Posts Tagged ‘England’
Joe Cole enhanced by life beyond the Premier League
Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, Saint-Etienne. The Englishman receives the ball inside the opposition half and embarks on a purposeful run towards the goal in front of the Tribune Charles Paret. He is with new company in unfamiliar surroundings but, with the ball at his feet, he is reassured to find that the sensations are the same. Defenders disappear in his slipstream before a body-swerve takes him past another opponent and into the penalty area. With one sweep of his right foot, a new chapter in his life begins.
Michael Owen, 1998. Joe Cole, 2011. Two English players have experienced life-changing moments at Le Chaudron, home of Saint-Etienne. For Owen it was that goal against Argentina; for Cole, a dazzling dribble culminating in an assist for Ludovic Obraniak on his Lille debut in September.
If the comparison is apt, the context is very different. Owen was 18 when he left the Argentine defence for dead, but he was on the threshold of a career that, though sprinkled with trophies, never quite hit the giddy heights to which it aspired. Cole’s career appeared to be stagnating too but at 29, his move to France has revitalised him. If Owen’s goal represented the beginning of his professional life, Cole’s Geoffroy-Guichard moment was a re-birth.
While Owen is content to sit on the bench at Manchester United, insistent that last year’s Premier League title represented the “pinnacle” of his career, Cole – two years Owen’s junior – has put his reputation on the line by turning his back on the comfort of the domestic scene. Lille president Michel Seydoux confessed his surprise at his club’s success in luring a star from the Premier League, admitting that “seen from England, French football is a bit like the Third World”. Cole, though, had long been intrigued by the challenge of pitching himself into a foreign championship. “Sometimes I feel if I’d been born in a Latin country I may have been coached better to play as a number 10,” he once told Champions magazine.
6 Comments »
Pitchside Europe: The strangeness of international football
“Imagine, if you will, that every few weeks, you and a select group of people from rival companies were summoned to work together on a special project for which none of you were paid but which was considered more important than anything you could ever achieve in your day-to-day job. Sound absurd? Welcome to the world of the international footballer.”
This week’s Pitchside Europe column for Eurosport, on the dislocating experience of international football, can be found here.
No Comments »
Coaching badges: The Grassroots Coach
In the third instalment of an intermittent series of interviews about coaching badges and the standard of coaching in the United Kingdom, Football Further spoke to Pavl Williams, a Level 2 coach working towards his UEFA ‘B’ licence.
Pavl has been coaching youngsters of varying ages since 2004 and is (amongst other things) currently working with elite local players aged 6-16 at Manchester United’s Carrington training centre. He is also the editor of Better Football, a coaching website that offers advice and learning resources for developing better coaches.
FF: How has formal coaching education made you a better coach?
PW: Like the vast majority of coaches I came into the role with no experience of playing high-level football and very little experience of talking to children. The most important thing that formal coach education can provide is information about kids. Great coaching is about tailoring the practice to the participants. So without a thorough understanding of your player’s motivations, experiences and perceptions, it’s very hard to communicate with them in a meaningful way. The Youth Award qualifications are great for this and have especially restored a lot of my faith in The FA’s development plan.
Another crucial aspect is that I grew in confidence when I attended my coaching courses. Getting a Level 1 certificate (and the requisite Child Protection and First Aid certification) relieved a lot of the pressure associated with parents watching critically from the sidelines. Similarly, going and completing the Level 2 and Youth Award qualifications has afforded me more credibility in the eyes of my players and more respect within my club [AFC Urmston Meadowside], where, despite being one of the country’s best junior clubs, there are still only a handful of coaches who have gone beyond the mandatory Level 1 certification. This confidence allows me to experiment with new ideas and, I believe, become more effective at what I do.
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.
12 Comments »
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.
20 Comments »
World Cup 2010: Ten tactical questions
With the World Cup now deliciously within reach, Football Further looks at ten tactical issues that could have a decisive influence on the outcome of the tournament.
1. Will freshness or preparedness prevail in Group A?
Attention on the tournament’s opening group is likely to focus on the travails of Raymond Domenech’s France and the efforts of South Africa to avoid becoming the first World Cup hosts not to make it beyond the first round, but both Mexico and Uruguay go into the tournament with high ambitions and two very different approaches to preparation. Mexico, like South Africa, embarked upon an exhaustive pre-tournament schedule, with coach Javier Aguirre dragging 17 players out of the Mexican championship early and overseeing no less than 12 friendly matches since the end of February, culminating in the superb 2-1 defeat of Italy in Brussels last Thursday. In the same period, Uruguay have played just once – a 4-1 win over Israel in Montevideo on May 26. Oscar Tábarez, who led La Celeste into battle at Italia 90, says he wanted to avoid tiring his players out. “This tournament is a drain,” he said. “Whoever turns up tired gets knocked out immediately. Teams with much bigger pools of players than ours, Argentina and Brazil, have lost for neglecting this aspect.” The battle of the fresh and the fit takes place on June 22, when Uruguay and Mexico will contest a potentially decisive final group game in Rustenburg.
2. Will France’s 4-3-3 work?
As discussed in detail last week, France are expected to deploy a 4-3-3 formation that they’ve worked on for only a matter of weeks after Lassana Diarra’s withdrawal forced Domenech to ditch the 4-2-3-1 that France have used since the eve of the 2006 tournament. After an encouraging 2-1 victory against Costa Rica, France drew 1-1 with Tunisia before slumping to a 1-0 defeat by China, and there are growing calls for ineffective right-winger Sidney Govou to be replaced by Arsenal central midfielder Abou Diaby, with Florent Malouda moving forward to the left wing and Franck Ribéry switching flanks to the right.
6 Comments »
World Cup scouting: Jack Wilshere (England)
A renowned pragmatist, Fabio Capello is not the kind of coach likely to take a gamble on a completely untested player when he names his England squad for this summer’s World Cup. Should he feel inclined to assess his options in the friendly matches that will precede England’s trip to South Africa, however, one player unlikely to have escaped his attention this season is Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere.
Currently on loan at Bolton Wanderers, where he has started seven of the last nine Premier League games, Wilshere is beginning to show glimpses of the talent that has made him perhaps the most talked-about English teenager since Wayne Rooney. The diminutive 18-year-old scored his first Premier League goal in the 2-1 victory at West Ham United last month and in Bolton’s 4-0 defeat at home to Manchester United last weekend he demonstrated a vision and a range of passing beyond most seasoned midfielders in England’s top flight.
“He surprised me,” admitted Capello back in August. “I saw him twice in the Carling Cup last year and he has improved a lot now. We have time before we have to decide if he will go to South Africa. He plays without fear, with confidence. And the other players passed the ball always to him. This is not normal to be so young and so good.”
7 Comments »
Tactics: Michael Owen – they think it’s all over, it already was
The news that Michael Owen will miss the rest of the season with a damaged hamstring prompted strange paroxysms of grief from those pundits who felt the injury had crushed the 30-year-old’s dreams of playing at a fourth World Cup with England this summer. In reality, his hopes have been dashed for some time.
As an out-and-out central striker whose game is fundamentally about scoring goals, he is a dying breed. The modern striker must do more than just score and all of Owen’s rivals for a seat on the plane to South Africa give more to the team than goals alone.
The following diagrams, screenshots from ESPN Soccernet, are heat maps detailing the involvement of Owen, Aston Villa’s Emile Heskey, Tottenham’s Peter Crouch, West Ham’s Carlton Cole and Fulham’s Bobby Zamora in the last Premier League home games in which they completed 90 minutes.
Michael Owen, Manchester United 3-0 Everton (21 November 2009):
7 Comments »
Tactics: In defence of Emile Heskey
Why does Emile Heskey get into the England team?
It certainly can’t be for his goals. In 363 minutes of Premier League football this season he has scored just one. Jermain Defoe, one of his main rivals for a place in Fabio Capello’s starting XI, averages a goal every 83 minutes. For Darren Bent the figure is 138 minutes. For Carlton Cole, 152.
It was the same story in England’s World Cup qualifiers. In seven matches Heskey scored once, a figure bettered by Defoe, Joe Cole, Theo Walcott, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Peter Crouch and Wayne Rooney and equalled by Shaun Wright-Phillips, Gareth Barry, Rio Ferdinand and John Terry.
Goals are clearly not what Heskey brings to the party. But he does bring something, because despite his goal-shy tendencies he spent more minutes on the pitch for England than any other striker apart from Rooney. And despite the strong claims for inclusion currently being presented by his rivals, Heskey is probably the only forward alongside Rooney who is currently guaranteed a place on the plane to South Africa.
“I think Fabio is a big fan of his,” said Bolton Wanderers striker Kevin Davies, a long shot for a World Cup call-up but a similar player in style to Heskey.
“He’s been in there ahead of strikers who are playing better and scoring more goals but I think as a target man, Fabio fancies him and likes the way he plays. I think he will be on the plane regardless…”
