The Soccer Team That Perfected The Art of Winning Without the Ball

A generation of players and coaches watched FC Barcelona and took the club's teachings as gospel. Intricate passing, subtle movement, and possession of the ball were everything. Barça's chief evangelist, Pep Guardiola, soon became one of the most decorated coaches in the game and spawned a generation of imitators.

Which is why a club named Nottingham Forest has become this season's most fascinating experiment. Every time it steps on the pitch, Forest is asking a radical question: Can a soccer team win if it never has the ball?

More than midway through the Premier League campaign, the answer is a resounding yes. Nottingham Forest, a club that narrowly escaped relegation from the top tier last year, sits in second place in the standings, ahead of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City. And yet, it has less of the ball than any other team in the league.

"I see a group of players really committed to doing things well," Forest's Portuguese coach Nuno Espirito Santo said ahead of Tuesday's 1-1 draw against first-place Liverpool. "What can happen in the future? I don't know."

One thing that's already certain is that Nuno's team has no plans to change its style. The coach views himself as a pragmatist, whose approach is sometimes boring but oddly effective-all of which makes Nuno a modern soccer iconoclast.

Forest has averaged just 39.9% possession this season and completed just 75.1% of its passes, the lowest rate in the league. It ranks 11th in total shots and 12th in goals scored. On Tuesday against Liverpool, it had just 29% of the ball and still secured a tie. It goes without saying that these are not the numbers of a team competing for a place among the European elite in next season's Champions League.

But Nuno never set out to build an offensive juggernaut. His first order of business when he took over in December 2023 with Forest in 17th place was making a risky bet on defensive solidity. If Forest could be hard to break down at the back-and maybe snatch a couple of goals up front-then it might stay up.

What Nuno landed on was a formula for becoming English soccer's most infuriating opponent. Forest lets teams pass the ball as much as they like, but give up next to nothing once the opposition gets near their goal. Teams taking on Nottingham Forest grow so frustrated by their tireless defense that they have a higher rate of missing the target completely than against any other club in the league. It's no coincidence that Forest leads the league in shutouts.

To understand how unlikely this was, it's important first to realize how far Forest had fallen. More than four decades ago, the club was hobnobbing with the top clubs in the world. In 1979 and 1980, Forest won back-to-back European Cups. But by the mid-2000s, the team was on a grim slide toward the third tier of English soccer.

The turning point came in 2017 when the club was acquired by a Greek shipping magnate named Evangelos Marinakis. Already the owner of Athens-based giant Olympiakos, Marinakis barreled into English soccer determined to make a splash. And within five years of his arrival, Forest was among the biggest spenders in Europe.

"I hate to lose and when it happens I'll do anything I can to change it," Marinakis said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year.

In the past three seasons alone, Forest has shelled out around $430 million to sign more than three dozen players. On the last day of the 2023 summer transfer window alone, it brought in seven players at once.

But at times, Marinakis's investment has stretched the limits of the Premier League's rules on finance. Last year, the club incurred a four-point deduction for exceeding spending limits-a decision Marinakis still calls "cruel" after it pushed Forest dangerously close to relegation.

The difference this season is that Forest has plenty of points to spare. Its charmed run has seen it rack up its first victory on the road at Liverpool since 1969 and its first victory at Manchester United's Old Trafford since 1994.

"What can happen in the future? I don't know," Nuno said. "The proof is that we did it before."