‘Tactics’
Tactics: What should England expect from France?
The press pack accompanying the France squad to England may have been slightly miffed at the lack of attention given to Les Bleus in Fabio Capello’s pre-match press conference, but Laurent Blanc’s side will have plenty of opportunities to make themselves headline news when tonight’s match at Wembley kicks off.
France lost 2-1 to Norway in Blanc’s first game in charge and were then stunned 1-0 by Belarus in their opening Euro 2012 qualifier at the Stade de France, but have since recorded consecutive 2-0 victories against Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania and Luxembourg. Upon taking the reins following the World Cup debacle, Blanc spoke of his desire to create a France team “that opposes its style upon its opponents”, and although we are still in the early days of his tenure, his vision for the national team is beginning to emerge.
In France’s last game, a rather laboured 2-0 defeat of Luxembourg in Metz, Blanc set France out in a 4-4-2 formation with a diamond midfield supporting Karim Benzema and Guillaume Hoarau in attack. He occasionally used a similar system during his time at Bordeaux, but against strong opposition his preference is for a midfield configuration that makes sure France cannot be outnumbered in the centre of the pitch.
“Playing with two strikers does not allow us to have numerical superiority in midfield,” Blanc explained in September. “You can use it against weaker teams. Against strong teams it’s vital to win the midfield battle. You have more options with two strikers but you can only play with one holding midfielder. That can weaken your team.”
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Tactics: What is Gareth Bale’s best position?
Claims that Gareth Bale’s two scintillating performances against Internazionale have turned him into the best player in the world may be a little far-fetched, but it is no exaggeration to say that in Tuesday night’s match at White Hart Lane, almost everything he did with the ball at his feet was magnificent. Speculation is already rife about which European giant he will elect to join if and when the time comes to leave Spurs, but an important decision also needs to be made about where on the pitch he should play.
Damien Comolli, the man who oversaw Bale’s move from Southampton, says he thought he’d found “the new Maldini”, and Bale and his manager, Harry Redknapp, are in agreement that his best position will ultimately prove to be at full-back.
“In the long run, I still think Gareth Bale will develop into a fantastic left-back – hopefully the best in the Premier League,” Redknapp told the September issue of FourFourTwo magazine. ”We wouldn’t lose any of Gareth’s attacking flair if we moved him to full-back… He’s good enough and energetic enough to get back and forward all day long. When you play as a left-back, it is difficult for the opposition to mark you.”
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Tactics: Ballon d’Or running shows strikers on the slide
The list of nominees for the first ever FIFA Ballon d’Or award is unsurprisingly dominated by attacking players, but the latest odds show that it is creative midfielders and multi-faceted forwards, rather than out-and-out strikers, who continue to enjoy top billing in the glamour stakes.
Of the five favourites to win the award, only one - Diego Forlán – is a striker, and his goal-getting counterparts Didier Drogba, Miroslav Klose and Asamoah Gyan can all be found towards the longer end of the betting. It confirms a growing trend. In the last five years in which the Ballon d’Or has been awarded, Thierry Henry (third in 2006) and Fernando Torres (third in 2008) are the only classic strikers to have made it onto the podium.
The contrast with the previous five years is telling. Between 2000 and 2005, strikers Michael Owen (2001), Ronaldo (2002) and Andriy Shevchenko (2004) all won the award, with Shevchenko finishing third in 2000, Raúl coming runner-up to Owen in 2001 and Henry taking second place behind attacking midfielder Pavel Nedvěd in 2003.
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Why isn’t Wayne Rooney the player we thought he’d become?
Wayne Rooney is a force of nature: a natural, swaggering, street footballer who used to play the game with the reckless abandon of the best player in the playground and who made the dimensions of the pitch seem to shrink whenever he received the ball. He retains all of these qualities, despite his current loss of form, but he only really got the credit his talent deserved in England when he started scoring goals.
With a player as gifted – as potentially world-beating – as Rooney, goals suddenly seem a rather banal commodity. Goal tallies are for players like Michael Owen and Ruud van Nistelrooy: single-minded, stat-obsessed penalty box prowlers, not marauding, bulldozing, game-changing tyrants like Rooney.
The trouble for Rooney is that he is a striker, which, in the reductive lexicon of his country’s football vocabulary, means he is expected, first and foremost, to score goals. Never mind the way he strode into the national consciousness as a freakishly precocious 16-year-old man-boy, or the outrageous lobs, chips and volleys he tucked away in the early years of his Manchester United career, or the devastatingly effective partnership he formed with supposed sworn enemy Cristiano Ronaldo between 2006 and 2009. The English press did not begin comparing him to Lionel Messi, Xavi and Wesley Sneijder until he started converting six-yard headers with almost monotonous regularity against the likes of Wigan and Birmingham last season.
Tactics: Were Holland 1974 the last true innovators?
“The only team I’ve seen that did things differently was Holland at the 1974 World Cup in Germany. Since then everything looks more or less the same to me…. Their ‘carousel’ style of play was amazing to watch and marvellous for the game.”
The words are those of Carlos Alberto, captain of Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning team, and they come from an interview published in the 50th anniversary issue of World Soccer magazine. The former Santos right-back is one of a number of greats - including Pelé, Bobby Charlton, Franz Beckenbauer and Diego Maradona – to have granted interviews to the magazine about the changes in the game over the last 50 years and their answers repeatedly return to the same complaints: that in becoming faster and more athletic, football has lost some of the artistry that was once central to its raison d’être.
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Tactics: Can France play without a playmaker?
The team that Laurent Blanc aligns against Romania on Saturday may herald a significant change of direction in the tactical evolution of the French national side. Teams representing the country have long been built around a single, richly talented creative player, from Raymond Kopa in the 1950s through Michel Platini in the 1980s to Zinedine Zidane at the turn of the last century. But that could be about to change.
The basic shape of France's midfield and attack in the 2-0 Euro 2012 qualifying victory against Bosnia-Hercegovina in Sarajevo in September 2010
France’s 2-0 victory over Bosnia-Hercegovina in Sarajevo last month was probably their most impressive performance in a competitive match for four years and they achieved it without a playmaker in sight. Instead, Alou Diarra anchored a muscular midfield with Yann M’Vila alongside him and Abou Diaby operating slightly further forward. Florent Malouda and Mathieu Valbuena were deployed on the flanks, in support of lone striker Karim Benzema.
Diaby has long been typecast as a defensive midfielder, presumably because of his height, his build and his physical resemblance to Patrick Vieira, but against Bosnia he was given the freedom to express his attacking gifts, embarking on lolloping runs into opposition territory and making a number of incisive passes. A playmaker, however, he is not.
Yoann Gourcuff, the heir apparent to Zidane, and Samir Nasri missed the game in Sarajevo, through suspension and injury respectively. Both are now back in the fold, but Blanc has promised that the players who starred against Bosnia will be given an opportunity to stake a claim to a first-team place.
“Nothing forces us to play with a number 10,” said Blanc this week. “In Bosnia, because we couldn’t do anything else, there wasn’t one. The train had passed, the team was put in place and it did a pleasing job.”
Blanc has admitted, however, that “players who are capable of making the team play better [i.e. playmakers] are always useful” and he has also expressed a conviction that Gourcuff and Nasri can be fitted into the same starting XI, most probably with Nasri playing wide on the right and Gourcuff in the centre.
The prototype 4-3-3 that breathed new life into the French national team’s play in Sarajevo was a world away from the stodgy, unimaginative football associated with the 4-2-3-1 of the Raymond Domenech era, but Blanc’s stated mission to create a side that “imposes its style upon its opponents” would perhaps be best served by a team containing at least one playmaker. In any case, Diaby’s ankle injury suggests at least one of Gourcuff and Nasri will make the starting XI against Romania.
Nevertheless, the performances of Diaby, M’Vila and co against Bosnia proved that France can function perfectly well without a number 10. The team-sheet at the Stade de France on Saturday could give the clearest indication yet that France’s love affair with the playmaker is about to be put on indefinite hold.
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Tactics: Pass master Van der Vaart central to Spurs’ redevelopment
Having essentially admitted that the purchase of Rafael van der Vaart was a transfer deadline day whim, it has been interesting to see how Harry Redknapp has tried to accommodate the Dutchman in his team. Spurs’ success last season was built on a fairly classic 4-4-2 formation, with dashing wingers on either side and a big-man-little-man combination in attack. Redknapp conceded over the summer that the same system would likely prove too naïve and inflexible for the demands of the Champions League, so van der Vaart’s arrival can also be seen as a recognition of the need for greater subtlety and sophistication in Tottenham’s attacking approach.
Van der Vaart has started three Premier League games since his move from Real Madrid – a 1-1 draw at West Bromwich Albion, a 3-1 win at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers and Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at West Ham United. In the games at West Brom and West Ham he played as the central playmaker in a 4-2-3-1, with Aaron Lennon on his right, Luka Modrić on his left and either Roman Pavlyuchenko (at West Brom) or Peter Crouch (at West Ham) up front. Against Wolves the shape was slightly different. In Lennon’s absence, van der Vaart played from the right, with Gareth Bale on the left and Robbie Keane playing off Crouch in the centre.
“Van der Vaart was, if you like, a bit part player at Real Madrid. He wasn’t in the team, he was on the bench and his confidence was low,” Redknapp told CNN this week. “He’s come here and we’ve made him feel very important. He’s a key player in our team and we base a lot of our game around how he plays and where we play him.”
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Interview: Michael Cox, Zonal Marking
The graphs, diagrams and match reports on Zonal Marking are pored over by thousands of football fans the world over and have helped push tactical analysis towards the centre of mainstream football debate in the United Kingdom. Set up in January this year, the phenomenally successful website received an average of 210,000 visitors per week during the World Cup and counts tactical mastermind Jonathan Wilson among its many admirers.
Variously believed to be the work of either a particularly public-spirited professional coach or a crack team of disaffected former Opta employees, the force behind ZM is in fact one man: Michael Cox. He very kindly agreed to grant his first interview to Football Further.
FF: A simple question to begin with. Why write about tactics?
- The classic Zonal Marking tactical diagram
MC: On an ‘emotional’ level, it’s something that’s always interested me. There’s something of interest in almost every game, and you spot patterns and long-term trends that are actually more important, if less exciting, than one-off moments of magic.
On a less romantic note: because to create a successful blog/site, there has to be a niche, a particular area of interest. It seemed like a bit of a gap in the market. My favourite blogs are the ones that focus on specific areas: Les Rosbifs about English players abroad, or European Football Weekends about away trips. You know there’s going to be a constant theme, you know they’re the definitive source on that area, you know it’s going to be well-researched and display good knowledge. There should be more sites like that – down to really specific things. I love tactics, but if ZM already existed, I would have done it about something else; another niche area.
I write down the teams in full, along with numbers. I also have a magnetic mini chalkboard thing with counters, which is better than drawing a diagram out with a pen. Then it’s just a case of making notes about everything that’s notable, and then finding patterns. People sometimes think that the site is a bit know-it-all, but it’s amazing the number of times that I note something like “the left-back gets drawn to the ball too easily,” and the opposition score by exploiting the space in behind the left-back within ten minutes. As for not missing anything, Sky+ helps! It also means you can go back and pause the game when the camera angle switches to views where you can see the whole pitch, to see what’s going on.
Tactics: Robinho arrival threatens Ronaldinho’s renaissance
Right-footed, left-sided attackers are currently one of football’s most fashionable commodities (think David Villa and Robinho at the World Cup; Franck Ribéry at Bayern Munich; Nani at Manchester United), and like any self-respecting wealthy Italian man, Silvio Berlusconi has to be up with the latest trends. So he bought two. But while Robinho is hoping his transfer deadline day move to Milan will allow him to re-launch his stuttering club career, his arrival at San Siro may well turn out to be bad news for Ronaldinho.
Berlusconi might be the most ardent Ronaldinho fan on the planet, but he seems obsessed with the idea that his hero should play in the centre. Earlier this summer he spoke of his desire to see Milan play with two strikers, supported by Ronaldinho as a central playmaker. It’s a seductive idea, motivated no doubt by memories of players like Gianni Rivera and Manuel Rui Costa who wore the red and black number 10 shirt with distinction, but it’s not a role that Ronaldinho seems to enjoy.
Almost all the most enduring images of Ronaldinho during his time at Barcelona – be it his sensational goal against Sevilla or his one-man demolition job against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu – saw him picking up the ball wide on the left and cutting in at goal. As he said himself last season: “I feel great and where I’m playing I can do my best. I’m happy to play behind the strikers, but where I’m playing now [on the left] is my best position.”
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Tactics: How the Premier League title contenders shape up
The Premier League season is less than two weeks old, but a look at how the top sides lined up in their opening matches provides an interesting indication of how they plan to approach the season from a tactical perspective.
The diagrams below, screenshots from the ESPN Soccernet website, show the average positions adopted by the players from Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City and Liverpool in their teams’ opening home games of the season. (Data is taken only from home games because ESPN’s average position diagrams inexplicably go a bit haywire for away teams.)
Average position diagrams do not give a water-tight representation of a team’s formation – which is necessarily in a constant state of flux – but they do offer useful insights into basic shape.
Chelsea: 4-3-3
In the 6-0 victory over West Bromwich Albion on the season’s opening day, Chelsea lined up in the same loose 4-3-3 formation that they adopted during last season’s title run-in, but with Florent Malouda playing on the left of the front three, rather than the midfield three. Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka both drop deep to get fully involved in the team’s build-up play and Malouda has become wonderfully adept at exploiting the space they vacate – as he did when he scored the sixth goal against West Brom from Anelka’s lofted pass.
The average positions of Chelsea's players in the 6-0 win at home to West Bromwich Albion on August 14 (starting players circled); ESPN Soccernet
[Squad numbers: 1. Petr Čech; 19. Paulo Ferreira, 33. Alex, 26. John Terry, 3. Ashley Cole; 5. Michael Essien, 12. John Mikel Obi, 8. Frank Lampard; 39. Nicolas Anelka, 11. Didier Drogba, 15. Florent Malouda; Substitutes: 2. Branislav Ivanović, 10. Yossi Benayoun, 21. Salomon Kalou]
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Tactics: Ashley Young comes in from the periphery
The imminent departure of James Milner to Manchester City means that Aston Villa’s 3-0 win at home to West Ham on Saturday represented the end of an era at Villa Park, but the positioning of Ashley Young meant that it also marked a potential new dawn.
Young has reportedly been angling to play in an advanced position behind the striker and in Villa’s opening game of the Premier League season he was granted his wish. Operating in a roving role in support of John Carew, he spent most of his time on the left but was able to flit from flank to flank and set up Stiliyan Petrov for Villa’s second goal with a delicately measured cross from the right-hand side.
The diagram below contrasts Young’s performance against West Ham with his contribution in the corresponding fixture last season. When the sides met in January, his remit was strictly confined to the flanks and there was an aimlessness to his crossing borne out by the fact he completed just 40 percent of his attempted passes. On Saturday, he spent much more time linking the play in the centre of the pitch and, although he tried to make fewer passes, his distribution was markedly more accurate.
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World Cup 2010: A tactical review
At the dawn of the tournament Football Further posed ten tactical questions that the World Cup would answer. Three days after Spain’s tense extra-time victory over the Netherlands in the final, the answers to those questions reflect a tournament in which defensive rigour was overwhelmingly de riguer and tactical innovation conspicious by its rarity.
1. Will freshness or preparedness prevail in Group A?
Having played just one game in the build-up to the tournament – a 4-1 win over Israel in Montevideo on May 26 - Uruguay took control of Group A before scrapping their way to the last four for the first time since 1970. How much of that was down to their fitness, and not the obliging manner in which the big teams benignly opened up the path to the semi-finals, is debatable. Mexico played 12 preparation matches and also made it out of the group phase, while their 3-1 defeat by Argentina in the last 16 showed no discernible signs of fatigue.
2. Will France’s 4-3-3 work?
How to put this? Not only did France’s 4-3-3 fail to work, but Raymond Domenech lost all faith in it before the tournament had even started. In their opening game, a 0-0 draw with Uruguay, they reverted to their tried and tested (if not actually effective) 4-2-3-1, with Jérémy Toulalan and Abou Diaby in the holding midfield roles and Yoann Gourcuff as the playmaker. The 4-2-3-1 remained in place for the 2-0 defeat by Mexico, but this time with Franck Ribéry in the playmaking role (to which he is wholly unsuited) and Nicolas Anelka reprising his great disappearing centre-forward act until matters came to a head at half-time. It was not until the 2-1 loss to South Africa that the long-awaited 4-3-3 finally made its appearance, but by then it was already too late. Over to you, Monsieur Blanc.
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World Cup tactics: Don’t neglect the holding role
As in 2006, three of the four semi-finalists at this year’s World Cup have played in a 4-2-3-1 formation.
For France, Portugal and Italy (whose 4-2-3-1 could also be interpreted as a 4-4-1-1) in 2006, read Spain, Germany and the Netherlands in 2010. Germany were the black sheep in 2006, with a 4-4-2 hinged upon a midfield diamond that featured Torsten Frings at the base and Michael Ballack at the tip. Uruguay are the odd ones out this time around, their 3-4-1-2 having initially morphed into a 4-3-1-2/4-3-2-1 and then a 4-4-2 for the semi-final defeat to Holland.
One of the most distinctive elements of the 4-2-3-1 is the presence of two deep-lying central midfielders in front of the defence. Spain, Germany and the Netherlands are not the only teams to have fielded two such players, but what has made their midfield configurations so effective is the way they have paired players with different qualities.
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World Cup tactics: How the quarter-finalists line up
On the eve of the World Cup, Football Further asked whether the 4-2-3-1 formation would continue to dominate as it did at the last tournament in 2006. The average position diagrams below, taken from all eight last-16 matches, demonstrate that while it remains the most popular shape in the international game, variations in tactics mean that it is being deployed in very different ways.
Uruguay: 4-3-1-2/4-3-2-1
Uruguay began the competition as predicted by playing in a 3-4-1-2 but after a dour goalless draw with France in their opening game they shifted to a flat back four, with Jorge Fucile shuffling along to left-back from central defence, Alvaro Pereira pushed forward from left wing-back into a genuine left-midfield role and Edinson Cavani brought in on the right side of the attack in place of playmaker Ignacio González. Reading of the formation depends on Diego Forlán’s positioning. He tends to play much deeper than Suárez, and slightly to the left, turning the shape into a 4-3-1-2, but Cavani’s tendency to pull wide means he often operates on roughly the same line as Forlán, with Suárez left to lead the line alone.
The average positions of Uruguay's players in the first half of their 2-1 victory over South Korea in the last 16; FIFA.com
[Squad numbers: 1. Fernando Muslera; 16. Maxi Pereira, 2. Diego Lugano, 3. Diego Godin, 4. Jorge Fucile; 15. Diego Pérez, 17. Egidio Arévalo Ríos, 11. Alvaro Pereira; 7. Edinson Cavani, 10. Diego Forlán; 9. Luis Suárez]
World Cup tactics: France start afresh with Blanc page
The debris from the slow-motion car crash that has been the last two years in the life of the France team is unlikely to settle for some time. The fall-out from their spectacularly ugly World Cup failure will rumble long into the summer, with players promising to reveal the full story behind their ill-tempered campaign and government ministers poised to carry out a searching investigation into the failings of the French Football Federation.
French football fans want a line to be drawn under this World Cup as swiftly as possible and in the imminent arrival of Laurent Blanc as new head coach they have at least an opportunity to start afresh. Le Président has not yet signed his contract but France’s next game, a friendly against Norway in Oslo on August 11, is less than two months anyway and he will already have formulated strong ideas about how he is going to approach his gargantuan task. What next, then, for France?
Blanc would not be the first international coach to turn to trusted players from his tenure as a club manager and in that respect his arrival is good news for the Bordeaux contingent, namely Alou Diarra and, in particular, Yoann Gourcuff. The latter’s wretched tournament was ended by a harsh red card in the 2-1 defeat by South Africa on Tuesday, but Gourcuff already carried the look of a haunted man. Amid rumours of discord between him and some of the team’s high-profile senior players, Gourcuff produced an uncharacteristically shaky performance in the 0-0 draw with Uruguay and lost his place for the 2-0 loss against Mexico. His composure was badly disturbed by the atmosphere surrounding the team and Blanc’s first job will be to restore him to the level of confidence he enjoyed during Bordeaux’s annus mirabilis in 2009.
