Triggerfish
24 Jun 2003, 01:18 PM
I saw pretty much all of the first round matches here in Paris (only missed the first half of Japan v NW), including all of France/NZ. There were two things that impressed me about that match, in particular. (1) France is a lot better than NZ (no duh). (2) Notwithstanding No. 1, NZ appeared to have made an intentional decision to try to play "real" soccer against les Bleus.
There were many, many, many points at which either the Kiwi keeper, or Nelsen or one of their other backline players could have just booted the ball upfield in order to relieve pressure (and hope to catch a break), but instead they tried to play the ball out of the back on the ground to the midfielders, including off of goal kicks.
You may be tempted to say that the result in itself is an indictment of those tactics, to which I would respond with a couple of observations. First, if they had player "bunker and boot" (also known as Bora-ball) they almost certainly would have lost anyway, although probably by a more respectable amount. Second, their weakness (and the reason they lost) generally was not that they couldn't get the ball out of the back on the ground, it was that the midfielders couldn't do anything with it once they got it.
While NZ may have been a little extreme in this respect (and I am sure that they knew it was not their best choice tactically), I noticed that each of the teams that I saw (NZ, Turkey, Brazil, Cameroon, France and Japan) in the first instance would attempt to play the ball out of the back even under pressure and only rarely resorted to Route 1 style play.
I don't know much about coaching techniques, but I am guessing that one of the ways that your backline guys learn to do this is to actually try to do it in game situations, even if the results aren't always pretty...
There were many, many, many points at which either the Kiwi keeper, or Nelsen or one of their other backline players could have just booted the ball upfield in order to relieve pressure (and hope to catch a break), but instead they tried to play the ball out of the back on the ground to the midfielders, including off of goal kicks.
You may be tempted to say that the result in itself is an indictment of those tactics, to which I would respond with a couple of observations. First, if they had player "bunker and boot" (also known as Bora-ball) they almost certainly would have lost anyway, although probably by a more respectable amount. Second, their weakness (and the reason they lost) generally was not that they couldn't get the ball out of the back on the ground, it was that the midfielders couldn't do anything with it once they got it.
While NZ may have been a little extreme in this respect (and I am sure that they knew it was not their best choice tactically), I noticed that each of the teams that I saw (NZ, Turkey, Brazil, Cameroon, France and Japan) in the first instance would attempt to play the ball out of the back even under pressure and only rarely resorted to Route 1 style play.
I don't know much about coaching techniques, but I am guessing that one of the ways that your backline guys learn to do this is to actually try to do it in game situations, even if the results aren't always pretty...