Post-match: USA vs Panama friendly 10/12 (R)

right. Balance might be more important than a physical presence. Ala Maradona.

 

So players were changing roles depending on the phase and sometimes what Panama was doing or we were trying to do to Panama

Press: mostly 4231, which means the AM will also release forward. Occasionally , especially in transition, Jedi and Musah would just be matched up and already on Panama’s players who were occupying WB spaces.

Mid Block: almost always 4231. I don’t think it counts as a 433 variation but Busio and sometimes Morris would have to step. Busio more vertically and Morris usually to cover the space behind Pulisic and ahead of Jedi. If we were in a 3/5 ATB in this or the pressing phase you would see Jedi releasing onto players wide in midfield much more often.

Low Block: 4231 you see Musah stacked vertically ahead of Scally unless stepping to close down or rotating to cover. Jedi and Scally are just in the normal FB spaces.

Buildup: on goal kicks sometimes McKenzie would start in the pivot. Before it was taken he would rotate back and Scally and Ream would split. Mostly 32 base with wingbacks in the 3421. WB on the ball side would show to their same-side marking back when they were on the ball and being closed down. Occasionally we would build with a 4 man backline with Jedi and Scally playing as FBs.

Progression: 3421, which again involves WBs tending to play higher than the pivots. Also that same tendency I discussed up thread of Yunus starting a little higher (by design, by tendency, influenced by defensive positioning starting point, ???).

Attack: a bit more asymmetric.

If the ball was on the left it looked like a 3421 would look in this phase using the approach our team was using. The LCB holding wide-ish, the DM ahead and tending to start more centrally. The LWB pushed up or pushing up to overlap. Jedi does tend to give himself a couple yards to get up to speed but he would also find himself on the backline as a field stretcher. The two AMs are free to find the game. The weakside DM, CCB, and RCB are usually holding. The RWB would be high either on the frontline or on the AM line.

If the ball was on the right side,then Scally would be higher than Ream would be when it was on the left, and much more likely to overlap. I don’t think that we saw a ton of weakside adjustments from the 3421 base behavior to compensate for this but I didn’t do a rewatch specifically for this. I remember a time when Jedi narrowed off on the AM line from the weakside but that kind of thing is just more likely to happen today.

Aside from a couple yards of asymmetry this is how I would expect a 3421 to play when trying to attack. On the field a 3421 trying to attack, when pushed up in the attacking phase or at times when trying to progress, has the wingbacks play higher, relative to the DM line, than they play in buildup. So in the attacking phase 3241 more accurately describes where players tend to be in a 3421, if that team is trying to attack, than 3421.

If the team playing a 3421 is using a conservative strategy then the WBs would start from further back in the attacking phase and 3421 would more accurately describe where the players are. There are also different CM systems that affect WB positioning. If the two CMs are playing as actual 8s then that would tend to cause the WBs to have to consider the CMs positioning in deciding how far forward to go. That need to consider balance would tend to lead to average WB positioning starting a couple yards deeper in the attacking and progression phases.

 

5'8" isn't tiny. Zico is 5'8", Alan Ball, best known as an inspirational player for the Vancouver Whitecaps (also won a World Cup), was 5'6". Maradonna was 5'5".

 

Plenty of excellent smaller players, far too many to list. It does help if they have some strength and good balance is a must but worrying if a player isn't tall enough is seldom relevant unless you're talking about goalies, center backs or a target forward. As long as the player is well-balanced and strong enough to hold off some challenges, it's fine. Some average height and taller players have poor balance and strength. Players have gotten taller as humans have gotten taller over the years, but still plenty of average height and below top players. Just saw a list showing the average Premier League player is roughly a bit over 1.8 meters. That's not much different than the typical height of healthy men in developed nations that supply most players. It's actually just about right on for the average size of a man in the US. So, you know, even the best soccer players are average sized humans with examples going smaller seen in just about any game you can find to watch. No idea why the obsession with needing a team of big guys persists.

 

Here's a list of average Premier League heights:

 

Modric was sort of weightless. He would float around and it kept him from being injured as he was never rooted to the ground. Amazing player.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/human-height

 

So Americans have grown 0.276" in 50 years.

 

Poch is yet one more Bielsa disciple - like Nagelsman, now also running a national team, Germany.

Bielsa at Leeds played a 3313. The wide players play very wide to pull the opponent wide which opens the middle. When Adams was at Leipzig, Nagelsman put Adams on the wide mid spot and most on BS said Nagelsman was doing the RB thing that Berhalter did when he copied Pep. Nuh uh. Nagelsman calls his wb's (the outside mids in Bielsa's scheme) his "jokers". Musah's goal shows why. If Poch plays 4 man back line and moves his RB Scally into r-dmid position with the r-dmid moving into the 4 man midfield line, that would be Pep style.

Another Nags type thing Poch tried was playing the 2 dmids closer next to each other (like Gundogan and Gross v. USA) and playing thru the middle to draw in the opponent before getting the ball to an ace like Musiala, Wirtz or Sane. (Gio, Puli, Weah, respectively).

The interesting thing is that Germany has a 9 problem similar to us. They don't have a dedicated fully certified 9. Fullkrug could be compared to Wright: Both can finish but can they play? Havertz can play but are his back to goal skills adequate (cf: Balo)? Germany also has that GK + CB problem we have. Who will replace legendary Neuer in goal? They were hanging on to leftie Hummels much as we are hanging on to Ream in the back line.

 

American men born in 1980 are, on average, 5.6 cm taller than American men born in 1930. That’s 2.2 inches.

 

I've grown way more than 0.276" in the last 50 years, I knew I was above average

 

The average man isn't 6' tall. Not yet.

Soccer has never especially been a tall person's sport, and it still isn't, but it is very slowly trending towards slightly taller than average, even as there are still plenty examples of shorter players. The "tall positions" of GK, CF, and CB probably make up a significant portion of that, but probably not all.

EDIT: The internet just told me that the average height of a man in the UK in 2024 (of ages 16 to 24, which is the tallest age group in the graph) is 178.8cm, which puts him just about level with the 16th tallest team in the Premier League. So the average Premier Leaguer is indeed a bit taller than the average young man.

But it's a damn sight less obviously so than, say the average professional tennis player. Or baseball player. To say nothing of basketball, obviously...

 

I guess I don't think a difference of a couple centimeters from average is significant, especially if you are looking at the subset of athletically gifted, healthy young men.. Still sounds like a typically sized person to me and not a big advantage to being meaningfully taller such that it needs to be a primary concern when looking for soccer players. I mean, take away center backs and goalies and you're even closer to average if not right there.

 

There are guys whose skill doesn't offset their lack of size enough at the highest levels, for sure. Even very skilled guys. But they tend to be very short and small -- Lucho Acosta, for example, is 5'3".

Some of his lack of success in Europe is simply that he's at a position where you need to be amazing, but some is simply that at his size, it's hard to defend and you can get pushed around. Giovinco was similarly sized.

I think that's the size where it becomes an issue. Not the lack of height, really, but rather the lack of bulk and strength. You just need to be insanely good otherwise to offset all the physicality you lack.

 

And American men born in 2024 are 0.276" taller than men born in 1970. What's your point?

 

Umm we’re comparing baby heights now???

The past point was that when Zico, Maradona, and Ball were playing people were shorter on avg and they were closer to the average.

 

Maradona and Zico were born in the 1960s not the 1930s. Average height hasn't changed much since then.

 

LOL Zico. Did you just date yourself? Maradona was 5'5" in sandals.

 

The closest comparison was Brazil but men born in 1960 were 2.7 CM shorter than men born in 1980. I would suspect that men born in Argentina in 2000 are 3.5 CM taller than men born in Argentina in 1960 due to the slower pace of growth as the low hanging fruit that led to gains got picked along with various periods of economic turmoil.

 

He is one of the greatest AMs of all time. Puskas was 5'8", Bernardo Silva is 5"8', Julian Alvarez is 5'7", Phil Foden is 5'7", height isn't an overriding factor for AMs.

 

Was Modric on his tiptoes?

 

Only Peter Crouch and Paul Miller disagree. I think it is an advantage to be tall for GKs, but a disadvantage for field players. After all, the ball is on the ground. We are not short (pun intended) of examples.

 

Uh you can still use your head even though the ball is on the ground

 

Andy Gray (Scottish striker) knocked Notts County out of the FA Cup in a quarter-final at Meadow Lane with a header similar to that.