| Jul 02 |
What We Learned From Brazil vs Holland (1-2)Adrian Chiles In Sensible Statement Shock I don’t normally bother to take any interest in what the ITV panel has to say as I’m quite capable of devising lukewarm footballing banalities myself, but one thing Chiles said struck home, “If you’ve got no discipline and you can’t defend set pieces, you aren’t going to stay in the World Cup”. Not the most complete dissection of the Brazilian team, but it cut to the chase and erased all the bullshit. He may never make such and authoritative, Hansonesque statement again in his hideous sofa-confined lifetime. It’s All About The Basics Much as everyone would have liked it to be, this match wasn’t about flair, individual skill, touches of footballing genius, dribbling or total football. It was about what the FA Director of Coaching Charles Hughes thought football was all about, few touches good, many touches bad. It was about the techniques of direct football rather than the artistic machinations of intricate interior passing. Brazil’s goal, like Germany’s first against Engerland was about a single, clinical pass through the middle to your frontman and catastrophic defensive play. Holland’s first was the result of the first genuinely dangerous cross into the box in open play, while their second was from one of only two genuinely effective corners. Looking at the most effective and dangerous moments of play, these too conformed to Hughes’ maxim. At the tail end of either half, both teams were playing an almost infectious kick and rush style of play as the ball was swiftly moved from one box to the other and back again. Unlike English football, where this is achieve by hoofing the ball over the midfield trenches, the movement here was mainly on the ground, the reason for the swift motion from one end to another was that both midfields had almost completely disappeared and there was a cavernous 30 yard gap surrounding the half-way line. This meant that Hughes’ few touches principle worked beautifully. Conversely, once either defence had settled down to it’s organised 4 – 1 – 4 on the 18 yard line formation, there were no ‘few touches’ moves to be made other than genuinely good crosses (which neither side could apparently deliver with any regularity), so the many touches, eye of a needle footwork needed to take prominence. The real key at this point was not number of touches, but speed of movement, both on and off the ball, and even then it didn’t conjure up very many serious chances. This Ball IS Shit So. Two of the best football playing and dead ball specialist sides and no one can take a free kick that is on target? I know it’s the whole bad workers blame their tools thing, but all of the best players bar the Japanese can’t be wrong. This ball doesn’t deviate and dip like others do and thus makes free kicks more difficult to take. This means not only do we not see as many free kick goals (total so far something like 3 and one of those was a mistake by the keeper and two of them were by Japan), but it becomes a much safer option for a defender to foul an attacker around the 18 yard line. Take the free kick, neutralise the attack, get the defense back in position. It’s a no brainer. 57 Down 7 To Go 7 Teams Remaining One Response to “What We Learned From Brazil vs Holland (1-2)”Leave a Reply |
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Palace Blog
Halfway between creative working and working creatively. Are you simply the things you like or are you more? Can you be more creative by changing what you do? Random acts of senseless beautality. That's what I'm interested in.
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[...] their initial match against Denmark), and made approximately one dangerous cross into the box (against Brazil), but these appears to have been aberrations. They do seem to have raised their game to the extent [...]