“For around three decades after the foundation of the Football League in 1888, the game remained unchanged. Teams played with two backs, three halves and five forwards, and soccer was all about getting the ball out to the winger so he could cross for the center forward. Pattern-weaving — working the ball in neat triangles between midfield and attack – was seen as the ideal and soccer was largely formulaic.” SI
“In terms of tactics, the most important factor in Tottenham Hotspur’s victory over AC Milan last week was that its wide players were able to exploit the width left by Milan’s narrowness. As a corollary to that, Spurs had the pace and energy to ensure that its numerical disadvantage in central areas didn’t mean it had to cede control over possession. Milan’s only three league defeats this season have come against sides who play with attacking width — Cesena and Juventus — and Roma, a team that usually deploys a 4-3-1-2, but deployed its trequartista, Jeremy Menes, in wide areas in that game.” SI
“The year ended with a reminder of what used to be in eastern Europe, as Robert Prosinecki was appointed manager of Red Star Belgrade. It is 20 years since he was a key figure in the last eastern European side to win the European Cup; this season only one, Shakhtar Donetsk, has reached the last 16 of the Champions League. Following CSKA Moscow’s progress to the knockout stage last year, that perhaps hints at the beginnings of a renewal, but two sides making it through the group stage in seven years is still a world away from the era when crack eastern European outfits were the bane of British clubs.” Guardian – Jonathan Wilson
“Rightly or wrongly, Roy Hodgson’s time at Liverpool seems to be coming to an end. There are those who will argue that he should be given time, and it is of course true that various managerial greats — Herbert Chapman, Don Revie, Brian Clough, Sir Alex Ferguson — struggled in their first seasons at clubs with whom they later achieved significant success. But it is also true that Hodgson, much like Sam Allardyce in his brief stint at Newcastle United, seems to have lost the confidence of just about everybody, with even those fans who urge patience unsettled by the functionality of much of Liverpool’s football, even against mediocre opposition.” SI – Jonathan Wilson
Jonathan Wilson
“We love Twitter. It is like visiting a Roman Forum back in 50BC, stopping to chat to all and sundry about everything under the sun. Want some chat about the wrong tactics used by Inter Milan at the weekend, then touch base with Jonathan Wilson or Zonal Marking. Fancy trying to understand what on earth is going on at Upton Park then have a chat with Jacob Steinberg, Mark Segal from ITV Sport, Matt Law from the Express or Dan Silver from the Daily Mirror. And want to get a Pro’s view on life now or as it was a few years ago then have a chat with Martin Allen, Garry Nelson or Bolton Wanderers Kevin Davies.”
On the first day of Christmas – The best website, On the second day of Christmas – The best game, On the third day of Christmas – The best journalist
“In August, I wrote a piece for the Guardian’s pre-season supplement in which I speculated that, after the World Cup and Internazionale’s success in the Champions League, we may be about to witness a return to reactive football. Since when we’ve seen probably the most attacking Premier League in living memory, which goes to show two things: first, never believe anything anybody writes when trying to predict the future of football; and second, the World Cup is no longer a bellwether.” Guardian – Jonathan Wilson
“The modern offside law continues to frustrate defenders and pundits alike, but the men who should benefit from it – strikers – have not exploited it to its full potential. First, some background on the offside law is needed, specifically the recent changes to it. Jonathan Wilson’s piece gives a history of the law along with some implication for tactics, whilst the Premier League’s head of referees Keith Hackett outlines the ‘new’ law in detail. In this article, we are dealing with a very specific outcome of the changes. Now, a player who is in an offside position when one pass in a move is played can go onto participate in the rest of the move as long as he doesn’t touch the ball from the initial pass.” Zonal Marking
The Question: Why is the modern offside law a work of genius?
April 13 2010. “Nothing in football is so traduced as the offside law. Most seem to regard it as a piece of killjoy legislation, designed almost to prevent football producing too many goals and being too much fun, while for the punditocracy it has become the universal scapegoat, the thing that “nobody understands”. Just because Garth Crooks doesn’t get something, though, doesn’t make it a bad thing. The modern offside law may be the best thing that’s ever happened to football, and it is almost certainly the reason Barcelona have been so successful with a fleet of players whose obvious asset is their technique rather than their physique.” Guardian – Jonathan Wilson
Carlo Ancelotti
“So Carlo Ancelotti is staying at Chelsea, for now at least, and with the club sitting top of the Premier League talk of crisis at Stamford Bridge feels slightly hysterical. Even if there was no substance to the reports — strongly denied — that Ancelotti was ready to quit on Sunday evening, though, something is going on behind the scenes, a lead that stood at five points three weeks ago has disappeared and the weakness of the squad’s structure has been exposed.” (SI)
“A disappointing match that produced very few goalscoring chances. Roberto Mancini went with his usual 4-5-1 / 4-3-3 system. Mario Balotelli was suspended so James Milner came in, with David Silva switching to the left. Sir Alex Ferguson went with his one-striker formation, seeking to match City in midfield by playing Darren Fletcher, Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick. Nani was on the right with Ji-Sung Park on the left. Rafael continued at right-back.” (Zonal Marking)
Match of the Midweek: Manchester City 0-0 Manchester United
“Perhaps it was ‘The Curse Of ITV’ returning to haunt us again. Last night, they showed a documentary about football in Manchester which examined, through the eyes of Eric Cantona, the current and historical state of the rivalry between Manchester City and Manchester United. The two clubs have had their fair share of drama from the matches between them in recent years, so perhaps it was understandable that ITV should choose to schedule this match at this time. Other corners of the press had, after all, also been been building the match up in a wearyingly predictable manner.” (twohundredpercent)
Highly-anticipated match offers little for most to cheer about
“Few Manchester derbies have ever been so hyped; few have ever been so disappointing. It was a game that yielded just one chance of note: the free-kick that Carlos Tevez curved toward the top corner after 35 minutes. The effort lacked pace, though, and Edwin van der Sar was able to make a simple enough diving save. And while most were probably bored rigid, Sir Alex Ferguson could congratulate himself on a job well done.” (SI)
“Jonathan Wilson recalls the events that took place in the final of the African Champions League ten years ago, the last time Tunisian giants Esperance got that far. On Sunday they’re looking to make amends for that fateful afternoon…” (Betting)
“Under normal circumstances in the Premier League, you’d look at a side that was five points clear with a quarter of the season played and assume it was strolling toward the title. These, though, are not normal circumstances. Chelsea has been the best team, scoring four more goals than anybody else and conceding five fewer. Beyond statistics, it feels as though Chelsea has been playing the best football.” (SI – Jonathan Wilson)
“Football is a holistic game. Advance a player here and you must retreat a player there. Give one player more attacking responsibility and you must give another increased defensive duties. As three at the back has become outmoded as a balanced or attacking formation – though not as a defensive formation – by the boom in lone-striker systems, coaches have had to address the problem of how to incorporate attacking full-backs without the loss of defensive cover.” (Guardian – Jonathan Wilson)
Barca face African adventure in the Cup
“For those who have been reading La Liga Loca for a year or two now it’s probably best to rejoin today’s ramblings a couple of paragraphs further down. It’s Copa del Rey rant time again. The Copa del Rey is the worst attempt at a competition since Maniche and James Beattie were the only two entrants in the ‘Best Salad Eater 2009’ jamboree. The whole fiasco is designed to clear out all the nasty, oinky, lower league riffraff as soon as possible to give as much chance to Spain’s Primera clubs to win it.” (Four Four Two)
Wayne Rooney
“It was five years ago today. Five years, a long time. A lot of water under the bridge since then. A lot of Johnnie under the old soft palate. Why, I’ll tell you, Ryan Giggs was a wee lad of 47, back then. Nani wasn’t even a gleam in Anderson’s eye. We’d all heard the rumours, of course. An 18-year-old boy with the instep of Kylie Minogue and the brow of a young Jack Nicholson. So much natural spark it was as if Mr Tommy Taylor had been crossed with Guy Fawkes. Apparently he’d played rather well for Everton over the past two seasons and had starred for England in Euro 2004. Now, like all true United fans, we were excited to see him for the first time.” (Run of Play)
Declining Rooney’s relationship with United in critical condition
“It’s not hard to pinpoint where it all started to go wrong. On March 30, Wayne Rooney put Manchester United ahead in the second minute of a Champions League quarterfinal match at Bayern Munich, a controlled, eminently accomplished finish from a Nani cross. It was exactly what everybody had come to expect from a player who had already scored 33 goals for his club that season and nine more for England.” (SI)
“Ask Montenegro’s players what has changed since the 2010 World Cup qualifiers and all reply with a combination of the same three factors: luck, experience and balance. For a new country, drawn from the pot of minnows, they performed creditably in World Cup qualifying, but there is a sense that they did not quite get the results they deserved: 2-2 draws against Bulgaria and Cyprus probably should have been wins; the 4-1 defeat in Bulgaria looked far worse than it really was. Soft penalties were given against them, there were unfortunate ricochets, and perhaps a lack of conviction at the back. A team packed with talented forwards either defended en masse, or poured forwards in numbers, and so were alternately involved in either tedious 0-0s or high-scoring thrillers, with little in between.” (Guardian – Jonathan Wilson)
Fabio Capello
“One of the oddities of reading Charles Reep, the pioneer of match-analysis in Britain, is that in among the Pooterish self-righteousness, and what at times seems an almost systematic misinterpretation of statistics, you come upon the odd nugget of wisdom. ‘The maximum number of matches played in the World Cup final stages, by any one team, has been six, up to the present date,’ he wrote in his unpublished book of 1973, League Championship Winning Soccer and the Random Effect. (Even now, with the tournament expanded to thirty-two teams, it is only seven).” (Guardian)
“The graphs, diagrams and match reports on Zonal Marking are pored over by thousands of football fans the world over and have helped push tactical analysis towards the centre of mainstream football debate in the United Kingdom. Set up in January this year, the phenomenally successful website received an average of 210,000 visitors per week during the World Cup and counts tactical mastermind Jonathan Wilson among its many admirers.” (Football Further)
“This has been a decade of broadly attacking football, at least at the highest level, but at the start of 2010-11 the game stands at a crossroads. Internazionale’s triumph in the Champions League, the predominance of reactive football at the World Cup and the growing realisation that nobody can match Spain/Barcelona at their brand of possession football, though, might mean a turn into defensiveness.” (Guardian – Jonathan Wilson)
“A victory for Zenit St Petersburg at home to Rubin Kazan on Saturday would not guarantee them the league title but it would give them a lead of at least nine points with half of the Russian season played. They have been relentless of late, unbeaten since Luciano Spalletti took charge in December – their last defeat, in fact, came against FK Moskva on 31 October – and Saturday’s 3-1 win at Rostov was their eighth in a row in the league.” (Guardian – Jonathan Wilson)
Scissors Kick 