http://m.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/05/22/central-winger-piecing-together-klinsmanns-revolution I haven't seen this posted yet. Its interesting.
Hmm... I am not sure I believe Klinsmann is using a central winger, and I am not sure Bradley would be described as one by Zonal Marking. Here is their take on the rise of the central winger in 2010. They describe a player like Ashley Young being lined up centrally, but drifting to either side of the pitch as space opened up. Here is another piece by Zonal Marking describing Iker Muniain of Athletic Bilbao as a central winger. The general idea is you play a false number 10, but his movement is largely lateral. He receives the ball out wide more often than a traditional 10 and players behind him step up to fill that space. For the US, Donovan could be used as a central winger in an asymmetrical formation. If you wanted to mimic Bielsa's use of Muniain as a central winger, for example, the US formation would look like this: Again, Donovan is the central winger in this setup. Bradley and Dempsey would be two players who would step in to vacate space when Donovan drifted to pick up the ball out wide and start playmaking. I do agree with the MLS piece that Klinsmann's 3 primary defenders are the two central defenders and the defensive midfielder. I sadly gave up on this blog, but here was some analysis I did earlier on in Klinsmann's tenure. It aligns with the MLS author. The full backs are supposed to get forward by design. I started tracking the opportunities created during the Slovenia game and found almost all of the early ones came through Chandler. I got sidetracked and stopped taking note of them, but this confirmed the importance of the full backs in Klinsmann's attack. Having above average attackers is key to creating chances, which is why I think we see Johnson there in the upcoming games.
While I agree with your general point Susaeta, I don't necessarily agree with your formation as you laid it out. Donovan I dont think is a central winger, in fact I dont really see him as a wing player at all. I dont think we have anyone on the roster who I would describe as a suitable selection for that role. The other thing is that I dont think you want to play Castillo in front of Johnson like that. One of the things about wanting to aggressively attack with your outside backs is you want to clear the space in front of them, usually with nominal outside midfielders that pinch in to flood the center of the pitch. If their midfielders dont respond my coming inside, you can usually dominate possession through the middle. If the come in to contest the middle, then you have your outside backs in open space. I think there are better midfield options who would help open up the space for the outside backs by naturally pinching in. Now a central winger is ideal, as are outside mids who prefer to play inside, but can go outside when needed. The idea being that you still have more advanced players in position to catch them if they are cheating on their rotations in anticipation of your fullbacks getting forward. But the idea I think is to leave the space open for your outside backs. I think if you look at our current roster options, featuring the outside backs in the attack actually makes quite a bit of sense. We generally speaking have some very good attack back line options on the outside right now.
In the 4-3-2-1 I've been envisioning for a couple years Donovan plays as a central winger while Dempsey plays more as a second striker from the two AM positions. This reflects one's strength in space and the other's in and around the box. I'd also want one of the two #8s to play as an overlapping CM in some cases (like how the Fire utilized John Thorrington), Johnson would be great in this role.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I am not advocating a central winger. Even Athletic used it less frequently as the season wore on. I was just trying to explain the difference of what I understood a central winger to be and what the MLS author was describing.
yessir. How I see it too. Dolo-----Gooch-------Boca---------Johnson/Corona ----------------Mr. Jones----------------- --------Bradley--------- Torres/Edu/Johnson -----------Donovan (free role)--------------- ---------------------------Demps (wd fwd/aml, play off space made by donovan and Jozy) ------------Jozy
I remember 2 seasons ago when Villa used Young as a central winger, it was awful. It takes a very special skill set to be effective in that role.
Before the debate gets too out of hand, I just want to note Central Winger is the name of Devon Pleuler's regular column on mlssoccer.com, which is why it appears in the headline. It has nothing to do with Klinsmann's tactics.
Seems like it to me, from the article: The last two paragraphs describe Bradley as a central playmaker who drifted wide. One, I am not sure I consider Bradley a "playmaker." Two, even if he were, I still am unsure I agree that what the MLS author is describing aligns to what has been Zonal Marking's point of view.
Of all your excellent blog posts, that one was probably the single most informative of the lot. This one is in that same vein and is great food for thought. You had more than 3 readers, by the by...
Six just on this thread. Mike bradley-not a winger. Donovan-winger. Once upon a time there was a concept that wingers/outside AMs/what ever they're called this week could actually, ya know ,change flanks in the same game.I even remember LD and DMB doing that.
In our Trident what I envision is Donovan and Dempsey switching and overloading sides freely, with Jozy sometimes dropping back into one of their roles and one of them moving up to forward. Donovan would tend to be the wider of the two in both circumstances. A typical move would be playing a ball up to a checking Jozy, Donovan makes a wide run off him while Clint makes a more central run into the box and the space Jozy has cleared. Basically this switching and overloading would allow us to be equally asymmetrical, a term so contradictory on its face that it must create chaos for a defense.