Like what the hell was it? Obviously the back line and forwards I figure out, but the midfield has me totally baffled. I think Carroll pretty much stayed at home in the center behind the attacking play, but couldn't for the life me tell where Olsen was playing. Was he in the middle with Dema? Was it Convey and Stewart on the outside? Help?
It was announced as a 352 and this is how I surmise (it's how it looked to me anyways) that they were to operate: -------------------Rimando--------------------------- Namoff---------------Nelsen---------------------Petke ------------Carroll--------------Kovalenko------------ Stewart----------------Olsen------------------Convey ----------------Esky---------Moreno----------------- could also be translated thus: -------------------Rimando--------------------------- Namoff---------------Nelsen---------------------Petke ----------------------Carroll-------------------------- --------------------Kovalenko------------------------ Stewart----------------Olsen------------------Convey ----------------Esky---------Moreno----------------- Stewart seemed to hang back a bit. He even played as an out and out right back (IMHO) as some points. Convey and Stewart pretty much held to the wings. Olsen was definitely center of the park for the bulk of it. Carroll seemed to be charged more with hanging back but both he and Kovalenko seemed more or less central, with Dema making more of the runs forward. It seemed like at times they want to plug up the middle up a bit, which given the Landon factor was not a bad idea.
I watched on television. It looked like the front three midfielders (Convey, Stewart, Olsen) had license to roam. Kovalenko and Carroll were behind them, but Kovalenko drifted forward occassionally. At the beginning of the game Wynalda pointed out that Olsen was in the middle, Convey on the left, and Stewart on the right but that did not last very long (though Stewart and Convey did primarily defend on their respective flanks). According to Lorrie Fair, Nowak was imploring Kovalenko to get more of the ball so his duties were not confined to defending. I loved the formation and style of play and think it has great potential to evolve into something beautiful.
I think the coaches worry a lot less about the "formation" than fans do. As long as the players execute the game plan, who cares? Responsibility is much more important that a position on a chart.
That's true, Monster, but if Ben Olsen is essentially playing the #10 role, that's newsworthy (to me at least). At the very least it's an interesting tactical decision. Given all the pre-season hype and Convey's performances elsewhere, I would have thought Convey would be behind the forwards and Olsen would be wide. Whatever works!
Nowak feels that way (as for coaches in general I don't know). As I said before on an earlier preseason thread: I said (to Nowak) "you mean you have no idea who will be a-mid?" He said he didn't care who would be a-mid, what he cared about was who was where on the field and what they were doing....He said the big picture for what was going on the field was like a puzzle, and the idea was to get these guys to learn more and more in order to learn what that puzzle was about. He said the team used to scramble around w/out purpose too much Seems to me Nowak's puzzle is to install on-field angles/spacing of players. To him spacing's key because it makes for more room to create, in addition to making it harder for the defense to cover because they can't focus their defense on particular areas or players. I believe I saw that yesterday- the players were more spaced apart than last year. This can be hard on a defense because among other things it makes the defense chase. We can argue the lineup all we want-but I'm telling you that I believe for the most part Nowak could care less about it. You saw the roaming going on. It's more about who's doing what and where than it is who's playing in what position-switching is possible as long as individual responsibility is maintained in regards to the overall team formation-in other words team formation is somewhat fluid.
in the game against the battery dc played best when ben went more into the middle and convey on the left with carroll behind benny.
Meridian's assessment is pretty much correct. Carroll is playing in the back of the midfield, and the other 4 players are more-or-less interchangable. They play their positions, yes, but they also seem to have a good deal of freedom to switch and play a fluid game. If anything, I'd diagram it like this: ------------Carroll Stewart-Olsen-Kovalenko-Convey
I'm looking forward to Carroll getting more comfortable to move forward. He has the speed and skill to do so, he just needs to get comfortable. One more weapon to our attack.
the confusion over the exact formation just shows Nowaks emphasis on versatility, maturity and vision of the players tto see each other and go where necessary during the course of the action - the only one who really stayed in one place was Brian Carroll - he's back at Def HB, but even he has played a lot of Outside HB in the past if we're confused as to the exact formation then maybe so are other teams - hopefully formations - schmations what I saw Saturday was a great step forward - The real question is: Who of the remaining HBs doesn't fit into this sort of fluidity?- Who's in trouble of having limited playing time or only being a role player? - Q2 (only an Outside HB), Namoff (outside HB - but also outside Def) - others - ???
Exactly. Another thing I noticed in the 2nd half of the San Jose game was when DC was on defense the players converged on whichever San Jose guy had the ball, in an attempt shutting down the player's room and passing angles. If you have a tape of the game I think you'll see what I mean-it happened consistently. 2, sometimes 3 guys would converge to get in front of the ball, one to the right of the ball, one to the left, and maybe one directly in front. This is consistent with what he supposedly said at halftime-that the San Jose players had too much space It's gonna take me some time to really figure it out I wasn't paying that much attention to the formation last game.