maart 2021

Ryan Gauld – Through pass analysis

Posted on 03/30/2021 by admin

Ryan Gauld is somewhat of a hype at the moment, and I’ve seen a few pieces on his performances – that’s why I haven’t written about him before. Although it’s not an excuse, I truly think that too many of the same pieces are not innovative and that’s why I didn’t want to write something trivial on this particular player.

In this article I will have a brief look at his passing in the last five games he played, especially his key passing. After that, I will look more closely to his through passes that he attempted in 2021 via a short video analysis of those passes.

The data is provided by Wyscout and the videos are also downloaded from Wyscout.

Pass clusters
In these pass clusters I will look what the most common clusters (4) were in the last four 90 minutes Ryan Gauld played. These game were against Benfica, Famalicao, Belenenses and Boavista.

Passcluster #1

Passcluster #2

Passcluster #3

Passcluster #4

Key passing statistics in 2020-2021
In the graphs below you can see a few comparisons (scatterplots) in the key passing metrics. In these graphs the 57 best midfielders – according to Wyscout – are included, illustrating how well Ryan Gauld is doing among his peers.

In the graph above you can see the scatterplot for the metrics Passes to final third per 90 and Passes to penalty area per 90. These metrics illustrate how often a pass is played to a specific area of attacking threat where the attackers might create a goalscoring opportunity. In the case of Ryan Gauld, you can see he does quite well in the passes to penalty area per 90 (3,29 passes to penalty area per 90). If we look at the passes to the final third per 90, he doesn’t do as well compared to the other midfielders: 2,86 passes to the final third per 90.

It’s hard to describe what effect a key pass or through pass has without looking at it – which we will do in the video analysis part of this piece – but the attempts to make a pass that contributes to the attack of your team, can be found in the metrics Key passes per 90 and Through passes per 90. We can see that Gauld attempts quite soms key passes per 90 compared to his peers: 0,39 key passes per 90. If we look at the Through passes per 90, he is quite average in passing: 0,78 through passes per 90.

If we look at the data from the key passing metric, surely we are interested to know in what passes lead to a goal or are expected to lead to a goal. We can assess that via the expected assists per 90 and the actual assists per 90, as illustrated in the scatterplot above. Gauld performs very well in this metric among midfielders. He has 0,2 xA per 90 and 0,16 assists per 90 – which compared to midfielders in the Primeira Liga is quite good.

In the two grapsh below you can see how well he does compared to the other midfielders in terms or percentile ranks and in in a beeswarm plot.

Video analysis

I had a look at 5 different moments in 2021 where Ryan Gauld attempted a through ball in the Primeira Liga. In the first two videos you can see that he tries to pass the ball through the defence in order to set up the attackers, but he does follow through when the passes are not received. He follows the ball and presses the opponent.

In both occassions the ball doens’t reach the target, which is the attacker who moves forward to receive the through ball. At that particular moment the ball is lost, but the way Gauld presses – makes sure that the ball is recaptured or the opponent is forced to make a difficult decision, which means more chance to regain possession of the ball.

In the videos above we have seen him turn and give a through ball through the middle. Another option for Gauld is to receive the ball on the flank, wait for the movements of forwards and bring the ball into the assists zone, as can be seen in the video below.

Ryan Gauld is good in giving these kind of through passes from the final third into attacking positions, but he does well in transition from defence to attack as well. He can progress the ball from the defensive third to attacking third quite easily with a through ball that has length.

Final thoughts
Ryan Gauld has gotten invaluable experience in Portugal and is having quite the season. His attacking contribution via key passing has definitely sparked interest from scouts and recruitment analysts in Portugal and Scotland, but also in the rest of Europe. Performing in this kind of league with these decisive passes is a hard thing to do. I appreciate this is only a small element of his game, but there’s no doubt interesting stuff to be said about the player.

Data: Wyscout
Video: Wyscout
Telestration in video: Metrica Play

INSIDE DUTCH ACADEMY SCOUTING

Posted on 03/26/2021 by admin

Being a scout or scouting in general is not as easy as it looks like. This is not to blow my own horn, but this is the truth. Not everyone is cut out to be a scout. Whether it is something for you to do or not, I can’t decide that for you – but I can tell you what it is to be a scout within an academy with a professional football club in the Netherlands.

On Twitter, I have been posting a lot about data scouting and recruitment with the occasional video analysis, but actual real-life scouting is something different. Especially when looking into kids/youngsters. In this piece, I will illustrate what aspects of scouting I have experience with and what some of the difficulties are.

What’s important to know that my experience of academy scouting consists of working within an organisation that needs to reduce costs and therefore will look for creativity in the region rather than the volume of scouts in the whole country.

The Role
It sounds kind of fancy: academy scout, and I would love to give a clear definition of what the role entails, but this might be different for every country or every club. The structure is like follows: there are five regions and each region has 3 or 4 scout with a coordinating scout or ‘headscout’ of that particular region.

Each region consists of 10 or more grassroots/non-league clubs. Each scout is responsible for 3 or 4 clubs which he or she monitors for the different age brackets. In the club that I scout for, we look at the U8’s until the U12’s. This is because at our club, the teams only start from the U12 and up.

The scout is tasked to look at different clubs and their teams and scout the children that might be good enough for the academy we are scouting for OR are considered good enough to train with a higher resistance.

Academy set up
There is a difference between scouting and recruitment. Obviously you can do a lot of scouting and recommend many players, but in the end a selection has to be made of players that can actually join the academy. This can happen through three possible options:

Training programme. The younger players will train in a training program with the possibility of joining the U12 or U13.
A player is scouted through the resistance programs of the Dutch football association. I will explain that later in this piece.
Player is scouted from the age 14 and up – exceptionally good and can join instantly
Players that have been let go from bigger academies and are picked up

Sometimes, there have to be more players get into the academy. This has to do with the flow of academy players to the first team. This means that in every team, players will flow to a team from a higher age bracket. From U16 to U18, U18 to U21 etcetera.

The clubs
So as I’ve said there are a number of clubs in involved in the region. These are all amateurclubs, but it’s hard to get a player to sign for you as there different professional clubs scouting in the same areas. A mid-table club will definitely have less appeal to a player or their parents than for example a club that regularly played for the title or Europe. That means you have to be creative and quick.

The region consists of 10 clusters of which 5 are based in Germany. Clubs opt a lot for local identity and significance rather than scout all over the country and beyond. Obviously, this has also got to do with the finances of clubs and the idea of identification of fans with the club. Taken this all into consideration, it’s both culturally and financially the best decision to scout in the direct region. This also means that the club’s identity and core principles reflect that of the region they live in.

The approach
I will not go into specifics of how to scout an actual player, perhaps in other articles, but I will talk briefly about the approach of scouting over here.

You maintain a relationship with the head of academies or academy directors of the amateur clubs. If you want to visit the club in questions, you will communicate your presence and ask what are interesting teams to look at. Often they have an idea what good players might be for your club, but be weary of their judgement. Sometimes they like to put forward their own son or daughter for scouting.

A full kit is provided, but not every club appreciates the fact that you walk in full kit. It will give some anxiety to the kids OR kids will be playing differently, because they now a certain scout is watching them. that’s why I always check first with the amateur club if they want to see this or not.

When you scouted a player, you can’t approach them directly. That seems obvious in these times of COVID-19, but this has also to do with privacy rules. If you want the names of certain players you have to ask their coach and after confirmation/go ahead of the parents, you will receive the names and you can pass them forward to the head of scouting of your club.

Before you will pass them on, you will grade them into three categories:

Good enough for the academy
Good player, but needs to be assessed under higher resistance
Not good enough (yet), take a look at a later moment

Only the players with first grade will go into the academy program.

The Association
When players are good, but you have doubts about their immediate ability to play for a pro club, you have the option to let them go the training programs with the Dutch association. The reason you do this, is to see a certain number of talented players playing with and against each other. Then you can properly assess their abilities and whether they can be scouted for a pro club/academy.

These players are selected and will train with each other, and occasionally play against each other and against pro academies. Scouts are invited to these games and can make up their mind whether a player is fit for their academy or not.

Girls vs Boys
This is a difficult one for me personally. While we scout for a club that only has men’s football, the opportunity for girls shouldn’t be disgarded. We obvioulsy can’t scout them for an organisation like ours or similar, but we can give the scouting reports to the football association. They have more training programs for girls and therefore can organise events where girl’s/women’s football scout can come in.

Although I can say that I have the ability to scout, sometimes you have to focus on different things with girls. Girls and boys are not similar in a lot of things, such is women’s football not comparable to men’s football. We shouldn’t compare them, but it is important to learn about the differences and talk to people in the women’s game to become better scouts. Something to be mindful about.

Racial profiling
You have to train yourself to be or become a scout. You have to be aware that you are prejudiced and therefore some decision need to be evaluated. One thing that I have encountered a lot, is racial profiling. I’m not talking about racism – although that is present everywhere. I’m talking about the fact that we are led to believe that white players are more technically gifted and black players have more pace and are better physically (this is just one example, there are many more).

I’ve training myself to not be affected by this by asking several opinions on the player and looking to players from other ethnical backgrounds with the same profile.

Responsibilities
You have a few responsibilities. It’s important to remember that you not only are there to scout a player or to chat with fellow-minded people. You are part of a professional club and you are also a representative of the club. Networking is important, but never forget who you are working for and representing.

The parents
Managing parents is difficult at times. In this time of COVID-19 and privacy regulations, it has become slightly easier. You have to be kind and respectful to the parents, but also firm and resolute. You have to make clear that if their son or daughter is good enough, they will find their way – and there is nothing you can do something about as parent. Supporting their kid, that’s what it is all about – and sometimes they need to be reminded of that fact.

Expectations
It is evident that there are expectations when you are scouting. You have to deliver the names of players so that the recruitment process can start. But don’t put too much pressure on yourself. There are a few players who have been scouted and have gone on to become elite players – Frenkie de Jong-esque. You might never scout a player that is going to make professional football or more – and that’s rather okay. The main thing is that you make the academy more complete and better.

Case study men’s football Italy: Defending with a 3-1-4-2 in the Italian Primavera

Posted on 03/22/2021 by admin

I love to make these analyses of case studies and in this piece I will look at the Italian Primavera or the U19 games of men’s football in Italy. I’ve studied 17 clubs across different levels in the Primavera.

Why Primavera?
Why the Primavera? This has everything to do with academy football. They are the highest youth teams in Italy and they demonstrate a playing philosophy that has been nearly perfected and that should be reflected by the first team. The difference is that a first team MUST get results, while an academy team is a lot about development and growth of a player. That’s the main reason why I wanted to look into the primavera.

So I specifically concentrated on teams playing a 3-1-4-2. This could be read as 3-5-2, but the reason why I made this distinction is because of the role of the single pivot or defensive midfielder.

In possession

With the ball the teams playing a 3-1-4-2 had a very clear structure. They had three central defenders, two wing backs and a very distinct playing defensive midfielder. Two advances midfielders or two number ’10’s – and of course the two strikers. In the image below you can see how they typically were set up

As you can see in the image above, they are lined up against a 4-4-2 (which is not exactly typical in Italian football, but used a lot for training purposes). The back three us playing close to each other and what was important for the teams playing with the back three, was that the left central defender and the right central defender, were confident on the ball and they were tasked with playing passes through the middle to the advanced midfielders.

In possession, the two wing-backs played high up the pitch, in the middle third. They contribute to the attack via receiving passes, making runs down the line and providing crosses into the box from the flank. The strikers would attack these and try to score from these crosses.

The defensive midfielder would play a little bit more conservative. He would distribute passes forward and pick out key passes or through passes, but remained on his position. This was needed as he was tasked with organising rest-defence and being the first player to break the attack. A solid rest-defence of four players was often a required principle of the teams researched.

Out of possession

When the opponents have the ball and advance from the middle third to the defensive third, the 3-1-4-2 has transformed into a 6-2-2 formation, which give a very compact defensive line.

As you can see in the image above, the opponent has advances and change to a 4-2-4 formation, which mean that the team researched needed to create majority in defence to win the direct duels. They have been doing that by dropping deep with their back three, as you can see.

The defensive midfielder drops deep and plays very close to the back three in order to create a 4v2 in the middle. The wing backs also have dropped deep and play on the same line as the defensive midfielder – effectively making it a 6-man defence which gives them a superiority of six against the four attackers of the opponent.

The two advances midfielders also drop and support the defence, but at the same time look at the defensive midfielders of the opponent in case they want to progress on the field. The two strikers become detached from each other with one striker staying high and the other dropping a bit more in his shadow.

Transition from attack to defence

Of course you have a transition phase from attack to defence and defence to attack, but I thought the transition from attack to defence was particularly interesting. The 3-1-4-2 advanced on the pitch with the three central defenders positioned in the middle third.

As soon as they lost the ball you had four players moving a direction to try to regain possession of the ball.

As you can in the image below, a few things have changed from the 3-1-4-2 when the ball is lost in the attacking third. The wing backs have to trail back in order to assist the defence and make sure the four-man attack of the opponent can’t progress too much.

The defensive ‘diamond’ – consisting of the three central defenders and the defensive midfielder – changes into a four-man defence. The central duo is formed by the middle central defender and the defensive midfielder.

The left central defender and right central defender leave their position and go press the wide-midfielders of the opponent in order to regain possession of the ball or draw them into making mistakes. This looks like a 4-4-2 just when they lost the ball, but eventually changes into the 6-2-2 as we have seen above.

Final thoughts

It was great to see that a lot of Primavera teams played with three at the back with a defensive midfielder, but what was surprising to me was the fact that played with six at the back in the defensive phase of play when the opponent attacked with three or more attackers. This might not be exactly the case in the first team, but to me it was a sign that the defensive art of play still is living in Italy.

Mees Hoedemakers – 1st Scout report

Posted on 03/13/2021 by admin

Perhaps you know a lot about the Keuken Kampioen Divisioe or Dutch Eerste Divisie (2nd tier). Perhaps you don’t. What’s evident is that a few teams are dominating the league and will be up for possible promotion to the Eredivisie. Traditionally, this league has set up great Eredivisie-talent and groomed players for a higher level.

In this scouting report I will look at SC Cambuur’s Mees Hoedemaker, who plays the majority of his games as a defensive midfielder in a team that tops the league at the moment.

Background

Nationality: Dutch
Age: 23
Date of birth: 18/02/1998
Current club: SC Cambuur
Career: AZ Alkmaar (Y), AZ Alkmaar, SC Cambuur (L), AZ Alkmaar, SC Cambuur
Position: Defensive midfielder
Secondary position: Central midfielder
Preferred foot: Right and left
Contract until: 30/06/2022

General

SC Cambuur often plays in two different formations. Either the 4-3-3 formation with a deep-lying midfielder/defensive midfielder or a 4-1-4-1 formation. In those formations with a single defensive midfielder, Hoedemakers played there.

His task in possession was to hold the line high and give first coverage to the attacking midfielders in terms of transitioning to another phase of play, and to distribute passes to the more attacking players.

Hoedemakers plays as the defensive midfielder in three-man defence and played between the defence and the midfield.

His task out of possession was to drop down in order to assists the four-man defence and play just in front of it. The compact 4-1 defensive bloc would then effectively become a 5-man defence. In the defensive phase of the game, he would join the four-man defence – which effectively made it a 5-3-2 formation. He’s intelligent and stands 1.82 metres tall, able to defend in the air well. As soon as the opponent’s got the ball, he either pressed the ball or he man-marked his direct opponent.

He’s enthusiastic, but this also means that he makes fouls in trying to recover the ball. His positioning is good, but his awareness can be better. He often opted to give a long pass, when others were available close to him. He’s confident in his technical abilities and shows this when they attack.

Defensive stats

In this data analysis I will look at the complete set of midfielders in the league. Why? Because the positions are not set in stone in this league and as a result, the players are fluid in their positions. Defensive midfielders will also play as central midfielders, central midfielders as attacking midfielders – you get the jist. I’ve selected a total of 83 midfielders across the league and I’ve barred one player, as he regularly plays for FC Utrecht in the Eredivisie, but has had a few minutes with the U23 team as he was recovering from an injury.

First, we will look at some defensive stats of Mees Hoedemakers. In the image below you can see the position adjusted stats for Interceptions per 90 and Sliding tackles per 90. In other words, how much does a certain player defensively engage an opponent in 90 minutes.

You can see that Hoedemakers has slightly aboe average when you look at the interceptions per 90, which means he does well in engaging in intercepting passes. In sliding tackles he doesn’t perform above average and you can read that in two different ways: he doesn’t like to tackle OR he doesn’t get himself in situation where he has to make a last minute attempt to recover the ball.

In his possession winning defensive duels is vital. He needs to cover for his attacking midfielders, but at the same time form the first line of defence before the back-four has to become involved. In the image above you can see that he ranks very high in the percentage of duels won:, and the amount of defensive duels he has per 90 minutes played.

Passing stats

The next data I will look at, is the passing data. How well does Hoedemakers do in this data compared to other defensive midfielders in the league. The reason why I opted for a comparison with defensive midfielders and not all midfielders, is that the defensive midfielders will not always choose to play a ball forwards more than an attacking midfielders would.

In the image below you can see the percentile ranks of Mees Hoedemakers compared to the 30 best defensive midfielders next to him.

He scores very high in the key passing metrics, as you can see above. Progressive passes is something he could work on – but everything apart from that is way above average and it’s no wonder that he is considered a player that needs to play in the Eredivisie or higher next season.

Defensive positioning

What I think is really good about his play is his defensive positioning. What I mean by this is how he reacts and moves when the ball is lost by SC Cambuur, and the transition phase from attack to defence sets in. To look into this further I’ve looked at a few situations in the game against Top Oss from February 16th.

In this situation he joins the attacking midfielders in passing forwards, but in the transition he has to trail back to assist his defence, which he does by positioning himself decent against his direct opponent and making sure there are no space unoccupied in the middle third of the pitch.

In the second half there was a similar situation: the ball was lost high in the middle third and Hoedemakers was up there as well. In order to neutralise the danger by Top Oss he had to do two things: trail back to the defensive third, just in front of the defence, and make sure that the attacking players of Top Oss wouldn’t be able to progress through the middle.

Conclusion
It’s worth to look at Mees Hoedemakers as a defensive midfielder with a good key passing quality. SC Cambuur are comfortably the best team in the league, but Hoedemakers impressed last season already and has continued his form. His mental strength has improved in the last season as he isn’t as ill-tempered as before and can deal with disappointments better. He is definitely fit for the Eredivisie or perhaps for a league in another country.

I will scout him further in a series of games to assess his full capability, but he has impressed me a lot.

Data and video from Wyscout
Telestration made with Keyframe Sports

Data scouting: on the hunt for the best wingers in MLS 2020

Posted on 03/07/2021 by admin

So, the reason why I started this blog was to write articles about the beautiful game from a technical side; looking at data, scouting, coaching and tactical analysis. My second objective was to expand my knowledge in data scouting beyond Europe. I’ve realised I haven’t too much with it until know, but this article will look at what the best best wingers are/have been in the 2020 MLS season according to the data.

The data I’m using for this analysis is provided by Wyscout and in their database I’ve been looking for the best winger in each metric – which I will mention below. I’m looking at a data set of 30 wingers as we are looking specifically for the best winger and not the best attacker with winger qualities.

In this article I will look at the following metrics:

Goal threat
Crossing
Dribbling

The idea is to assess how well the data was in the 2020 season and whether we need to look at a few good players in the coming MLS season AND to scout a few players who are ready for a move into another league.

Goals and assists

First I will look at the attacking numbers as wingers are often involved with goalscoring or creating the goalscoring opportunities. In the image above you can see the expected assists vs the actual assists in this 2020 season in the MLS. A few players really stand out in this metric: Rodriguez with 0,34 assists per 90, Espinoza with 0,33 assists per 90 and Mihailovic with 0,38 assists per 90. A special focus should be on Quintero, as he created the highest xA of the bunch with 0,36 xA per 90.

In the image below I had a look at the goals scored by the wingers.

If we look at the expected goals per 90 and the goals per 90, there are two players really standing out. Molino with 0,36 xG and 0,66 goals per 90, and Rossi with 0,59 xG and 0,7 goals per 90. These two really stand out and all are slightly overperforming their xG: converting those chances into goals more than the chances would suggest.

Crossing

An important part of a winger’s arsenal is the ability to cross. It definitely depends on the playing styles opted by the club, but when you have attackers or attacking midfielders who play wide, crosses are important. The ability to whip in a cross from the flanks to the players in and around the box, can great a lot of danger from the attacking side.

In the image above you can see who has the most crosses per 90 and the most successful crosses. In the amount of crosses we can Morgan with 6,38 crosses per 90 with an accuracy of 33,12%, Barrios with 4,77 crosses per 90 and 37,37% accuracy, and Espinoza with 4,7 crosses per 90 and 24,56% accuracy – in the top-3. Medina and Ring have the highest accuracy, but they have fewer than 1,5 crosses per game – which makes the accuracy less impressive.

Dribbles

Another important metric to look at is dribbling. The ability to dribble and have a go at your direct opponent, is important for a winger as well. How well does he perform in the 1v1s? These can be partly read in the dribbles data as portrayed above. We can see Mihailovic and Morris with the highest accuracy, but that’s not the most relevant thing about this image. I want to look at the player that make the most dribbles per 90 and have a high accuracy while doing that.

Diaz has 6,28 dribbles per 90 with 60% accuracy, Morgan has 6,67 dribbles per 90 with 59,63 accuracy, Russel has 7,38 dribbles per 90 with 57,23% accuracy, and Pavon has 9,92 dribbles per 90 with 58,26% accuracy. Those four players perform the best in this specific dribbles metric.

Shortlist
I’ve only looked at specific metrics, but I decided to look closer at the following players as I thought they are standing out and will prove to be valuable assets to teams:
– Cristan Pavon – was on loan from Boca Juniors at LA Galaxy
– Lewis Morgan – Inter Miami FC
– Diego Rossi – Los Angeles FC

The next step is to look at these 3 players in different games and follow them via video scouting.

Data from Wyscout
Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/profile/marc.lamberts#!/vizhome/MLSScoutingawinger/

Case study Northern-Ireland: Roles in the 5-3-2 formation in U18’s

Posted on 03/03/2021 by admin

A few of you might know this, but I have done a year abroad in Northern-Ireland. Belfast to be more specific. While studying abroad I’ve learnt a lot about the history of the region I’ve been, the religious difficulties and violence, and about the customs of the specific area I was located. While I could talk about these things for ages, I wanted to talk about my experiences with Northern-Irish football. This is a football blog after all.

I’ve previously written about case studies in the Netherlands concentrating on inverted full backs, ball playing central defenders, zonal marking in set pieces, and the 4-3-3 & 4-2-3-1 formation. While I’ve finished the case study in the Netherlands, I wanted to have a look at Northern-Ireland as it has shaped me as a coach. In this analysis I will look at the 5-3-2 that was employed against a 4-4-2/

In this analysis I will focus on what I’ve observed in the games I’ve seen in the U18’s league. This might be different to what senior sides do and the decisions made in attack, defence and transition can therefore be different than what is best, but this analysis looks at what happened.

5-3-2
Formations are not set in stone throughout the match, but often are starting points at the beginning of a half or when a set-piece is taken. Formations are fluid as we can see in maps with average positions. The idea of position versus zones is a debate you can have, but in theory a 5-3-2 can broken down in the following: 5 defenders, 3 midfielders and 2 attackers.

Often a 5-3-2 is a defensive state and it become a 3-5-2, but in the games I’ve observed at the time, this was not the case. This was a 5-3-2, that changed a little bit during the attacking phase of the game, but it was no 3-5-2 with 5-3-2 in the defensive phase in the game and that has all to do with the roles of the lateral defenders.

Full backs or wing backs

In the image above you see a 3-5-2 formation with wing backs. These two players have a very specific role going forward and dropping deep. In defence this 3-5-2 become a 5-3-2 and in attack this become a 3-3-4 in most cases I’ve seen.

In the 5-3-2 I’ve observed there was always a back-five with an individual role of a full back to go high up the pitch into the middle third, but no higher than that. The rule in going foward was: only one of the full backs could higher up the pitch, the other would play deep – which in some case could result to a 4-4-2 in formation or 4-3-3 with a deep-lying #10.

Midfield trio

The midfield consists of three players. In the games I’ve observed there were two different scenarios:

Scenario #1: There was a double pivot of two defending midfielders with an attacking midfielder playing more advanced. This attacking midfielder had the role of a #10 and would play closer to the two strikers when the team was in possession and in the attacking third.
Scenario #2: There were two midfielder lying deep, but they were not a classic double pivot. The two deep-lying midfielders consist of a defensive midfielder + a central midfielder. That central midfielder moves along with the phases of play. In defence he plays deep and more defensively and in attack he moves to a more advances position, close to the #10.

In defence the double pivot would drop so that there would be a clear number of defensive-minded player. In reality there would be seven players defending with three attacking-minded players.

Strikers

Evidently this system plays with two strikers. In the images I’ve included in this piece, the strikers are not playing close to each other and have space between them. This is done intentionally as they were not classic strikers, but neither were they wingers. These players had the task to win the duels, hold on to the ball and move to a certain flank in order to create space in the middle and on the other flank. The other striker and attacking midfield could then move forward and create danger in front of goal. In this system, the two ‘strikers’ were identical in their role and in their style of play.

Another way of playing was when the two strikers played close to each other, but they had different qualities to bring to the game. There was one striker who was big, strong in the air and very good in holding the ball. The other striker was quicker, more agile and made more runs into specific areas to compliment the qualities of the first striker. This dynamic was supported by the attacking midfielder when he moved more up the pitch.

Allow freedom on the flanks

The main issue with the use of full backs instead of wing backs in the 5-3-2 is the freedom on the flanks. Because of the nature of the lateral defenders, pressing high up the opponent’s half or even in the middle third, is not really feasible. Thus, it is easy for the opponents to advance with wide midfielders and/or wingers. Because of the five-man defence they are dealt with quite easily, but it leaves the opponent too much freedom to dominate the game.

I gained valuable experience researching this system in Northern-Ireland. Like I said, it has shaped me as a coach and made me think of the benefits of a three-man central defence. Obviously there are flaws to this system and perhaps the use of wing backs or employing a 3-5-2 is essential, but it was great to see this being used in the U18’s.

*The tactical images are made with Tactical Pad, which gave me the freedom to alter the pitch just like I wanted to.