

But it was in that tournament when Pizzi rounded into form as manager of this pressing, direct, energetic madness. His signature game was the 7-0 win against Mexico. The match displayed Chile’s continuity in the man-marking, high press, and devastating transitions. Pizzi added a wrinkle in changing the shape to a four defender backline - albeit with the freedom for the right and left back to support the press and provide width further up the field. It showed how thoroughly they could dominate opponents who lacked their level of organization in the transition phase.  

And it seems more useful to discuss shape and organization instead of formation when it comes to the current side. Left back Jean Beausejour’s movement up and down the sideline is the catalyst to move to a three player defense. Diaz holds his position at the base of midfield, with Pablo Hernandez, Charles Aranguiz, and Vidal providing the energy and box to box movements both in and out of possession. Vargas and Sanchez play furthest up the field, although Vidal’s late runs are a staple of their counter attack. Perhaps no club side - much less a national team - is better at moving fluidly between zones but maintaining a structure in defense, possession, and transitions. In the finals of last year’s Copa America Centenario against Argentina, Chile survived an early Diaz red card by switching to a 4-2-3 formation that held on until the penalty shootout. Pizzi was a manager to be trusted.  

As with any top manager, Pizzi emphasizes the process over the result. He defined a successful Confederations Cup as one in which his Chilean side had no more energy. They were one mistake away from going home as champions, but Diaz’s mistake is a small detail compared to the identity shift that the same style brought the national side over the past decade. 

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The problem with Chilean football, center back Elias Figueroa said in 2004, was that they never had an identity. Beyond tactics, Bielsa fused this current generation with a mentality to be proactive in any match - either home, away, or in international tournaments in Russia against European champions. In creating a lineage between Pizzi to Bielsa, it is difficult to imagine Chile playing any other way. As Jonathan Wilson continued, the image of Nicolas Jara’s red card for assaulting Edinson Cavani during the 2015 Copa America was a sign that Chile were no longer romantic upstarts. They were willing engage in any dark arts necessary to gode opposition. Jara probably should have been sent off for elbowing Werner in the finals.   

The biggest opponent for Pizzi’s well oiled machine in the upcoming year before Russia is time. The core of the golden era - Sanchez, Vidal, Isla, Jara, Medel, Aranguiz, Bravo, Vargas, and Beausejour - are all between 27 and 34 years old. Pizzi’s Confederations Cup roster featured just four players under the age of 24. Granted, Vidal and Sanchez show no signs of slowing down for club or country. But their combination of tactics, skills, and mentality figures to crescendo next summer.  

Pizzi never replaced Valdivia’s playmaking ability, who could have translated their possession into chances particularly in the second half against Germany. And he could develop more young depth heading in this upcoming year. But no top level international side has gotten the most out of supposed role players. Beausejour passed through Birmingham City and Wigan. Medel, the heart of the team, played at Cardiff City for a season. Isla failed to turn a loan spell at QPR into something more permanent. Jara bounced around between West Brom, Brighton & Hove Albion, and Nottingham Forest. The center back pairing of Medel and Jara are 5-7 and 5-10 respectively, but the theory is that mobility matters more than height with the side pressing so far up the field. The whole is truly bigger than their individual parts.

Before the match, Vidal said beating Germany would establish Chile as the best national team in the world. That’s the level of expectations raised within a decade, as a generation of players and an overarching style molded into one. That was the hard work, and they were rewarded with two Copa America titles. They were on the verge of three international trophies in three consecutive summers barring Diaz’s mistake. But as Pizzi stated, those types of individual errors are a feature, not a bug, of a system that could win so much more next summer.