When it came to high pressing, most people's first thought was Guardiola and his Dream Team III.
But in fact, Benitez was also a master-level head coach in this regard.
How far back this could be traced required further research, but in Yang Yang's impression, from Benitez to Guardiola to Klopp, and then Simeone, all of these head coaches could be called believers in high pressing.
Benitez's Liverpool and Real Madrid, Guardiola's Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Man City, Klopp's Dortmund and Liverpool, and Simeone's Atletico Madrid all appeared to play completely different styles, and their approaches to high pressing also differed. In reality, however, they all reached the same destination by different routes.
They had only one purpose in adopting high pressing: using a meticulously organized formation to pressure the opponent, winning the ball back as quickly as possible and as close to the opponent's goal as possible, then launching a rapid counterattack.
During his time at Liverpool and Real Madrid, Benitez always favored double defensive midfielders. Xabi Alonso and Mascherano were the keys to his high pressing, but in the following years, Real Madrid gradually abandoned that approach. The reason was simple: football tactics were changing.
Benitez most commonly used a 4-2-3-1, but under the opponent's targeted tactics, it often evolved into a 4-2-4. In other words, the front three and the No. 10 became disconnected from the back four because the double defensive midfielders could not completely control the midfield.
At that point, Guardiola adopted a 4-3-3 Formation, with the midfield forming an inverted triangle. Busquets sat deepest.
One very obvious change was that in Benitez's double defensive midfield, Xabi Alonso and Mascherano were basically protecting the defense and acting as transitional passers for the team. That made it easy for the formation to be torn apart. But