Play Through Them!

You can read this with video embedded here

The Matildas have started their Asian cup campaign with a 1-0 win against a defensively impressive Philippines side. The Philippines were in damage limitation mode from the start, looking to avoid a scoreline like the 8-0 loss from Olympic qualifying back in ’23. The Philippines were happy to stay in their own half from the kick off and employed time wasting tactics in the first half, despite being down a goal. Their aim was clearly to protect their goal difference, which will likely be what decides which of the third placed teams progress from the group stage. Irritatingly sofascore don’t have proper stats up for the game, but the fact that the Matildas had 85% of the possession, along with Paramount’s claim around 73 minutes that the Matildas had 521 passes, but the Filipinas just 93, shows how defensive the Philippines were.

       Commentary during the game focused on some of the loose passing from the Matildas, which I agree was an issue at times, but the Philippines were very well set up, and read the play well, making it very difficult for us to create good opportunities. Here are a couple of moments from the first half where they showed this.

       The first clip is a simple moment, but one where we can easily see the Philippines defensive awareness. After the Philippines waste a free kick by giving the ball straight to Lincoln in goals, she quickly throws wide to Gorry and a quick counterattack could be on. Except that there are two Filipinas there blocking a progressive run or forward pass. Not to worry, both Van Egmond and Carpenter are running to position to receive a square pass, where they’ll be able to play towards our two Matildas making straight runs (you can see them approaching the centre circle at the pause). Seeing this happening Long (#5 for the Philippines) is chasing back, and get’s just close enough to the passing lane to Van Egmond that Gorry decides not to risk the pass. The opportunity to counter is now over and the Philippines can settle into their defensive shape. This kind of defensive awareness is what made the game so tough for the Matildas.

       video 1 here

       One move we went for quite a lot in the first half was to create a cut back cross from the left. The Matildas didn’t score from it in this game, though I would expect that we will get a couple from such moves in this tournament. I think this instance is interesting as it again shows how well the Filipinas were reading the game, and how hard that made it to break them down. Our focus here will be Sawicki, #6 for the Philippines. At the pause we can see Sawicki tracking Van Egmond’s run. Van Egmond’s run here is great, she’s coming from deep and arriving late, if she did get on the end of the cut back from Foord she be receiving it centrally, somewhere between the spot and the edge of the area. A great place for a shot. Sawicki is tuned into this danger. Watch the little leftward shuffle she makes to get herself between Foord and Van Egmond to make the interception. Part of why this works for the Philippines is definitely numbers, but also Sawicki’s defensive awareness made it so hard for us to break them down.

Now watch the video through again and enjoy Foord absolutely skinning her defender.  

       video 2 here

       That’s more time than we usually spend on the opposition, but I think it’s helpful to see that we didn’t beat the Philippines by eight goals this time because they defended well.

       A highlight of the second half was Gorry’s ability to find space around the penalty box when the opposition is defending with every player. I’ve chosen a moment when she got a shot away to focus on, but I’ve also clipped together a few other moments from the second half to close us out. Don’t take this as downplaying anyone else’s contributions to these moves (e.g. in the example below Fowler’s movement is just as important as Gorry’s), I just found Gorry repeatedly impressive here.

       Right from the start in this clip we see Gorry’s desire to get between the Philippines’ midfield and defensive lines. When Guillou (#21) backs off we see Gorry drop into the space she left, getting her into their midfield line. From the next pause, with Guillou and the rest of the Filipinas focused on the movement of the ball to our left, Gorry begins to identify space behind Guillou, but ahead of their defenders. We’ll see her point to that space, but Hunt plays a less risky pass moving us back out to the left. As we come out to Foord we can see that Fowler has taken up that space behind Guillou, enabling Gorry to just drop off the midfield line, so the Philippines’ midfields don’t drop deep too soon. As we roll on, Fowler’s in a great position for the cut back cross, but can’t quite get on the end of it. Gorry has held position around the D. This sets her up for the next phase. At the pause I’ve rough indicated where she will move.

       As Hunt picks up the clearance, Gorry moves back towards her, helping draw the Filipinas out. Fowler has moved central now, meaning it’s Gorry’s turn to attack the space that we identified before behind the Philippines’ midfield. There’s some confusion from the Filipinas as to who should pick up Gorry, but this has been forced by the variety of movement from both Gorry and Fowler, and we get a half decent shot away.

       video 3 here

       That’s enough from me, here’s a few other moments of good midfield movement and interchanges around the box that involved this quality of movement from Gorry.

       video 4 here

A highlight of the second half was Gorry’s ability to find space around the penalty box when the opposition is defending with every player. I’ve chosen a moment when she got a shot away to focus on, but I’ve also clipped together a few other moments from the second half to close us out. Don’t take this as downplaying anyone else’s contributions to these moves (e.g. in the example below Fowler’s movement is just as important as Gorry’s), I just found Gorry repeatedly impressive here.

       Right from the start in this clip we see Gorry’s desire to get between the Philippines’ midfield and defensive lines. When Guillou (#21) backs off we see Gorry drop into the space she left, getting her into their midfield line. From the next pause, with Guillou and the rest of the Filipinas focused on the movement of the ball to our left, Gorry begins to identify space behind Guillou, but ahead of their defenders. We’ll see her point to that space, but Hunt plays a less risky pass moving us back out to the left. As we come out to Foord we can see that Fowler has taken up that space behind Guillou, enabling Gorry to just drop off the midfield line, so the Philippines’ midfields don’t drop deep too soon. As we roll on, Fowler’s in a great position for the cut back cross, but can’t quite get on the end of it. Gorry has held position around the D. This sets her up for the next phase. At the pause I’ve rough indicated where she will move.

One move we went for quite a lot in the first half was to create a cut back cross from the left. The Matildas didn’t score from it in this game, though I would expect that we will get a couple from such moves in this tournament. I think this instance is interesting as it again shows how well the Filipinas were reading the game, and how hard that made it to break them down. Our focus here will be Sawicki, #6 for the Philippines. At the pause we can see Sawicki tracking Van Egmond’s run. Van Egmond’s run here is great, she’s coming from deep and arriving late, if she did get on the end of the cut back from Foord she be receiving it centrally, somewhere between the spot and the edge of the area. A great place for a shot. Sawicki is tuned into this danger. Watch the little leftward shuffle she makes to get herself between Foord and Van Egmond to make the interception. Part of why this works for the Philippines is definitely numbers, but also Sawicki’s defensive awareness made it so hard for us to break them down.

You can read this with video embedded here

The Olyroos have made a decent start to their AFC u23 Asian Cup campaign. After taking the lead from an early corner, Thailand threw the game away with a brain fart of a red card tackle from Jensen in just the 12th minute of the match. It is tempting to write off the performance in a game with such an early sending off, but there are lessons we can take as fans from the game, in particular some areas where we’ll want the young lads in the team to improve in the games against China and Iraq.

       The two main areas of concern for me can be grouped as inconsistent decision making both with and without the ball (as a United fan I could spend the whole thousand words on Dukuly’s second half, but I won’t subject you to that this time) and vulnerability to counter attacks. Let’s start with decision making without the ball. In the first clip we’ll see Thailand’s play that win’s them the corner which they score from. Watch Paull here, indicated at the pause. He starts fairly deep ready for his direct opponent Sealao (#8) to run at him. When the ball is played wide to Noiwong (#2), Paull steps up very aggressively toward Sealao. But, Sealao has already started making the forward run that Paull was previously covering by sitting a bit deeper. This means that with a little side step Sealao is able to get behind Paull and run onto the straight pass where he then plays the cross which wins the corner. It isn’t necessarily the wrong thing to step up here, if Bovalina and Rawlins had reacted faster they could have been trying to trap Sealao offside. Bovalina (the other CB) does see Paull and reacts to try and step up with him, but Rawlins (the RB) doesn’t step up at all, instead staying with his direct opponent. That Rawlins doesn’t react at all suggest to me that that the plan wasn’t to have an offside trap, and that Paull made the wrong call to step up so aggressively. Of course, I’m not on the inside, and it could have just been a poorly executed offside trap.

video 1 here

       I feel bad picking out individuals for criticism, and I do want to emphasise that what we saw in this game was inconsistent decision making, not uniformly poor decision making. In this next clip we see Paull timing his step up very well to get in front of his direct opponent and win the ball. Notice also the difference in what Paull’s opponent is doing, here Phochai (#7) is facing away from goal and failing to protect the ball with his body, whereas in the previous clip Sealao was running toward the goal.

video 2 here 

Like this out of possession work, the Olyroos were inconsistent in their decision making with the ball. One obvious place to point this out is Alagich’s decision to shoot straight at the keeper in the 66th minute. But I think more interesting was some of the decision making about when to cross. Some of the crosses were optimistic long balls toward the penalty box, rather then an effort to pick out a particular player or dangerous area. In this clip I’ve put together two instances from the first half where we didn’t make great decisions about when to cross. The first one from Valadon shows a lack of patience. The cross itself is poorly executed, hitting the first defender. But more than this, he does have another player (I think it’s Rawlins, but sorry I’m not sure) ahead of him who has a chance of getting into a much better position for a cross. Even if Valadon beats the first defender, the cross is coming over the attacker’s shoulder and toward the goalkeeper. Especially with a shorter attacker like Jovanovic this sort of cross favours the defenders. We see what this looks like in the second example in this clip, which comes a few minutes later. The cross comes from far too deep, over the attackers and is easily collected by Boonloet in goals.

video 3 here

The last of the concerns I wanted to raise was vulnerability to counter attacks. There were a couple of instances where it was only a lack of quality from Thailand that allowed us to win the ball back, or not concede having given up a chance. In this clip there’s a few things to note. The first, is the lack of pressure from Bovalina on the first Thai player to the clearance. Now we can see at the pause he is changing direction because he’s not close enough to compete, and if he get’s beaten he’s risking letting Simmons get stuck in a 1v3. I think his decision not to compete there is understandable, but I do wonder if Vidmar intended for the players staying back to be so exposed in these circumstances.

When we do create 1v1s to try and break down this counter, we are beaten too easily. At the next pause Simmons has very slightly overrun his position leaving him off balance when Phochai cuts back in toward the centre. Running on from there Bovalina doesn’t react fast enough to Phochai’s underlapping run, letting him in behind to receive the return pass from Baukhai. I’d be interested to know what others think here, because I’m not sure why Bovalina hasn’t closed down Baukhai to make it difficult for him to turn to try and stop this sooner. If nothing else it seems to be asking a lot of Simmons for him to compete twice in a row, when Bovalina is right there to make it difficult.

video 4 here

Lastly here is a boring moment I clipped up, just because I want to use it in coaching. A textbook example from Alagich of dropping to position to get in the way after his line has been broken.

You can read this with embedded video here

Adelaide’s men’s team have won 1-0 away against a Perth Glory team who have been on the rise in the league in recent weeks. After three straight losses we did see some changes to the starting line up and some modification to the formation. Alongside the forced change of Barnett coming in for the injured Vriends, White replaced Duzel in midfield, and Anselmo got his first start for the club playing as a target forward rather like Ibusuki used to.   

       Bringing White into the midfield changed how we looked both with and without the ball. Despite the win I’m not sure that these changes were delibrate, particularly without the ball. One of Duzel’s jobs so far this season has been to drop into a right back position behind Pierias. Here, for example, is his heat map from the loss to Melbourne last time out. Although he’s covering a lot of ground, one of the peaks (redder colour) is in that right back area.

       Similarly for White’s positioning against Perth, there is a peak around right back. This suggests that the aim for White was the same, that part of his job was to drop in behind Pierias.

images here

       I was surprised when I went and looked at the heat maps, because my impression watching live was that White wasn’t covering that space behind Pierias, especially when we didn’t have the ball. This impression came from a couple of instances where we looked vulnerable to attacks down our right. Here is an example.

       Here we lose the ball up around right wing, both Pierias and White are up there trying to create something. When we lose the ball both are bypassed quickly, see the second pause. Run the video on and we see there is, as you’d expect, space for Perth to attack down our right. They don’t opt for a switch in this instance and attack down our left. Both Goodwin and Barnett are aware of the space down our right and are trying to direct traffic to get someone in to occupy it. White is dropping and you’ll see him come toward that space soon. Good on him for being the one to make the run back, I’ve no idea where Pierias is. The concern though is, that even though he’s made the run back he’s still positioned more as a midfielder rather than taking up the right back spot. On the last pause here you can see exploitable space behind White. Perth didn’t make much use of this space but it was there a few times.

       [[video 1 here]]

       Here it is in a different context. This is after we’d gone to a back 5, which we’d done a bit before the red card. Even with the back 5, we’ve not stayed compact in front of the ball down our right, with a big gap between Barnett and Stanisic which has enabled Sutton to get behind Barnett with an underlapping run. I’d be interested to hear what others think about this moment. The gap is created when Barnett steps out to prevent a pass out wide to Popovic. He comes back toward Sutton, but as the ball goes right again he’s worried about Popovic and leaves Sutton free. It looks to me like the best option is for Stanisic and the other centre backs to all shift one player to the right and close up that gap. But what do others think, should Barnett have left Popovic until the ball goes to him? Should Duzel have left his man to Stanisic and gone to Sutton?

       [[video 2 here]]

       Compare this to a similar move down our left a couple of minutes later. There’s a few things to note here. The first is that we have two players going out to Risdon to stop him playing the ball into the penalty area. But what I think is noteworthy is how active Kikianis and Kitto are to keep the horizontal gaps small. These two factors combine to make Perth’s passes into the penalty area far less effective than what we saw before. It looks like Stanisic is more comfortable making interceptions in central areas as well, although he could have got something on that last straight ball that makes it through to Smits.

       [[video 3 here]]

       To close, a little note on Anselmo. During the first half I was thinking I’ve doing the whole post about him, but unfortunately he went off injured at half time. Visa places are precious and we don’t want to waste one on someone who’s not going to play, so I understand why Reds fans have been concerned about his lack of action. I’m not convinced he’s worth a visa spot, but in the first half we did at least see glimpses of why the club want him. This was very early on in the game, but we see here a straight pass from Smits to Anselmo. Anselmo receives with his back to goal, but is able to turn two defenders twice and keep us going forward. I’m a big fan of having variety in build up and progression play (rather than just always going Kikianis to Alagich to Duzel then long and wide, say) and it looks like if Anselmo can get fit he can give us a different option when playing from Smits.

       [[video 4 here]]