Soccer Coaching Learnings From Euro 2008

Now that Euro 2008 has ended with a desrving victor, Spain, it is useful to examine any new trends and learnings from the tournament. Our team at http://www.soccerpracticebooks.com/ watched and analyzed every single game of the tournament. Here are our observations:

Formations

The trend away from the standard 4-4-2 continued to more teams playing with one striker, mostly in a 4-2-3-1, with the occasional 4-1-4-1. The idea is that the three offensive midfielders can alternate in the support of the lone striker and therefore create a more variable and unpredictable scoring threat. Germany is a key example of this with any of Ballack, Schweinsteiger or Podolski joining Klose in the final attacking plays. The downside is that if the opponent shuts down these midfielders, then the lone striker is a bit lost. Also, there can be a loss of variability because in a two striker system one of them often goes wide for a cross and doing so opens up the space in the middle. Finally, when opposing defenders have the ball and start playing out of the back, then one striker isn't always enough to pressurize the defense and not always did we see the offensive midfielders step up. They tended to focus on the opposing midfielders.

The two defensive midfielders provide backing for the attacking midfielders during transition to defense, and have responsibility to start the attack from their own end.

The 4-1-4-1 is mostly a response to the 4-2-3-1 putting a defensive midfielder to cover the central attacking midfielder from the 4-2-3-1.

In our view, the system you choose depends on the ability of the players you have. What is important is that your team stays disciplined in all areas of the field, that the transition to defense and to offense works and that the attacking play is variable enough to cause problems for the opponent. We advocate that any team is capable of playing more than one system and is able to adjust in a game when the starting formation doesn't work.

Tactics

The trend to minimize ball contacts continued. There was a lot of one touch and two touch soccer being played. It seemed like the more skilled the players, the less touches on the ball and the more quick passes. Exception being when they went into 1v1 situations. Some game statistics had over 600 passes per game.

One or two touch passing is not to be confused with tactics, however. Some teams played a lot of one touch passes in a slow build style, looking for opportunities for final penetrating passes or combinations into the scoring zones (Spain and Holland), we call this horizontal/vertical soccer. Other teams played as quickly as possible into the attacking third, we call this vertical soccer (Germany and Russia). Again, it is a matter of choice for the coach.

There was a general preference for quick transition play with the entire team moving fast. Almost all teams transitioned to defense very quickly, getting all players but one striker goalside as fast as possible. Transition to offense was equally fast, however the horizontal/vertical teams only broke fast on counter attack opportunities, otherwise they played the possession game. Vertical teams broke fast to the other half, no matter what.

Skills

overall ball skills are improving everywhere, and countries that had a lull in the 1990's are producing higher skilled players again, Germany being the prime example. Like aerobic training is the foundation for speed, so fundamental skills are the foundation for tactics. We always recommend, regardless of age of players, to train skills.

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