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- Oct 17, 2024
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Poppa implemented a surprisingly complicated game plan given it was an international rather than a club game. There is a lot of moving parts, but I want to give my assessment of the tactics with screenshots. The complexity of the game plan probably explains why poppa is choosing players he worked with rather than his best players. You don't get a lot of time with players. The too long didn't read summary is this
1) We had a 10 man deep block unless there was a pressing trigger. The three pressing triggers were a) a heavy touch b) an underhit pass c) the ball goes to their left cb. This suggests we saw their left hand side as a weakness playing out
2) In posession a really high percentage of passes were forward, aggressive and high risk. This meant losing possession a lot of the time. The tradeoff being that we went for the kill with every possession. The rare times we recycled posession it was to get it to geria and launch an attack down their left hand side. Again this suggests poppa saw a weakness on their left
3) There was a mild asymmetry in how we defended when deep. We would commit more numbers defending behich's edge than millers. This was subtle, because if their #10 roamed number would follow, so it wasn't an ironclad rule. But again this shows we didn't perceive much threat down that side
4) lots of attention to detail, including a plan to counter their pressing trap on irvine/oniel, a plan to get motion in set pieces, a plan to defend short corners on our right hand side with behich rather than miller and a plan to save energy when 4-0 up
Our press
This is our very first possession of the game - note we have a 10 man block and not even the usual partial press with 1-2 players pressuring the pass from the back four. There was no counter press after we lost possession, we just quickly retreated. The fact that it was the first minute of the game suggests this is not a forced tactic, it was planned despite Irvine's disappointment at having less possession
Notice though that that when the ball goes to their left cb we press like maniacs
Otherwise we sit back. The only exceptions were one time there was a heavy touch and another there was an underhit pass. Hard to get a screenshot showing an underhit pass, but this is the heavy touch which triggered a press and an eventual turnover
Our build up
Nearly every pass was a high risk forward pass delivered at speed. This meant that most possessions only had a string of 3-4 passes before we lost possession. Again this is not a tactic you implement if you want to win the possession stats. To spell it out, it is worth detailing our first few possessions
First possession: Throw in from behich, 3 high risk forward passes, nearly expose their high line early but the last pass under pressure is misfired
3nd possession at 1:32 geria drives the ball forward and tries a killer through ball, possession lost. Every pass so far is forward. We are willing to press high when there is a slow pass to the left cb
4th possession, we try a pass to the left cb, then pass back to geria and try and launch an attack through geria. The longish forward pass on the deck is intercepted though. Rowles makes our first backward pass of the game so far, our passing is extremely aggressive and high risk.
The pattern would continue through the game. If we recycled possession (what is pejoratively referred to as sideways and backwards passing) it was to draw indonesia's press forward, get the ball to Geria and accelerate down that flank
This pattern would continue until we went 4-0 up. On first watch I mostly remembered the mistakes, on replay I think we dominated with Geria, Boyle, Miller and Vellupilay having a field day down our right flank
Assymetric deep defence
This one isn't obvious and I'm not happy with the screen shots I got for this as they aren't like for like situations. But we would defend millers edge less vigorously than Behich's unless their number 10 came down that edge. There was a slight asymmetry in our defence, perhaps baiting them to come down millers side. I guess we thought their left side sucked with and without the ball
Attention to detail
There were a lot of little bits of attention to detail like behich defending the short corner on our right side so we can use miller's aerial ability in the box
We can't go down Geria's flank every time or it get's too predictable. So we need a plan to go through the middle. Below you see Indonesia setting up a pressing trap on irvine/oniell. This was quite effective against Arnold's team who wanted to play through the 3rds at all cost. Irvine/oniell can have a bad first touch and a pressing trap was quite effective. China tried and failed to do it against poppa, same result from indonesia. Here we see 5 defenders on oniell/irvine
Poppa solved this the same way he did against china - he exploited the space behind the 5 man pressing trap by having Boyle and Vellupilay appear in the space behind. Burgess has a fantastic passing range and is able to deliver the ball to vellupilay's feet
1) We had a 10 man deep block unless there was a pressing trigger. The three pressing triggers were a) a heavy touch b) an underhit pass c) the ball goes to their left cb. This suggests we saw their left hand side as a weakness playing out
2) In posession a really high percentage of passes were forward, aggressive and high risk. This meant losing possession a lot of the time. The tradeoff being that we went for the kill with every possession. The rare times we recycled posession it was to get it to geria and launch an attack down their left hand side. Again this suggests poppa saw a weakness on their left
3) There was a mild asymmetry in how we defended when deep. We would commit more numbers defending behich's edge than millers. This was subtle, because if their #10 roamed number would follow, so it wasn't an ironclad rule. But again this shows we didn't perceive much threat down that side
4) lots of attention to detail, including a plan to counter their pressing trap on irvine/oniel, a plan to get motion in set pieces, a plan to defend short corners on our right hand side with behich rather than miller and a plan to save energy when 4-0 up
Our press
This is our very first possession of the game - note we have a 10 man block and not even the usual partial press with 1-2 players pressuring the pass from the back four. There was no counter press after we lost possession, we just quickly retreated. The fact that it was the first minute of the game suggests this is not a forced tactic, it was planned despite Irvine's disappointment at having less possession
Notice though that that when the ball goes to their left cb we press like maniacs
Otherwise we sit back. The only exceptions were one time there was a heavy touch and another there was an underhit pass. Hard to get a screenshot showing an underhit pass, but this is the heavy touch which triggered a press and an eventual turnover
Our build up
Nearly every pass was a high risk forward pass delivered at speed. This meant that most possessions only had a string of 3-4 passes before we lost possession. Again this is not a tactic you implement if you want to win the possession stats. To spell it out, it is worth detailing our first few possessions
First possession: Throw in from behich, 3 high risk forward passes, nearly expose their high line early but the last pass under pressure is misfired
3nd possession at 1:32 geria drives the ball forward and tries a killer through ball, possession lost. Every pass so far is forward. We are willing to press high when there is a slow pass to the left cb
4th possession, we try a pass to the left cb, then pass back to geria and try and launch an attack through geria. The longish forward pass on the deck is intercepted though. Rowles makes our first backward pass of the game so far, our passing is extremely aggressive and high risk.
The pattern would continue through the game. If we recycled possession (what is pejoratively referred to as sideways and backwards passing) it was to draw indonesia's press forward, get the ball to Geria and accelerate down that flank
This pattern would continue until we went 4-0 up. On first watch I mostly remembered the mistakes, on replay I think we dominated with Geria, Boyle, Miller and Vellupilay having a field day down our right flank
Assymetric deep defence
This one isn't obvious and I'm not happy with the screen shots I got for this as they aren't like for like situations. But we would defend millers edge less vigorously than Behich's unless their number 10 came down that edge. There was a slight asymmetry in our defence, perhaps baiting them to come down millers side. I guess we thought their left side sucked with and without the ball
Attention to detail
There were a lot of little bits of attention to detail like behich defending the short corner on our right side so we can use miller's aerial ability in the box
We can't go down Geria's flank every time or it get's too predictable. So we need a plan to go through the middle. Below you see Indonesia setting up a pressing trap on irvine/oniell. This was quite effective against Arnold's team who wanted to play through the 3rds at all cost. Irvine/oniell can have a bad first touch and a pressing trap was quite effective. China tried and failed to do it against poppa, same result from indonesia. Here we see 5 defenders on oniell/irvine
Poppa solved this the same way he did against china - he exploited the space behind the 5 man pressing trap by having Boyle and Vellupilay appear in the space behind. Burgess has a fantastic passing range and is able to deliver the ball to vellupilay's feet
