Obviously, the most interesting aspect of the tourney so far has been del Bosque's decision to bench all his strikers and go with a 4-6-0. I remember Man Utd's Ferguson musing about a 4-6-0. Now that was with Rooney as a withdrawn striker and Ronaldo comfie on the wing, but Spain put Cesc up top, nominally, and I would have gone with Pedro if I had to choose a midfielder to "lead the line". Some interesting subbing thus far. The Greeks brought in Salpingidis at half time for Ninis, who up til that point had been the only attacker to show an inkling of desire to attack. And all Salpingidis does is score on his first touch of the ball, create a penalty, and score a second goal, albeit offside. Showing that as always, off-the-ball movement is key.
I have not been able to watch these matches. But France played with no real strikers? They actually expected to win the game? Who had most of the real dangerous chances to score France or England?
No, France played with Karim Benzema up top. England didn't have a shot on goal other than Lescott's header, and while he is a threat in the air, it was a less-than-convincing header.
Germany vs Portugal, I only watched the 1st half but speed of play was surprisingly slow from the Germans. Each player held the ball for extra touches instead of circulating quickly. Spain v Italy. Spain just tried to go through the middle every time. When you have a plan, I guess you stick with it and who am I to question those guys. But it would seem that even a little variety in the attack would have benefitted them. Case in point, Iniesta was their most effective attacker generating attacks from his wide-of-center positioning. Maybe that was by design. Netherlands v Denmark. Arjen Robben is great on the ball but he has the least variety of any attacker I can think of.
If you are talking about his runs, that is not quite fair. He is playing winger and switches sides repeatedly. Also his position has flank defense responsibilities--defending with the fullback, so that limits his offensive runs. These restrictions are typical for any 2-way player. Moreover typically his team's CF is tall and the opponent's CBs are tall, so it doesn't make any sense for him to switch inside with the CF. He is better used running at defenses rather than being a target.
He used to be one of my favorite players. Have watched him for the better part of a decade (maybe more) since he was Chelsea and probably before. He's been doing the same thing for that span, probably no evolution. To me, he's been largely ineffective. Compare to other "lesser talented" wingers like Ryan Giggs he doesn't bring much to the table. Just my feeling on him. Sure that's what has been required of him tactically but he's woefully unimaginative. Kinda like Samir Nasri with Arsenal didn't do much out on the wing. But now that he goes wherever he wants he's much better.
Here is a link to a Grant Wahl article commenting on the number of national teams built around club teams. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...euro2012-diary-poland/index.html?sct=sc_wr_a1 And Jonathan Wilson discussing Spain using 3 attacking mids in what he called a radical 4330 system. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...ilson/06/10/spain.draws.italy.euro/index.html I guess his point is that you can put anybody in a forward position, but if everyone up top wants to support who is going to finish? From the first link you can see what might have been the problem. Spain's no-forward lineup from Barca was facing an Italian side built around six players from Serie A champion Juventus. If Spain was expecting to win by flair, they picked a tough side to experiment against.
Zonal marking was talking about this forward-less formations. It's just another evolution in the game. When you have guys like Fabregas and Silva who are good enough finishers it makes sense to a degree. Why isolate their playmaking ability on the bench when all you're asking of your "forwards" are basically tap in goal. I think I wrote about it a few months back about how a vast majority of Barca's goals in the most recent Champions League came from within twelve yards or closer. From that range do you really need specialized striker skills? I think we've gotten to a point with Spain and Barca that now it's common knowledge how to beat them—just like Chelsea. Although it was interesting that Italy played a 3-5-2 and by all accounts was more effective than Spain.
I made a study on the difference in goal production using 2 true forwards and one true forward and a mid in a 442 years ago. The difference in goal production over a season is a half a goal less when you only play with 1 true forward and a mid. Why, because if the mid could play forward and be dangerous playing forward he would be a forward and not a mid.
Depends on what you consider "striker" skills. I presume you mean things other than just striking the ball, like movement off the ball, first touch etc. And yeah, you do need those things because in some ways the congestion makes it harder to operate. It is something of a moot point, discussing Barcelona tactics unless you factor in the excellence of Messi. Barca are able to score so many goals in close precisely because Messi can get them there, in a way that Ibra, Eto'o and even Villa cannot. As to your point about using Silva and Cesc as "finishers", I think we saw that it is not enough just to have some more good ball control guys on the pitch. They are not targets, and the reason Italy was more effective than Spain is because the Spanish didn't know what they were building play up to. While Torres was abysmal, he did carve up the Italian defense, kind of like the Czechs did to the Greeks. Except the Italians are better than Greece.
So, if you're van Marwijk, coach of the Dutch, you need to do a better job of helping your players succeed. Willems on the left is getting exposed by everyone, at will. He needs help. He's young, got some talent, speed to burn, but he's isolated. Given that Mathijsen is not 100% either, van Bommel and De Joong look very slow, Willems is getting no help from anyone. So, van Marwijk needs to drop Afellay and insert Kuyt who at least will never ever be accused of not coming back to help provide cover. Coaching 101: If you've got a player who's struggling, give him some help.
Look how that matches up with 4330: 3 backs against 0 forwards and therefor cover for the 5 midfielders playing against 6 midfielders. From what I read Spain kept trying to attack centrally, which would be playing into the 352's defensive strength. This will unfortuneately lead to people concluding that the attacking midfielder position should be scrapped. In reality my bet is that the problem is that Spain had no experience playing without a designated forward. It is one thing to play positionless 3v3, and another to do it 11v11--not to mention at the international level against a side famous for their defense.
It is one thing that playing small 3v3 games has trouble teaching, in 11v11 there is a goal and the field is linear. I won't be able to see Spain play Ireland, who are sure to park the bus, so perhaps del Bosque will again go 4-6-0, and maybe it won't hurt since the target is maybe less needed in a half-sided game. But it still seems to me that Spain played better with Torres, whatever his faults...
The Irish might have just been that bad. All credit to Torres for the pair, and Silva, and especially Cesc! When Spain operates that efficiently, good luck. They probably completed 1000 passes. Ireland, on the other hand, looked toothless. Long ball to Keane for the entire first half- pointlessly. Couldn't string three good passes together. Ton's of unforced errors. By the time they figured out how-to work smoothly on the floor, 75 minutes had passed and it was waaayy to late. Spain v. Croatia will be good. I think Croatia may Bunker-n-Break because they have the lineup to make it work. Two strikers Jelavic and Mandzucic will frustrate Pique and Sergio Ramos. Italy actually seemed fine today against the two because their three backs were always numbers up. (Besides Chiellini's error- of course) Italy probably won't advance. They'll need to beat a playing-for-pride Ireland by a four goal margin or need a winner in the other match. Or lightning! They didn't have a goal in the run of play v. Croatia and they lost their three matches (friendlies) before the Euro.I'd love to see a Di Natale/Balotelli combo. Oh and HOWDY y'all!
Welcome to BS, VegasFootie. Glad to see that your first post is here in the coaching forum... Agreed that Ireland are really pretty poor, but Torres nevertheless gave them "strikers" goals. Spain is a great team, and they were always going to win, but his contributions made it a 4-0 shellacking as opposed to a gritty 1-0 game.
I have been very very busy in the last few months. I heard Greece beat Russia does Greece still play man defense?
Tried to find something on-line, but struck out. The BBC article (expert's view of Greece team "tactics and key questions") was nothing more than a brief and incomplete discussion of the personalities and mentioned they played a 433. Guess we have to watch a match to find out.
Tough to tell what the Greeks are trying to do defensively, since for the past two games both starting CBs have been out -- one due to injury and one due to red card. And they had the red card middle of the first half of the first game, so their shape changed a bit. I couldn't tell if they were man marking, it wasn't obvious, so I'm going to assume they were playing zone d. RCA2, you'll like this site, it's the best site around for a discussion of tactics www.ZonalMarking.net Here's their report on the Greece - Czech game: http://www.zonalmarking.net/2012/06...e-vulnerable-down-their-left-again/#more-8894 which was the second group game.
Thanks Val. Nick, I took a look at the first 20 minutes of the Russia/Greece match. The back four were playing a zone. The 433 midfield was playing 2 back 1 up. The two holding midfielders was a little tougher to figure out. It looked like 1 was playing zone and 1 was man marking a specific Russian central attacker. The thing that struck me was that Greece had a lot of space between the lines. Also they stuck with a 4231 shape until the final third when they compressed to 451 more or less. Russia was moving on the flanks in the middle third instead of using the space between the lines in the center of the pitch.
From a purely tactical point of view, this is where I love to put crosses in: Darren Fletcher, who's about to retire medically from Man Utd, hits them from here with regularity. The second coaching point is that as soon as Stevie G got the ball, he made the cross: the moment the defense is weakest is at the moment of turnover.
Yeah, I know... I've come to refer to it as moment of turnover because the girls just don't seem to understand the word "transition". Even the high schoolers that I coached....