Tuesday, 28.01.2025
As has often been discussed across Spielverlagerung, the flanks generally offer lesser strategic value for the in-possession team. A ball-carrier by the touchline only has 180 degrees of movement and limited access to space across the pitch. Therefore, defensive strategies commonly look to show the opponent towards the outside and into a pressing trap.
Tactical Periodization is a football training methodology developed around 35 years ago by Vítor Frade, a sports science professor from Porto University in Portugal.
Throw in situations in matches are often just taken for granted and involve little meaningful thought or decision making around them, other than to mark the opposition and prevent ball progression. But these situations can dictate not only who controls possession, but also how and where this possession takes place.
Pressing systems involving a back three formation offer the opportunity to commit more players to press in higher areas. With seven players within the first and second lines of the press, there are opportunities for numerical advantages in specific moments within the opposition’s build-up.
The game of football is a game with a specified purpose, laws and means. Two teams are facing off against each other with the objective of scoring a goal utilizing the ball. These rules are the same all around the globe. Similarly, the principles following these laws of the game will be the same – as will be the purpose of training. Football is a game that is trained and therefore coached, with most coaches focusing on doing so within their specific interpretation of these principles, for attacking, defending and the transition in both directions between these two.
As we move forward through the years football continues to evolve. The developments are not often massive evolutions such as Sacchi’s zonal congestion from the 80s or Michels’ and Cruyff’s total football from the 70s, but most frequently minor positional or role adjustments within the different phases of the game. Every goal scored for your team and every goal conceded that is prevented for your team has high value – and as analytics continue to grow within our sport, we are seeing its impact on football’s phases little by little.
Set-pieces are both under- and overrated in several ways. Some coaches & teams tend to overvalue them, focusing on them too much, whilst there are probably significantly more cases, where they don’t even work on this aspect of the game with their teams. Although there are more interests, articles towards the set-pieces, that show the increasing importance and complexity of a well-executed routine and strategy.
On December 2nd, 2018, Holstein Kiel travelled to MSV Duisburg and convincingly won 4-0. Last season, under the command of Tim Walter (now the coach of VfB Stuttgart), Kiel gained popularity as a high-pressing, possession-hungry side, using a variety of unique actions and structures not used by other teams. Kiel were identified as promotion candidates, but inconsistency lead to a 6th place finish. Amid this inconsistency though, were games where their approach couldn’t have been much better, with their win against Duisburg perhaps being the best example.
“We found a lot of problems when attacking a 5-4-1 when the striker is marking our holding midfielder and 10 players are defending so deep. We are thinking about how you could attack against that system.” – Pep Guardiola when previewing the 2018/2019 EPL season.
On the last day of the transfer window, you will always see remarkable transfers being made and this season was no exception. We took a look at the situation in Denmark where two transfers caught our attention in particular.