This is the third piece in my series of case studies in the Dutch youth leagues. In this analysis I will look at man marking and zonal marking in set pieces with the focus on the U16 and U18 leagues in the Netherlands.
This analysis, however, deals with a smaller sample than the previously two written pieces. I have looked at the four professional clubs in the province of Limburg: VVV-Venlo, Fortuna Sittard, Roda JC and MVV Maastricht. The reason for that is that I’m quite familiar with their way of playing and that I have had the opportunity to visit training sessions of the U16’s and U18’s – therefore this analysis will focus on what I’ve observed with them.
In this analysis I will look at 4 routines executed by teams in those two age groups: there are two routines with man marking and two routines with zonal marking. It’s important to stress that this is not a consult of how man marking should be done or how zonal marking should be done – but it’s an observation of those routines in set pieces with the addition of commentary of what went right or wrong.
Man marking
So, what is man marking? You constantly mark a certain opponent – in the 90 minutes that you are on the pitch you are tasked with following one opponent all the time and making sure he can’t do something productive with the ball or make sure he can’t go into space without you following him/her.
The task is not so different when it comes to set pieces – a player is tasked with defending/following another player and when it comes to it, win the aerial duel in order to prevent a goalscoring opportunity.
Zonal marking
Zonal marking is the type of marking where a player covers/marks a space rather than a specific player. When the opponent enters a certain area, the player tasked with defending that space will take that player in marking.
This also applies when defending set pieces – the player has a space to defend close to the goal and will not deviate from that space to track a player.
Case study: 4 types of marking a set piece.
The first thing that I looked at was the idea of purely having man-marking or purely having zonal marking in the set piece defending. Only one situation had purely man marking and the rest had a combination of man marking and zonal marking. Before we look into this situations, I will show you in the image below which zones were used by the 4 clubs in order of defending:
Once again, this is not the ideal picture of the zones or the best way to look at it, but in the games I’ve observed there were 4 zones: the blue zone was defended by the keeper and central defenders, the orange zones by the full backs and in the white zone, the midfielders and attackers tried to win the aerial duels.
In this set pieces I’ve only looked at the positioning of the defending side, as that was were my emphasis was with this analysis.
Set piece 1:
In set piece 1 the situation was as follows:
- Attacking side had 7 players in the box
- Defending side had 9 players in the box
- Pure man marking
In the image above the corner was takes from the right side and the beginning position of the 9 defending player was build up as follows: the whole defence was playing close to the keeper as the there were usually 3 attacking players trying to get into close position to the keeper.
While there were 4 defending player vs 3 attacking players, they were still man marking as the striker often was someone who had to be dealt with by 2 players. This was particularly seen in the U16 matches were you could see a significant difference in height between players: not everyone had fully grown yet.
The #8, #6, #10 and #7 were tasked with man marking any midfielder or defender in the box attacking the corner, but the #11 wasn’t. Although he was standing in the box, he was tasked with using his pace in the break and and to assists the #9 in the process of a counter-attack.
Set piece 2: 6 players zonal marking, 3 man marking
In set piece 2 the situation was as follows:
- Attacking side had 6 players in the box
- Defending side had 9 players in the box
- 3 man marking
- 4 zonal marking
- 2 on the posts
In this routine there was a combination of man marking and zonal marking. The four defenders were zonal marking as they marked the space instead of the man. #2 and #5 marked the zones just next to the goal and the #3 and #4 were marking the zones directly in front of the keeper.
The keeper wanted the two posts guarded as there were players at the opposition’s side that easily won aerial duels and post a threat in front of goal. In the image above this were #6 and #7 guarding the posts.
In the white zone of the box there were 3 players: #8, #10 and #11. They were man marking the incoming players from the opponent, but they also had a different task: blocking. They blocked the incoming runs – or tried to – from the opponent in order to prevent them having a powerful header towards goal.
Set piece 3: 5 zonal marking, 3 man marking
In set piece 3 the situation was as follows:
- Attacking side 7 players
- Defending side 8 players
- 4 man marking
- 3 zonal marking
- 1 on the post
This set piece set up was also a combination of zonal marking and man marking with one player on the post. the four defenders were tasked the blue zone (central defenders #3 and #4) and the orange zone (full backs #5 and #2). #5 has two tasks – he not only has to guard his zone, but also stay alert of any space near the first post when taken from this side, as this post has been left free by the keeper.
There were 3 players white zone and they were man marking and blocking runs from the incoming attacking players. They were not only tasked with that, but they needed to be decisive and secure in their way of heading the ball out of danger – the #9 and #11 were situated to anticipate their balls and lead the counter-attack with the 3 man markers moving up the pitch in that particular situation.
Set piece 4: 4 zonal marking, 4 man marking
In set piece 4 the situation was as follows:
- Attacking side 6 players
- Defending side 6 players
- No players on posts
- 4 players zonal marking
- 4 players man marking
In the last set piece situation there were no players on either posts, leaving the orange and blue zones to be defended by the 4 defenders. Again this was a combination of zonal marking and man marking, with the defenders playing zonal marking in this situation. The posts were also covered by the full backs #2 and #5 – among the other tasks they had.
The attacking side played with two strong strikers and they formed a line of 2, which led the defending side to play man marking in the white zone with #10 and #6 tasked with marking the 2 strong strikers. As seen in the cases above, these 4 players were tasked with blocking incoming runs and clear the ball when the aerial duels were won.
The #9 and #11 were standing outside the box anticipating a counter attack. In this case the #9 stood closer to his own box and the #11 stood less wide as it in the previous situation.
Interesting points
Obviously a lot of things went wrong – football is not a sport of perfections, but of errors and how you react to them. Defending set pieces and in this particular case corners, is something that is often defended with the head. If you look at the age groups I’ve looked at, not everyone is matured enough in his physical appearance or has developed the skill of heading enough. So a lot of corners result into situations that lead to goal or to individual errors which you would not see in the senior sides.
Another interesting thing to notice is the intellectual abilities of the players. We certainly don’t have to underestimate players that feature in an academy – they know what the tactical concepts are behind man marking and zonal marking, but the execution in real match situations – that’s different stuff. Anticipating and reacting to unforeseen actions on the pitch, that’s where these age groups are developing and need developing in order to achieve a higher level in defending set pieces like a corner.
