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From what I gather it's from when primarily defenders (but midfielders as well) hold towards the back of the pitch to create an impervious wall of defense.
In soccer you should have 11 attackers and 11 defenders - everyone on the pitch helps in both ends of the field. "Parking the bus" though refers to when teams keep 9-10 men behind the ball, meaning towards the defensive end. You don't commit many men forward and as soon as you lose the ball everyone is falling far back, forming a bunker that is hard to break down.
That style of play can be very boring to watch, and even for great teams it can be very difficult to break down.
Parking the bus is also that you give up possession of the ball to the opponent voluntarilry, don't press the player with the ball very much, and committing few players in a counterattack.
Parking the bus may not be very attractive to watch, but it doesn't mean it's easy. The concentration must remain at full level throughout the match, and the better the opponent is at attacking, the less the defending team can afford mistakes. If you've parked the bus for the first 70 minutes of the match and are a goal or two down, it's almost impossible to switch to an attacking style and gain momentum in the attack.
Recent classic examples of parking the bus successfully was of course the Champions League final between Chelsea and Barcelona. Another one was Spain-Finland in the WC quals, when Finland played with four defenders, with one midfielder dropping to stopper, four holding midfielders and one single striker. The end result was 1-1, with Spain scoring its goal from a corner and Finland scoring from a very rare counterattack.
A lot of people will give teams a TON of flack for using a parking the bus strategy.
In a nutshell people call it anti-football tactics because it's a very defensive strategy that doesn't call for a lot of forward attacking. Teams will sit back primarily and absorb the pressure and then snap a counter attacked every once in a while. It can work pretty well if you have a cohesive unit and also have the ability to hit your chances on the counter to produce goals. It's not a bad strategy against teams that love to hold possession, like the Spanish teams.
A prime example of it working pretty well would be the semifinals of the 2011-2012 Champions League between Chelsea and Barcelona.
I think it's a kind of catenaccio, more defensive, based in zonal marking intead the man marking of catenaccio.
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