Early games of Arriola-Ball: A Tactical Study in Identity, Chaos, and the Birth of an Idea

If the first handful of matches of the Iñaki Arriola era at Chur have shown us anything, it’s that footballing identity can travel – but it doesn’t always travel comfortably. In Arriola, Chur hired not just a manager, but a walking embodiment of modern Basque football philosophy: compactness, collective conviction, relentless transitions, and the stubborn belief that space is something you take, not something you wait for.

He brought these ideas with him from the Basque heartlands, but the journey from Gernika in the Segunda Federación – a full-time environment, video rooms, conditioning suites, analysts – to Chur in the Swiss 5th tier, where half the squad works a day job and trains after dinner, is a cultural shock that even Arriola’s obsessive preparation couldn’t fully soften. Yet somehow, within that gulf, he has carved out the beginnings of a stylistic revolution.

Arriola’s 4-2-3-1 is not just a tactical system – it is a memory. It echoes the shape that coursed through Basque football in the early 2000s, from Eibar’s iron-blooded compactness to Athletic Club’s vertical surges. But while those teams had the luxury of professional full-backs, midfielders built like granite walls, and strikers who’d run through a forest fire for a throw-in, Arriola must achieve similar effects with builders, students, and baristas.

In possession, Chur stretch into a 3-2-5, the same structure that Iraola used to suffocate La Liga mid-blocks with Rayo Vallecano. But at Chur, it looks rawer, scrappier, more improvised – a hand-drawn imitation of the Basque blueprint, executed with pure willpower and adrenaline. Arriola has spent hours watching old match tapes from his Gernika days, pausing, rewinding, scribbling notes. He’s known to stay in the club office until midnight on training nights, replaying Chur’s games from three different angles, muttering to himself in Basque: “Ez, ez, ez… sakonago… sakonago!” (“No, no, no… deeper… deeper!”) He’s trying to recreate patterns of play his old squads drilled five times a week – only now he has two nights and players who must learn those patterns between school homework, shift work, and family obligations.

And yet… the ideas are emerging.

At Gernika, Arriola relied on a double pivot who rotated like watch gears and wingers who inverted sharply into the half-spaces. At Chur, the pivots try to do the same – even if their passing speed is more Swiss commuter train than Basque freight locomotive. It does mean though, that when they win the ball, the centre backs and pivots are in close proximity and the build up can being. The intention remains the same as it did in Spain: Chur overload central areas to draw bodies inward. Once the gravity forms, they escape into wide zones.

This is where the Basque influence becomes vivid. In classic Arriola fashion, the right-sided #10 sit narrow, almost becoming a pivot at times and creating a box midfield, which frees the right-back to surge into acres of space. In Spain, these patterns create devastating third-man runs. In Chur, they create promising 2v1s – if the final ball doesn’t ricochet off a shin or roll out for a throw-in. Progress, not perfection. The overall aim, though, is to get the central #10 on the ball between the lines, ready to drive at defenders.

Without the ball, Chur move initially into a 4-3-3 with Tiziano Stolz the more aggressive, pressing left winger, but often tighten into a 4-4-2, a shape that would make Javier Clemente proud – the old-school belief that space must be denied above all else. He has, though, at times, sat both wingers back into a 6-2-2 shape, using key pressing triggers centrally – an advancing central midfielder and a stoppingcentre back. The key here is that Arriola wants his pivot to sit between the play and his goal, creating a central blockage that force the opponents wide, then doubling up to stop crosses and put the ball back into areas where they have numerical superiority. The intention is beautifully Basque: block the middle, force the opponent wide, win the duels. 

Reality? Mixed.

The spacing is improving. The instinct is there. But the execution… well, it still looks like part-timers trying to channel Bilbao’s 1980s rigidity after a long day at work. Sometimes, when the break is too chaotic and there is a turnover, the positioning is all wrong, especially in deeper areas where – here – the left back has completely lost his bearings as a cross is headed into the goal and, with it, a huge chunk of xGA conceded.

What Chur do manage brilliantly, however, is interceptions. The shape does force predictable passes, even if the counterpress afterward still resembles a herd of goats scattering on a hillside. Arriola knows this. He has the clips stored, labelled, and timestamped. He has shown the players how their compactness works – and how one missed cue turns the whole structure into confetti. The problem? At Gernika, the players recovering behind the Stolz role were full-time professionals. At Chur, recovery speed depends on who’s worked a double-shift, who’s still sore from Sunday, and whose legs simply give out first. Thus, Stolz’s surges can either create breath-taking counters and move the team up the pitch…or leave him miles ahead of a team trying to remember what shape they’re meant to be in. But again – the idea is there. And the idea is Basque to its bones. One tradition Arriola has been unable to import is the classic Basque target man – the Aduriz figure, the Ismael Urzaiz silhouette, the striker who makes a near-post cross a weapon of cultural significance. Chur have no such player. He also, notably didn’t have one at Gernika and I’ve noticed the similarities. He has improvised. Late runners crash the box. The #10 ghosts in between lines.

There has also been in a shift in set piece: near-post corners become a form of organised chaos, a Basque melee transposed onto Swiss soil but he also does the opposite – leave empty spaces for his better aerial defenders to attack, pinning his hopes on that near post corner beating the first man. This is a clear intent that either Inaki – or another member of his backroom staff – are already focusing on the minute details, making the team more dangerous in every area of the pitch.

We have no idea who is running the recruitment at Chur at the moment but we do know that two new names have entered the fray and they look to be exactly in the mould that Inaki would want. Two tens, but two very different tens. Edon Berisha, a product of the Luzern academy, joins along with Spaniard Javi Martinez – originally from Gran Canaria but via a spell, last season, at Zurich. Both of these players possess the mental attributes that sit behind Basque football structures: anticipation, decisions, determination, work rate and team work.

They’ve been here for just two games and, seemingly so anyway, have been thrust into the team short of match fitness and short of the tactical acumen that Inaki has been feeding his players through long sessions of shadow play and tactical work over the last months, however, they’ve both settled in well. A combined zero goals or assists, but a combined 0.45xA and 0.29xG between them, playing in the side who picked up four points from six during that time, paints a positive picture, at least. There will be more to come from these lads, I am sure of it.

The bigger picture is the overall league table:

Arriola has guided this Chur side to six wins and two draws in his eight games, scoring thirteen and conceding just three. We can, as armchair analysts and terrace fans, say what we like about his style – like it or loathe it, it is getting results. 

He’s beginning, with his threadbare backroom team, to bring the good times to Graubünden and we are making a serious case for a shot at promotion, after also finishing 2nd last year and losing out in the playoff. Eight games remain and, whilst the visit of Unzwil is the hardest, the games are winnable, he has shown that. Promotion, when Inaki took over, was a mere dream and the club were more concerned about not falling into relegation trouble. So – to be here now – is a testament to what this man has already started to do at the club.

There is Basque style and Basque building blocks coming into the first team – more creativity, more control, more passion and teamwork and desire. 

We might just be 120 days into his reign, but we, the fans, are starting to see his idea.