Analysing corners is part of my daily routine and through the years I’ve been quite fortunate to be able to dedicate my time to it as much. Analysing set pieces can be quite daunting: Where do you start? Where do you gain knowledge? There are great resources out there, but if you want to train your eyes, you need to see what’s happening in those set pieces.
In this article, I will give four different tips and pointers when you start looking at corners and which areas of the analysis are important to understand the basics.
Corner kick
First, we look at what’s happening from the actual kick. What player is taking it? We focus on a few things:
- Foot: left of right
- Side
- Short or long
- Inswinging or outswinging
In the image above you can see a corner from Milan in their game against Genoa. The corner is taken from the left of the goal with a player who kicks the ball with his right foot. As the idea is to deliver the ball from that angle, the ball will be inswinging — towards the goal.
Why this basic step is important, has all to do with how the ball will be delivered and how teams will anticipate that. An inswinging ball will affect how a team defends or attacks.
Defensive team
Secondly, we look at what’s happening from the POV of the defensive team. We look at a few things:
- Is it a hybrid, man-marking or zonal defence?
- Coverage of the post(s)
- Zones
Two seconds later we see that the ball will be kicked and the teams are in position. The defensive team Genoa has a hybrid set-up. They have a man-marking in the front post area marking a Milan player. Furthermore, they have 5 players zonally defending the box: 2 in the front post zone, two in the goalkeeper zone and 1 in the far post zone.
They have three players deeper in the central area, as they are tasked with blocking runs of the Milan players. One player stands deep in the front post zone as he is tasked with the incoming player on the left.
This allows us to focus on what kind of defence they employ, and where they are situated. You can explore their strengths and weaknesses, which is vital for the analysis part that comes after observation.
Attacking team
In the attacking team, we look for how they position before the movement and what their aim is with the attacking corner:
- Players’ positioning
- Indication of movement
As you can see, Milan have 1 player on the front post occupying at least 1 defender. They have five players outside the six-yard box who will make a run to connect with the ball. They are against four defending players so we see a 5v4 in this area of the pitch with runners vs blockers.
Two players outside the penalty area are there for the second phase of the corner when the first contact is cleared, but they also pose the first line of rest defence in case possession of the ball is lost.
Movement
In the movement, which is the most important part — we see that of the five players, four move forward into the front post and the goalkeeper zones close to the six-yard box. This means that this area is crowded and there are players that will be relying on their individual aerial qualities to connect with the ball. The player that remains in his position (#17) has a little bit more space in case the ball goes far and he is a bit more free of his marker.
Eventually, Milan tries to make space for Gabia, who isn’t marked directly due to blocks and he can connect cleanly with the ball.
Final thoughts
If you want to look into watching corners and start analysing them, my advice would be to watch as many as possible. Watch hundreds of them and look at the things I have written above. If you look at the movements, the kicks, the defensive and attacking set-ups — you will at some point really get a grip of what it is that makes corner routines successful or unsuccessful.
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