<img src="https://i.ibb.co/PgyNYVz/Mulan.png" alt="Mulan" border="0"></a> 

Every time a defensive team wins, I keep hearing the word "pragmatic" to describe their performance, specifically with Mourinho and Diego Simeone. Their teams could receive 11 shots on target, 20 in total, and half their team is yellow-carded. Yet, once their team scores 1 header from a corner, which is often their only shot on target, the word "pragmatic" is shared by people online, pundits at studios, and football articles. It is a very idiotic and lazy way to describe the situation, mainly because:

# No Coach is Pragmatic

Why wouldn't Pep Guardiola believe in possession football and Tiki-Taka when it had won him 14 titles as a player and a staggering 32 titles as a manager? This style won him 16 league titles, 10 as a coach and 6 as a player with Barcelona. The same thing can be said about Klopp with Gegenpressing, Klopp won 3 league titles and a UEFA Champions League title, which would have been more if it weren't for very few minor details. 

The response here might be that Diego Simeone and Mourinho also won titles with the first qualifying for two UEFA Champions League finals and the latter winning two, and both had a taste of local league titles. However, that is my point. What Mourinho and Simeone did wasn't any more pragmatic than the rest of the managers, defensive style isn't pragmatic, it's just defensive style. 

Pragmatism in football simply means achieving a win no matter what. The lies said to describe Mourinho and Simeone when it comes to pragmatism meant that everyone should play like Mourinho and Simeone and as evidenced by the current football climate, there are fewer and fewer coaches playing that way nowadays. Pragmatism is dealing with each match depending on the circumstances, handling those circumstances to get the win.

This is why I would argue that Mourinho and Simeone are among the least pragmatic top names in the coaching world if pragmatism even exists in football. 

# Is This Pragmatism?

Is defending against teams like Malaga, Elche, and Valencia and living under the threat that they could come back at any moment because you didn't kill the match when you could have? What's so pragmatic about playing lower-table teams the same way you would top teams? Pragmatism is so practical that it borders on opportunism. 

Pep Guardiola isn't pragmatic, Klopp isn't pragmatic, and Mourinho and Simeone are the furthest things from being pragmatic. You can't have pragmatic as an identity through the years. Sometimes, it does happen in a match or two that a coach becomes pragmatic. But, you simply can't be pragmatic your entire career as being pragmatic means that you don't have any preferences whatsoever. It means that your team plays a low block one game, a high block the next, one-day tiki-taka and another day defensive football and no coach in history have ever done that. 

# It's Not Pragmatism, It's Stubbornness 

That's just a fact, football styles have evolved so much from the pair's defensive styles that even being defensive is different from the pair's vision of it. Ever since Manchester United, Mourinho's decline began rabidly yet his response was always the same thing. The same press conference mind games, "football heritage", and "I knocked you out with Porto". 

It remained the same way, Mourinho went to Tottenham and had the same problems with players having the same problems as there is no tactics or training when it comes to the final third of the pitch, they only trained defensively with the D-block and medium block. That's all he does as he feels the players could handle themselves without guidance upfront. Where's the pragmatism in that?

It's simply a lie that commentators and pundits had to say to attempt to explain why the hell Mourinho's Chelsea or Simeone's Atletico Madrid were defending a 1-0 lead so hard at home against the teams in the relegation zone. It's just something people said to complement Manchester United as they defended against a team of literal teenagers, Ajax, in a final because they had to say to explain why a team of Manchester United's size playing this way.

Mourinho's Chelsea was double digits ahead of second place in the 2014-2015 season as Chelsea was leading the table comfortably, yet when they played Burnely, a team in the relegated zone, at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea defended the entire game despite having beaten them 3-1 at the Turf Moor. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. Is that pragmatism? Playing against Burnley while it's only a matter of time before you win the league title, really?


The word "pragmatic" has lost all its meaning thanks to commentators, pundits, and people on social media using it wrong to justify the boring football we were watching. Each coach have their own ideas and have the right to apply them and each fan have their own preference, however, these people shouldn't paint it as something it is not.

You don't get to say that your ideas are what's pragmatic and what's realistic. They're just your ideas. Sometimes, your ideas might show some pragmatism, but more often they'd be just lazy ideas. 

# This Applies to the Other Side as Well 

Pep and Klopp are simply playing the style they believe would bring them the win. Their ideas are that top performance would bring you the win, their ideas is that more possession, more offensive aggression, pace, rhythm, and the so many ideas they share would bring them the win. It's just their style, and I love that style and prefer seeing it, but no one from that school of thought should pretend it is the only right style of playing. 

# In Conclusion 

The word "pragmatic" is an intruder in the world of football, an intruder that only exists because wanted a positive way to explain what is otherwise a boring style of play. The biggest is that even if it applies in football, the people the word is being used to describe are the furthest thing from it because pragmatism dectates that these people should have simply adapted a new style by now since their performance, stats, results, and careers have been in a rabid decline.