Archive for January, 2010
Tactics: Chelsea without Drogba, a study in symmetry
The advantages of asymmetrical formations have been documented in detail by the game’s foremost tactical thinkers in recent years, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t teams out there still deploying perfectly symmetrical systems.
Step forward Carlo Ancelotti. The below screenshot from ESPN Soccernet shows the average positions of the Chelsea players during their 3-0 Premier League victory over Birmingham City on Wednesday and reveals that they took to the field at Stamford Bridge in an almost flawlessly symmetrical shape:
Average position data is obviously flawed by the fact that it provides only a vague idea of a side’s on-pitch tactics and gives no real insight into player movement or the exchanging of positions, but the diagram nonetheless highlights the clearly defined roles in Ancelotti’s 4-3-2-1.
World Cup scouting: Moussa Sissoko (France)
Patrick Vieira claimed earlier this week that he is “100 percent” certain of making France’s squad for the World Cup. To do so the 33-year-old must regain full fitness, nail down a regular starting place in Manchester City’s first team and convince Raymond Domenech that he still possesses the powers that turned him into one of the game’s pre-eminent defensive midfielders in the early years of the last decade. Even then, he may find his path to South Africa barred by Moussa Sissoko.
Lassana Diarra and Jérémy Toulalan have established themselves as France’s first-choice defensive midfield pair but if anyone can put paid to Vieira’s international hopes for good it is Sissoko. Tall, rangy and strong in the tackle, the 20-year-old Toulouse midfielder of Malian descent possesses a similar skill-set to Vieira and is strongly being linked with a move to the Premier League.
Having already been capped at every international age level from under-16 to under-21, Sissoko was surprisingly called into France’s senior squad in place of Vieira for the 1-0 World Cup qualifying victory in the Faroe Islands last August. He made his debut in the return match, coming on as a substitute for Toulalan in a 5-0 win in Guingamp in October, and his first start swiftly followed in the 3-1 win at home to Austria in Paris.
“A childhood dream has come true,” said Sissoko. “I didn’t expect this, even though it’s true that things have been going well with my club for the last few seasons.”
Tactics: United out-man City’s midfield three
When Jose Mourinho swept into English football in 2004, he immediately realised that the natives’ predilection for the 4-4-2 would make midfield dominance relatively easy to come by. His trademark 4-3-3 system ensured that his Chelsea team typically enjoyed a numerical advantage in the centre of the pitch and glory – on the domestic front at least – swiftly followed.
The challenge, then, became to procure a man advantage against a three-man midfield. On Wednesday night, Manchester United showed how it’s done.
Chelsea’s current midfield diamond (effectively a 4-1-2-1-2) means they are always well staffed in central midfield, but United were able to dominate Manchester City’s central trio in their 3-1 Carling Cup semi-final second-leg victory without sacrificing any of their natural width.
Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher are more readily associated with, respectively, languid passing and terrier-like harrying, but against City their less heralded attacking talents came to the fore. The key lay in forcing City back towards their own goal and quickly flooding men forward to take advantage.
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Goal of the Week: Cristian Maggio
Cristian Maggio (Livorno 0-2 Napoli):
Honourable mentions: Seydou Keita (Mali 3-1 Malawi); Alessandro Del Piero (Juventus 1-2 Roma); Kader Keita (Ivory Coast 2-3 Algeria)
World Cup scouting: Gervinho (Ivory Coast)
Replacing a much-loved club favourite is a thankless task. Occasionally, such as when Barcelona brought Rivaldo in from Deportivo La Coruña to replace the departing Ronaldo in 1997, a club strikes gold. More often than not, though, things don’t pan out as hoped.
It was with a heavy heart, then, that Lille’s directors set out last summer to replace Lyon-bound Michel Bastos, the jet-heeled Brazilian winger with the thunderous left foot whose 14 goals and nine assists last season fired his team into Europe and earned him a place in the Ligue 1 Team of the Season.
The man they turned to in the end was Gervinho, real name Gervais Yao Kouassi. The 22-year-old Ivorian forward with the dreadlocks and the Brazilian nickname made a steady start to life at the Stadium Lille-Métropole but in October he suddenly exploded into life, scoring 11 goals in 12 league games in the run up to Christmas and leaving Lille second in the table and in the knockout phase of the Europa League as he headed off to the Africa Cup of Nations.
Gervinho arrived in France in 2007, joining Le Mans from Belgian side Beveren, but he had reportedly been tracked by Arsenal since his days at the prolific academy of hometown club ASEC Mimosas. His stats in his first Ligue 1 season were unspectacular – two goals in 26 league appearances – but his effervescent dribbling and livewire performances reportedly brought him to the attention of Ligue 1 heavyweights Monaco, Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain.
Tactics: Evra and Richards showcase defensive evolution
Jonathan Wilson’s oft-quoted tactical bible, Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics, documents the shift in tactical emphasis from attack to defence in the 130-year history of the game as we know it.
Whereas teams originally set out in 2-3-5 systems that prioritised attack above everything else, a steadily growing awareness of the need to deny your opponents space prompted a gradual defensive evolution that has led to the 4-2-3-1 and various 4-5-1 hybrids becoming the current formations du jour.
With space in the attacking third of the pitch disappearing apace, pundits have begun to predict that the next phase of the pyramid’s inversion will see defensive players assuming more and more attacking responsibility in order to capitalise on the fact that they are often the only players on the pitch (apart from the goalkeepers) with time on the ball and space to run into.
Manchester City’s Carling Cup semi-final first leg victory over Manchester United on Tuesday night provided an interesting case in point.
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Coaching badges: The Beginner
Improving coaching standards, it is commonly agreed, is the surest way of improving the standard of football in a country. Nowhere is this issue more relevant than in Great Britain, where England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 (coupled with the enduring mediocrity of the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish national sides) sparked a timely debate on the quality of coaching in a nation where technical deficiencies have long been an area of concern.
The soul-searching prompted by the failings of the Steve McClaren era generated a belated and somewhat begrudging acceptance in the English game that formal coaching training was probably quite a good thing after all. But what does training to become a coach in the UK actually involve?
Liam Graf, 24, obtained the Football Association’s Level 1 coaching badge towards the end of 2009 and will shortly be embarking upon Level 2. He spoke to Football Further about the work of a trainee coach.
Goal of the Week: Ronaldinho
Ronaldinho (Milan 4-0 Siena):
Honourable mentions: Siaka Tiéné (Ivory Coast 3-1 Ghana); Ashley Cole (Chelsea 7-2 Sunderland); Edin Džeko (Stuttgart 3-1 Wolfsburg)
Source: 101 Great Goals
Odd one out Touré ploughs lonely furrow
Q. Why is Manchester City’s Kolo Touré the odd one out at the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations?
A. He is the only centre-back in the entire tournament who regularly plays for a club that is currently in the top six of one of Europe’s five biggest leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain).*
It may seem restrictive to focus on only the top six clubs from Europe’s elite leagues, but it is nonetheless remarkable that among the playing staff of Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Bordeaux, Lille, Montpellier, Marseille, Lyon, Monaco, Bayer Leverkusen, Schalke, Bayern Munich, Hamburg, Borussia Dortmund, Werder Bremen, Internazionale, Milan, Roma, Napoli, Juventus, Palermo, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia, Real Mallorca, Deportivo La Coruña and Sevilla there is only one central defender playing at Africa’s showpiece event.
Pelé’s prediction that an African team would win the World Cup before the end of the last century has been the subject of much knowing mockery, but African players have since fully infiltrated the upper echelons of the world game. We are used to seeing African full-backs (Eboué, Taïwo, Assou-Ekotto), defensive midfielders (Yaya Touré, Essien, Mahamadou Diarra), attacking midfielders/wingers (Muntari, Sessegnon, Kalou) and strikers (Drogba, Eto’o, Kanouté), while Espanyol’s Cameroonian goalkeeper Carlos Kameni is among the best in La Liga.
World Cup scouting: Gregory van der Wiel (Netherlands)
As a people, the Dutch are renowned for being laid-back but Ajax right-back Gregory van der Wiel shows more appetite than most to live up to his national stereotype.
FourFourTwo magazine reported that, after making his third appearance for his country in the 4-0 World Cup qualifying victory over Macedonia in April, he was spotted at a snack bar outside the Amsterdam ArenA, eating a hot dog with some old school friends while still carrying his official Dutch team bag.
The 21-year-old landed himself in hot water in October, meanwhile, when he was ruled out of the Netherlands’ friendly game in Australia with concussion but felt well enough to attend a Lil’ Wayne concert and then posted a photo of himself with the American rapper on Twitter.
The incident drew a rebuke from Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk, but while van der Wiel’s off-pitch antics have not always delighted his coaches – his attitude prompted Ajax to farm him out to satellite club Haarlem when he was 14 – his on-pitch performances certainly have.
Tactics: Van der Vaart gives Pellegrini food for thought
The first-choice starting XI may have become an outmoded concept in 21st-century football, where squad rotation is now the accepted norm, but Manuel Pellegrini’s tinkering at Real Madrid this season has been enthusiastic even by modern standards.
The Chilean has fielded no less than 16 different combinations in midfield and attack since the start of the La Liga campaign and is yet to name the same team for two league games in succession. Below are the midfield/attack combinations Pellegrini has deployed in the league in 2009-10, in the order in which they have appeared:
1. Lassana Diarra, Xabi Alonso; Kaká, Raúl; Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema (3-2 v Deportivo, h)
2. Alonso, Guti; Kaka, Esteban Granero; Gonzalo Higuaín, Benzema (3-0 v Espanyol, a)
3. L. Diarra, Fernando Gago; Kaká, Raúl; Ronaldo, Benzema (5-0 v Xerez, h)
4. Gago, Guti; Kaká, Granero; Ronaldo, Higuaín (2-0 v Villarreal, a)
5. L. Diarra, Alonso; Granero, Raúl; Ronaldo, Benzema (3-0 v Tenerife, h)
6. Mahamadou Diarra, Alonso; Kaká, Guti; Raúl, Benzema (1-2 v Sevilla, a)
7. L. Diarra, Alonso; Granero, Rafael van der Vaart; Raúl, Benzema (4-2 v Valladolid, h)
8. M. Diarra, Alonso; Granero, Kaká, Royston Drenthe; Raúl (0-0 v Gijon, a)
9. L. Diarra, Alonso; Kaká, Marcelo; Higuaín, Benzema (2-0 v Getafe, h; 3-2 v Atlético, a)
10. Alonso, Granero; Kaká, Drenthe; Higuaín, Benzema (1-0 v Racing, h)
11. L. Diarra, Alonso; Kaká, Marcelo; Ronaldo, Higuaín (0-1 v Barcelona, a)
12. Alonso, van der Vaart; Granero, Marcelo; Ronaldo, Higuaín (4-2 v Almería, h)
13. L. Diarra, Alonso; van der Vaart, Marcelo; Higuaín, Benzema (3-2 v Valencia, a)
14. L. Diarra, M. Diarra; van der Vaart, Marcelo; Ronaldo, Higuaín (6-0 v Zaragoza, h)
15. L. Diarra, Alonso; van der Vaart, Marcelo; Ronaldo, Higuaín (0-0 v Osasuna, a)
16. Gago, Alonso; van der Vaart, Kaká; Ronaldo, Higuaín (2-0 v Mallorca, h)
Pellegrini’s preferred formation, as he outlines in this video from the UEFA Training Ground website, is a 4-2-2-2. The team’s attack is founded upon a two-man defensive midfield pairing, with two multi-faceted attacking midfielders operating behind two forwards (Brazil lined up in similar fashion at the 2006 World Cup, but with less than spectacular results).
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Goal of the Week: Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi (Tenerife 0-5 Barcelona):
Honourable mentions: Clint Dempsey (Stoke City 3-2 Fulham); Bafétimbi Gomis (Strasbourg 1-3 Lyon); Sergio Canales (Sevilla 1-2 Racing Santander)
Source: 101 Great Goals
Goal of the Week: Madjid Bougherra
Madjid Bougherra (Rangers 7-1 Dundee United):
Honourable mentions: Javier Pastore (Catalonia 4-2 Argentina); Aaron Ramsey (Portsmouth 1-4 Arsenal); Dedi Ben-Dayan (Hapoel Tel Aviv 5-0 Hapoel Ra’anana)
Source: 101 Great Goals
