Monthly Archives: September 2024

English football’s 3pm kick-off is dying – does anyone care?

Leave a reply

“‘At three o’clock on Saturdays, we know who we are, where we belong, and where we should be even when we aren’t,’ wrote Daniel Gray, the author and historian, in his 2016 book Saturday, 3pm: 50 Eternal Delights of Modern Football. Gray calls that sacred point in the English week ‘football time’, the opportunity for hundreds of thousands to escape the humdrum and stresses of everyday life and find a fleeting, common sanctuary. ‘What a privilege that is,’ he concludes. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

How to stop Arsenal scoring from corners: Hybrid marking, better grappling and an active keeper

Leave a reply

“When Nicolas Jover signed up for an online set-piece course last summer, the tutors initially thought it was a prank. Despite transforming Arsenal’s set-piece play over the past three years in his role as a coach dedicated to that specific area of the game — he has turned them into one of Europe’s best at dead-ball situations — Jover has always wanted to learn. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

List of Scottish Football League clubs

Leave a reply

Aberdeen and St Johnstone
“The Scottish Football League (‘SFL’) was established in 1890, initially as an amateur league as professionalism had not been legalised in Scottish football. In 1893 a Second Division was formed, with the existing single division renamed the First Division. The Second Division was discontinued during the First World War but revived in 1921. A Third Division was added in 1923 but collapsed three years later as a number of its member clubs found themselves unable to complete their fixtures for financial reasons, with many folding altogether. After the Second World War the divisions were rebranded as Division A and Division B and a Division C was added. This included a mixture of new member clubs and the reserve teams of clubs from the higher divisions, but this division was dropped in 1955. …”
Wikipedia

Five tactical takeaways from the Premier League’s first five weekends

Leave a reply

“It is unwise to draw firm conclusions about your Premier League team in the early weeks of the season. While it might be premature to spot any statistical trends, that doesn’t stop us from identifying some fun quirks that have stood out. As luck would have it, each of the five teams in question finished outside the top five positions in the Premier League last season. Don’t you love the symmetry? From West Ham United’s woes to Fulham’s flanks and a word from the xG gods, let’s dive in: feast your eyes on five tactical takeaways from the first five weekends. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

Tactical Fouls in the Brasileirão

Leave a reply


“Tactical fouls are a polemic subject within football. Many view them as a valid defensive resource but there are plenty more who see them as a cynical exploitation of the rules. … There are various ways to define a tactical foul, but for the purposes of this article the definition will be: fouls committed within five seconds of an open-play turnover. It’s an approximation, but I’ve checked it against video and it seems to cover the large majority of situations that could be classified as tactical fouls. …”
StatsBomb

Germany: 2024-25 Bundesliga – Location-map, with 3 Charts…

Leave a reply

“The map page shows a location-map for the 18 clubs in the 2024-25 Bundesliga, with recently promoted and relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2024: FC St. Pauli, Holstein Kiel; relegated in 2024: FC Köln, Darmstadt.) The map also shows the 16 Federal States of Germany, and the 14 largest cities in Germany, with 2021 population estimates listed at the the top of the map. …”
Bill Sports Maps
W – 2024–25 Bundesliga

The Rise of Hungary and the Carpathian Brigade

Leave a reply

Hungary’s ‘Carpathian Brigade’ before a recent game against Bulgaria 
“As a Hungarian, who is infatuated with the national team, growing up in the late naughties  and early 2010’s, I was not exactly accustomed to seeing my beloved reds represent the  country of roughly 10 million people, at a national tournament. Let alone three  consecutive tournaments. As a matter of fact, none of us Hungarians, who were alive  between 1986 and 2016, were used to seeing the ‘Mighty Magyars’ on the TV, whenever  the World Cup was on. In the aforementioned timeframe, the team failed to qualify for a  single international tournament. This meant, that, back then, if you were Hungarian, and  an avid follower of football, like such a big chunk of this nation’s population happens to  be, you had to settle for a different nation’s team, come the World Cup or the Euros. …”
Football Paradise (Sep. 10, 2024)
NY Times/The Athletic: Hungary, Viktor Orban and the weaponisation of a national football team (June 13, 2024)

Italy: Serie A, 2024-25 season – Location-map, with 3 charts: Attendance (2022-23)

Leave a reply

“The map page has a location-map of the 2024-25 Serie A, along with 3 charts. The location-map features each club’s home kit [2024-25]. The map also shows the 20 Regions of Italy. And the map also shows the 11 largest cities in Italy (2020 metropolitan-area figures) {Metropolitan cities of Italy}. The cities’ population figures can be seen at the top of the location-map. Also, the map shows the locations of both the 3 promoted clubs and the 3 relegated clubs from 2024…Promoted to Serie A for 2024-25: (Parma, Como, Venezia); relegated to Serie B for 2024-25: (Frosinone, Sassuolo, Salernitana). …”
Bill Sports Maps
W – 2024–25 Serie A

Is there a trend of Premier League head coaches getting younger?

Leave a reply

“Life provides us all with many reminders that we’re getting older. Your body aching for no ostensible reason. The increasing realisation you have no idea what music is cool anymore. Hangovers appearing after a couple of quiet beers, rather than a big night out. Measuring the time since you last visited a nightclub in decades, rather than years. For us football fans, there’s another: managers getting younger. And in the Premier League, they are getting much younger. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Erik ten Hag’s FC Twente years – ‘He always thought he knew better than the coach’

Leave a reply

“‘He was always the best. He was always a big mouth. He was a little Johan Cruyff with the mouth (giving instructions to team-mates during matches). He was always thinking he knew things better than us.’  Leon ten Voorde is speaking about his childhood friend Erik ten Hag, now the Manchester United manager, whose team on Wednesday face FC Twente, where he spent 23 years as a player and then coach. Ten Hag’s love of football started with playground games with Ten Voorde in their hometown of Haaksbergen. Situated 10 miles away from the city of Enschede where FC Twente are based, its people are proud Tukkers. A Tukker is not only a regional distinction for those in the east of the Netherlands, but also a description of a particular way of life. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

How Milan’s brave use of Christian Pulisic in a narrow position helped them defeat Inter

Leave a reply

“The script was already written. AC Milan’s head coach, Paulo Fonseca, was under pressure, his struggling team were up against Inter Milan, and a win separated Simone Inzaghi’s side from making history. After six consecutive victories against their city rivals, Inter needed another one to ink their names into the record books. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Penalty area

Leave a reply


“The penalty area or 18-yard box (also known less formally as the penalty box or simply box) is an area of an association football pitch. It is rectangular and extends 18 yd (16 m) to each side of the goal and 18 yd (16 m) in front of it. If any part of the ball is over any part of a line demarking the penalty area then the ball is considered to be inside the penalty area. Within the penalty area is the penalty spot, which is 12 yd (11 m) from the goal line, directly in line with the centre of the goal. A penalty arc (often informally called ‘the D’) adjoins the penalty area, and encloses the area within 10 yd (9.1 m) of the penalty spot. It does not form part of the penalty area and is only of relevance during the taking of a penalty kick, when any players inside the arc are adjudged to be encroaching. …”
Wikipedia