"Anti-football" is a playing style in association football that emphasizes a highly defensive and aggressive approach, relying mainly on passing and involving the deployment of all team members except the striker behind the ball.
The term "anti-football" has been used in English since at least 2001, when Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti used it in their book Fear and Loathing in World Football to describe the tactics of Argentine club Estudiantes de La Plata during the 1968 Copa Intercontinental.
[1] Arsenal's Cesc Fàbregas used the phrase to describe the style of play in the English Premier League after a frustrating 1-0 defeat to West Ham United.
[2] In 2007, Fàbregas had a heated exchange with fellow ex-Barcelona player, Blackburn Rovers manager Mark Hughes, who defended his team's style of play.
[3] During their run to the 2008 UEFA Cup Final, Rangers manager Walter Smith deployed an ultra-defensive strategy dubbed "Watenaccio" (a reference to the defensive system Catenaccio, which was popularised in the 1960s in Italian football).