The Joy of Six: Great defences

1) Milan 1987-1997 (Maldini-Baresi-Costacurta-Tassotti)

Obviously we don't deal in national stereotypes at the Guardian, but, well, when it comes to defending, Italians do it better, don't they? Protecting a 1-0 lead is part of the national curriculum. Yet there was nothing familiar or quintessentially Italian about this magnificent Milan back four, who patented a new style of attacking defending that involved squeezing space – the manager Arrigo Sacchi wanted no more than 25 yards between defence and attack – and charging out like men going over the top to catch attackers offside the moment the ball was fed infield and their defensive don Franco Baresi, who read a game like he had written it, gave the signal.

It was thrillingly aggressive stuff, ostensibly kamikaze but actually dripping with logic: the pressing was, as Sacchi noted, as much psychological as physical, and it took world football years to adjust to something so completely different: if catenaccio translated as 'door bolt', then Milan preferred to slam the door in attackers' faces. Attack is often said to be the first line of defence; Milan's defence was certainly the first line of attack. They were the last great club side, and their defensive quartet played almost 3,000 games for Milan - 3,000 - between them, with Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta going on into their forties. Changes in the offside law mean that they couldn't use the same tactics nowadays, but nobody seriously doubts that such great players would not have found another way.

2) Greece 2004 (Fyssas-Kapsis-Dellas-Seitaridis)

The element of surprise generally and logically applies to attacking elements, but it benefitted Greece at the other end during Euro 2004. Their oldfangled man-marking system confounded a new generation – like asking today's yoof to operate a VHS or a ZX81 – and was so brutally effective that they barely gave away chances, never mind goals. They became the first side to win the European Championships without conceding in the knockout stages, and in the process took care of the holders (France), the tournament's best side (Czech Republic) and the hosts (Portugal, twice).

Only Panagiotis Fyssas had 20 caps going into the tournament, but all played with the certainty of international veterans. Traianos Dellas, a Sheffield United alumnus and Roma reserve, swept up imperiously, while the quicksilver Giourkas Seitaridis neutralised Thierry Henry, Milan Baros and Cristiano Ronaldo with such majesty that his subsequent mediocrity is hard to fathom. Greece's post-2004 struggles were less inexplicable, given the essential obsolescence of man-to-man marking. But by the time teams had realised how to penetrate Greece's defence, it was too late.

3) Arsenal 1988-2000 (Winterburn-Adams-Bould or Keown-Dixon)

Most great footballing groups have appropriately effusive or catchy nicknames: Le Carré Magique, say, or the Holy Trinity. With the most celebrated defence in English football history, all anybody bothered to do was capitalise the 'B' and the 'F' to make it the Back Four, an appropriately basic sobriquet for a group who went about their business with the minimum of fuss. The Back Four certainly came across as BFFs on and off the field, the sort of men who you could imagine instinctively finishing each other's sentences (or pints, in the early years).

George Graham got them to think as one entity, programming each man to move in accordance with the other – and not just putting their hands in their air simultaneously – during repetitive training drills that Nigel Winterburn said "bored the pants off us". The results were so effective that they bored the pants and the jockstrap off neutrals and opponents. But when Arsène Wenger took over, the staple 1-0 to the Arsenal became 3-0 to the Arsenal, and a new physiological awareness allowed them to extend their union into a second decade – and have their most parsimonious season, with only 17 goals conceded in 38 league games in 1998-99.

That season they almost made up the England defence for the only time – Winterburn, an unused squad member, was the odd man out when Lee Dixon, Tony Adams and Martin Keown, the fifth Beatle, were picked against France – but their group highlight came the previous season, when Arsenal won the Double and Wenger's trust in players who previously were not allowed to pass 'Go' manifested itself in this fairytale goal against Everton. That made it 4-0 to the Arsenal, a victory that clinched the title, but you suspect the second part of the scoreline will have given them the most pleasure.

You can read more about the Back Four, including how they never practiced playing offside, in this superb interview

4) Internazionale 1962-65 (Facchetti-Tagnin-Picchi-Guarneri-Burgnich)

With the possible exception of Susan Boyle, everything and everyone loses their innocence sometime. The relatively noble art of defending became forever a cynical and cold art around the time the Internazionale manager, Helenio Herrera, developed catenaccio. The Inter legend Sandro Mazzola went so far as to say that Herrera "invented modern football". They were far from being purely defensive – Giacinto Facchetti was a brilliant and almost revolutionary left wing-back – but they knew which side their bread was buttered on: the side that said 'goals conceded'.

Until that point, football matches had frequently been orgies of goals, but Herrera decided it was time to sex things down once and for all. He was perhaps the first to fully fathom that, in a football sense, destruction was intrinsically easier than creation, and that games could be won not by scoring more than the opposition, but by conceding fewer. Inter never plumbed the brutish depths of, say, the Sixties Estudiantes side, but they defended as if their lives depended on it, with four man-markers who acted like a second skin ahead of the captain and sweeper, Armando Picchi. Between 1962 and 1966 they won three Serie As and back-to-back European Cups and Intercontinental Cups, becoming known as 'Grande Inter'. Football, and Serie A in particular, would never quite be the same again.

5) West Germany 1971-75 (Breitner-Schwarzenbeck-Beckenbauer-Vogts)

It's apt that this mob first played together in a 7-1 victory over Norway, because this lot were as much about attack as defence. Sure, Berti Vogts was a rottweiler, who tossed Johan Cruyff around like a ragdoll for 89 minutes of the 1974 World Cup final; and the stopper, Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck, was the bad cop to Franz Beckenbauer's good. But Beckenbauer and Paul Breitner were simply magnificent all-purpose players, the true Total Footballers of the Seventies.

Beckenbauer liberated the libero position with his silky forward movements and ability to, as Scott Murray put it on these pages, not so much evade challenges as ignore them. Then there was Breitner: preposterously cool, erudite and gifted; one of the first wrong-footed full-backs, who would go on glorious sorties like this one against Chile in the 1974 World Cup. Now that's what we call Total Football.

6) Liverpool 1999-2000 (Matteo-Henchoz-Hyypia-Carragher)

Bear with us here. Liverpool have clearly had better defences – in 1978-79, a freshly made quartet of two Alans, Kennedy and Hansen, and two Phils, Thompson and Neal, conceded only 16 goals in 42 league games – but none as important. For most of the Nineties, Liverpool's defensive incontinence was a standing joke. Phil Babb couldn't even protect his own special place, never mind the team's. Liverpool were in danger of becoming a Spurs-like comedy club when, in his first summer as sole manager, Gerard Houllier spent just shy of £6m on two little-known centre-halves: Stephane Henchoz had pulled up few trees as Blackburn were relegated, while Sami Hyypia ... well he had a funny name and looked a bit like Dolph Lundgren.

They weren't quite as makeshift as, say, the record-breaking Arsenal back line of 2005-06, but few thought they were in it for the long haul. Yet these two bouncers instantly restored order and stopped attackers taking liberties. Liverpool had the thriftiest defence in the league in 1999-2000, even though they were nowhere near the title, and the security these two provided allowed Houllier to mix and match at the other end (look at this motley crew) and still win a raft of trophies in the short-to-medium-term.

Henchoz and Hyypia were disgusting to look at in every sense and, you suspect, equally unpleasant to play against – all bone-jarring challenges, tangled legs and, in the case of Henchoz in Cardiff, slyly positioned hands – but, well, who gives a solitary one. Defending isn't a beauty competition. They more than did their job by introducing a new seriousness at Anfield and, when Hyypia leaves a club in much ruder health than he found it 10 years ago, he will deserve every eulogy he gets.