Friday, 16.04.2021
Julen Lopetegui’s arrival at Sevilla ahead of the 2019-20 season provided a welcome opportunity for both Sevilla and Lopetegui to re-establish themselves within Europe’s elite. Lopetegui having almost a full season’s break following embarrassing dismissals at Spain and Real Madrid had a point to prove against many doubters.
The Canaries entered the 2019/20 Premier League season with an abundance of hope, fresh from finishing their promotion campaign in the Championship on top of the pile with a notable 94 points, 5 clear of runners-up Sheffield United and a whole 11 from Leeds United back in third-place, Daniel Farke would have surely been confident of steering the new boys to safety in their return season to the top flight. However, this has not played out in the manner to be expected.
VfB Stuttgart did it. One year after their promotion they made it back to the 1. Bundesliga. Having moved from Hoffenheim to VfB at the end of December 2019, head coach Pellegrino “Rino” Matarazzo, led the team to this success. What kind of football does the Italian-American focus on and what are the prospects for the upcoming challenge in the first division?
After the heady days of the first season under Quique Setién which culminated in a 6th placed finish, Real Betis endured a more difficult second season finishing in 10th place. Despite a number of high-profile arrivals, most notably Nabil Fekir from Lyon, Betis’ fortunes have not improved under the new coach “Rubi”. From analysing the current team to preparing for the La Liga restart, this series details how MK, JD and AB would approach taking over the Andalusian side in their current form.
After the heady days of the first season under Quique Setién which culminated in a 6th placed finish, Real Betis endured a more difficult second season finishing in 10th place. Despite a number of high-profile arrivals, most notably Nabil Fekir from Lyon, Betis’ fortunes have not improved under the new coach “Rubi”. From analysing the current team to preparing for the La Liga restart, this series details how MK and JD would approach taking over the Andalusian side in their current form.
After the heady days of the first season under Quique Setién which culminated in a 6th placed finish, Real Betis endured a more difficult second season finishing in 10th place. Despite a number of high-profile arrivals, most notably Nabil Fekir from Lyon, Betis’ fortunes have not improved under the new coach “Rubi”. From analysing the current team to preparing for the La Liga restart, this series details how MK, DG and JD would approach taking over the Andalusian side in their current form.
Roberto de Zerbi’s team show us one of the most interesting positional play approaches recently. The concept of positional play became very popular these days, still a lot of coaches and teams misinterpret it and just throwing the concept around without a deeper understanding. Although, Sassuolo is a good example for the opposite.
Just by looking at the numbers, we can see that Atalanta is 3rd (70) in goals scored – after PSG (75) and Bayern (73)- amongst the top 5 league teams, and 1st in shots per game, leading with 20,1 attempts -just for comparison, Barcelona have 12,7 (scored 63), Dortmund have 13,8 (scored 68), Juventus have 17,5 (scored 50), and the closest is Manchester City with 19,4 (scored 68). As these numbers looks very intriguing, this analysis will focus on their strategy in possession (link can be found at the end of the article).
Such as set-pieces generally, throw-in strategies are often neglected, even though some simple guidelines could easily help to utilize them better. A great example for that is Liverpool, who even hired a throw-in coach, Thomas Gronnemark, in order to increase their effectiveness in this part of the game. Since Liverpool has a very high success rate (around 70% or maybe even more) in maintaining possession after a throw-in (just to put that into context, usually the average is around 50% at best). This article focuses on the main principles, movements that Liverpool use during throw-ins.
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.