He maintained this playing style while employing a variety of formations, working wonders with a squad comprising Premier League flops (Stefan Savic, Borja Valero, Marcos Alonso) and ageing stars (David Pizarro, Joaquín, Alessandro Diamanti).
For every Nations Cup since they returned to the competition in 2006, football writers have praised the quality of a squad comprising Didier Drogba, the Toure brothers, Didier Zokora and Emmanuel Eboue etc. - one that has been good enough to reach the first two World Cups in the country's history.
But then it's as though Season's Greetings has been hi-jacked by a squad comprised of the absurdist Ionesco, that master of logorrhoeic misanthropy, Thomas Bernhard, and Caryl Churchill at her most radically playful.
Bling Ring, in 2013, finally starred a squad comprised of women, but that was an indie film rather than a full-fledged blockbuster a la Baby Driver or the omnipresent Mission: Impossible franchise.
The half-hour program, targeted at third-graders, features a "Cyber Squad" comprising three children and a wisecracking bird that takes on the dastardly villain, Hacker.
The mission leader formed a 15-man squad comprising a negotiation group, an intelligence group and a logistical group.
How chuffed the club, and those loyal Fartown supporters, must be that in a 17-man squad comprising 13 Yorkshiremen, a Cumbrian and only three imports, the two shining stars were both Huddersfield born and bred – Eorl Crabtree in the pack, and Leroy Cudjoe at centre with his 23 tackles, no misses, 13 carries, four breaks, 226 metres, and two interception tries.
They are led by William Porterfield of Ireland with the rest of the squad comprising another two Irishmen, three Scots, a Namibian, a South African who plays for Namibia, a Pakistani playing for the UAE and most fascinatingly of all three Afghanistanis – making it almost as multi-national as the England team.
When none of Danny Cipriani, Tom Wood, Kieran Brookes, Dave Attwood, Tom Youngs, Joe Simpson and Luther Burrell can break into the latest EPS squad, comprising the best 45 players in the country, it is a pretty fair indication of increasing depth.
On the positive side, the episode entitled "Throwdown" in which Sue Sylvester creates a splinter Glee squad comprised solely of minority students spurred an intense classroom debate on Beverly Daniel Tatum's seminal work "Why Are All of the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" Seriously, watch the episode and have a conversation about in-groups and out-groups.
Any sporting squad comprises a diverse combination of personalities and during a long tournament you get to know all about them.
