Football Tactics

Discussion in 'The Netherlands' started by Orange14, Nov 11, 2011.

  1. Antario2

    Antario2 Member

    Jan 29, 2012
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    The Dutch disease or the 'mystery case of the empty center':

    [​IMG]
    This Roda performance highlights the obsession of many Eredivisie coaches with possession above all else. It has lead to passing around the ball in unimportant parts of the pitch, and worse of all leads to a lack of activity in the center part of the field. This diagram is the defining element of Dutch football now...

    AZ:
    [​IMG]
    Feyenoord:
    [​IMG]
    PEC:
    [​IMG]

    Now compare this with Liverpool:
    [​IMG]
    or Roma:
    [​IMG]
    This suggests the problem may not just be players, but a systematic problem in Dutch coaching. Why the obsession with possession in the first place?

    My interpretation is that it is a fairly new development as even the great teams of the 70s and 90s rarely had more than 60% possession. Imo the Dutch school never came to grips with the changes to offside in 2006 which neutered the offside trap as the main defensive weapon. Defending was never our area of expertise and playing high up the pitch became a lot more difficult in the wake of the rules change.

    However one man seemed to have an answer: Guardiola's Barcelona used possession as a replacement for the offside trap to be able to play high up the field again without being exposed to counters all the time. Unfortunately this system cannot be copied with average players and the result is backfield ball circulation without any real penetration.

    Maybe it's time to do the unthinkable and really start to learn how to defend.
     
  2. Laurent75

    Laurent75 Member

    Aug 2, 2014
    Actually at this moment I would be tempted to say we have better defenders than strikers, wouldn't you ? I mean as CB's now we can put :

    -------------Bruma (Van Dijk)--------------------------De Vrij(Vlaar)------------------------------Blind(Kongolo)

    This looks pretty decent/ good. I mean Vlaar and Van Dijk would be starters in so many goodnational teams . The french or german defenders aren't that much better than our options.

    The problem is clearly the midfield/attack where we don't even have half the quality of the other big national teams.
     
  3. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    But the diagrams are misleading. Look at Liverpool v Burnley. Could on ask for any better ball distribution than that? Players getting the ball into the attacking third and what was the net result of the match? 2-0 Loss.

    Do we need to defend better? The answer to that is complicated as well. Teams that rely on huge amounts of possession time tend to make more errors in the defensive half as the back four are not challenged more than a few times a game. This results in easy goals on mental mistakes. I've seen this happen a lot at Barca over the years but they compensate by having great offensive players that can score their way out of trouble. Contrast this to Ajax Dutch League games where the team has trouble scoring goals and concedes too cheaply (and it's magnified so far this season in both the CL and league games).

    In order to better react under pressure, teams need to be pressured. I'm afraid that these total possession games don't allow for this and as a result mental errors lose matches whether it is a keeper or outfield player error.
     
  4. Antario2

    Antario2 Member

    Jan 29, 2012
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    I don't mean that there are no decent Dutch defenders, what I am saying is that in the Eredivisie too many coaches are too focused on possession. If teams were able to defend better, they could take risks in attack again.

    Now many teams just endlessly circulate the ball in the backfield and along the wings, as their coaches are too afraid to allow their team to try penetrating forward passes in center midfield, because they can't cope with counters from that area. It is further complicated by man marking instead of zonal marking, which makes it hard to deal with opponents that have good off the ball movement.
     
  5. Antario2

    Antario2 Member

    Jan 29, 2012
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Chance has a huge impact on single match results due to the low scoring nature of soccer and high quality chances do not guarantee conversion. However over a league season teams that generate a lot of high quality scoring opportunities, while conceding fewer tend to perform better than those that generate fewer.

    It's the reason why Leicester type league wins are so rare. Usually the luck in terms of converting fewer opportunities in goals for this type of team doesn't hold out.
     
  6. Wir werden erpresst:p
     
  7. This was part of the blasted view of the new Feyenoord Academy head by some in this forum. The article I posted and the posts after that show that we really need to calibrate our way of play again and one thing for sure is that my posted article should be mandatory reading.
     
  8. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    Please post a link to the post, maybe I missed it first time through.
     
  9. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    I agree in part here but Leicester was not a one off IMO. They had some excellent players who were below the radar screen and Ranieri molded them into a coherent team. I watched their last seven matches in the run to the championship and they played probably the most coherent football of any team I've seen in recent years. Nobody was ever out of position and they knew how to create chances. By the end of the season when the championship was still in doubt they were not the surprise of the league any longer.

    Team sports are challenging. Everyone thought the US Olympic basketball team would wipe the floor in all their matches. They didn't and it was only in yesterday's final that they came alive and played in the manner that we all thought they would.
     
  10. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    How about Bayern or PSG? They often have loads of possession too. Also Enrique's Barcelona still has a lot of it, although it is more direct as Guardiola his team. It's more like Rijkaard his side now actually.
     
  11. Antario2

    Antario2 Member

    Jan 29, 2012
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    The same reason why Barcelona can make it work. They have technical players who are better than those of nearly all of their opposition, so they can retain possession close to the opponents goal while not allowing their team open to counter attacks all the time or lose too much energy chasing the ball. In addition these players can make the incisive passes necessary to set up an attacker, as to create more goal scoring opportunities than the opponent.
     
  12. I think I confused you. I was referring to the posts up here from nr 46 on in relation to the debate about two months ago on the views of the new Feyenoord Academy head.
     
  13. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    Thanks!
     
  14. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    But look where their possession occurs; it's in the attacking half of the pitch. all you have to do is count the number of back passes to the keeper for those teams (which you can do on one hand). I don't watch PSG much but the other two teams have extremely good technical players who read the game and don't fold onto the ball for more than a second or so. Contrast this to Ajax (who I know best) where players dwell on the ball so long you can get a cup of coffee and the keeper always has lots of touches as most of the possession is in their end of the field.

    The first game Sanchez played both Bazoer and Gudelj were surprised to receive passes from him as in the past everything went up the sidelines as it was deemed safer that way in case of a turnover.
     
  15. Antario2

    Antario2 Member

    Jan 29, 2012
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    The thing is that all of the top teams in England, except LVG's United, had created more chances but Leicester had the highest shot conversion rate. In addition in defense while they conceded an average number of shots, the conversion rate of opponents was extremely low. While no doubt Ranieri did some amazing things in terms of tactics and team formation, these figures suggest a significant amount of fortune was also involved, as Leicester performed particularly well in the statistics governed most by chance.
     
  16. Rinus127

    Rinus127 Member

    Sep 8, 2015
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Meestvoorkomende passingcombinaties bij PSV dit seizoen:
    1. Isimat -> Moreno
    2. Moreno -> Isimat
    3. Moreno -> Willems

    Meestvoorkomende passingcombinaties bij Feyenoord dit seizoen:
    1. Botteghin -> Karsdorp
    2. Kongolo -> Botteghin
    3. Botteghin -> Kongolo

    Dutch soccer lacks depth. Players almost never take risks , they are too formatted . Football is first an instinct game , where the player must be bold . I watched the other time the Arsenal -Southampton match , and I did not understand why Jordy Clasie was so loved in this forum. He made no pass that broke the lines of the opposing team during his playing time. Conversely , I have seen a player who plays in France , Koziello is his name. He is as small as Clasie and younger. Well it was a treat to see him play . His game is a perpetual risk taking.
     
  17. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    ^^Watch Jong Ajax play and how adventurous Nouri is with his passing. This is the way it should be done:


    Peter Bosz was at the match and he clearly saw some players who are better than those he has in the first team!!
     
    Rinus127 and JC-14 repped this.
  18. JC-14

    JC-14 Member+

    Jan 28, 2010
    Amsterdam
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    That's the kind of football I like to see. But apparently these kids can do it against grown physical opponents but the first team players 'aren't strong enough' to do it. Or something like that.
     
  19. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    Quite right and I wonder what Bosz thinks of all this.
     
  20. JC-14

    JC-14 Member+

    Jan 28, 2010
    Amsterdam
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    Do you mean the rule that you're not offside if the ball isn't passed to you? Because I've yet to see a team actively exploiting this.
     
  21. Antario2

    Antario2 Member

    Jan 29, 2012
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    It is much harder to exploit these days as defenses sit much deeper to compensate. Van Nistelrooij for example was a master in drifting in onside from off side positions, which was impossible before 2005.

    Dutch teams before 2005 moved up and made the field compact, which increased the effectiveness of pressing. And they could do so with limited risk, as the opponents forwards needed to either move from their own half or stay behind a defender, when a pass was played behind the Dutch defense. If an opponents forward dribbled past his marker any of his team mates in an offside position prevented him from making any passes. It really limited the attacking options of the opponent.

    These days a forward doesn't have to worry about offside until they take part in play. That hugely complicates the game for defenses that play a high line. Guardiola's Barcelona was explicitly created to deal with this problem as their possession replaced the offside trap as the main defensive tool. Before 2006 that team couldn't have functioned and for a large part it explains the change in fortune of Spanish football. Unfortunately every Dutch coach saw this and tried to do the same with much lesser players creating the dreaded U-shape passing.
     
  22. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    Why was that Guardiola style less effective before 2006?

    How does e.g. Bayern keep the lines compact without the offside trap? Often playing very advanced too.
     
  23. Orange14

    Orange14 Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 27, 2007
    Bethesda, MD
    Club:
    AFC Ajax
    Nat'l Team:
    Netherlands
    Rijkaard started the "Guardiola Style" when Pep was still the youth trainer. It worked because of the players he had at the time. I posted last week a link to an interview with Ruud Gullit and he discusses this in detail.
     
  24. I think it was more the product of the Ten Cate/Rijkaard tandem and especially in that order.
     

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