Mourinho opts for a focus on man-marking again in a big game, and is able to secure a win at home to Conte’s Chelsea, just as he did last season. Mourinho’s defensive strategy As alluded to already, the United manager chose to build his defensive strategy against Chelsea heavily around man-marking. This meant that United’s […]
In Mourinho’s first El Clasico as Real Madrid manager, his team were humiliated by Pep Guardiola’s legendary Barcelona side. Barca’s structure Although Barcelona nominally started the game in a 4-3-3, as always under Pep, their positional structure was more fluid than this. When Barcelona were in their possession phase, Alves pushed aggressively high on the […]
Two of Europe’s strongest defensive teams met in Group C of the Champions League on Wednesday. Spaces within Chelsea’s 5-3-2 The problem of halfspace coverage when using two strikers has been detailed over at Spielverlagerung recently, and this game helped provide some more examples of this issue from both teams. This aspect has already been […]
Guardiola’s side faced what promised to be a tough challenge against a Shakhtar side that have already beaten one of the best teams in Europe in the form of Napoli in this years Champions League. City force Shakhtar to the centre… Given how passive and risk-averse many of City’s opponent’s often are, we don’t always […]
Despite coming out of the game with a 4-0 win, England’s World Cup Qualifier performance against Malta wasn’t exactly inspiring, especially considering the level of opposition. Passmaps & xGplot for Malta against England. #passmap #xGplot #autotweet pic.twitter.com/RtyyZKtWBo — 11tegen11 (@11tegen11) September 1, 2017 As demonstrated by the above graphics from 11tegen11 (and, indeed, obvious to […]
In World Cup Qualifying, Group A leaders France took on the Netherlands on Thursday night, with the Dutch looking to make up ground on their opponents in order to avoid another disappointing failure to qualify for a major international tournament. France’s strong pressing scheme… Despite dominating possession, perhaps the most interesting aspect of France’s game […]
The highlight of Wednesday’s Champions League qualifying matches was the clash between Napoli and Nice. The Naples outfit came into the match with a full-strength side in Sarri’s usual 4-3-3. Favre on the other hand opted for a 5-3-2 shape, perhaps at least partially due to the absence of Balotelli and new signing Wesley Sneijder. […]
Two well-known coaches made returns to Ligue 1 at the weekend when Marcelo Bielsa’s Lille side met Claudio Ranieri’s Nantes. Bielsa’s 3-3-1-3 The Argentinian coach wasted no time in introducing his trademark formation to Lille. The impressive Thiago Mendes played in front of a back three of Edgar le, Amadou and Alonso. Malcuit and Toure […]