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- Oct 17, 2024
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Watched the replay and I have to give credit to the Saudi manager. Even though on balance of chances we should have won, he really did his homework identifying our strengths and weaknesses
1) Forcing us to play out on our right flank.
This takes out some of our best attacking weapons. First Jordy Bos hardly saw the ball and souttar and Burgess both have deadly long passes that can unlock a defence. The latter was particularly important for Saudi to cut out, as they needed to play a high line to implement their high press. They also had a back up against Jordy Bos by putting the lightening quick Abdulhamid at rb in place of their usual Hamed.
So how did they force us to play out from the right flank? In setting u they would overload the middle and have more numbers defending their right side of the pitch than their left to tempt us to play through geria and miller. See for instance below (there were multiple examples of this)
Then once the ball goes out to our right, they up the squeezing intensity. The in particular team to rush geria and gauci everytime they have the ball. Here is a photo of everyone rushing geria (just before the pass, the set u was asymmetric to cover the other side of the pitch)
And here they rush gauci. Gauci has a good first touch but seems to like to change to his preferred foot sometimes which can get him in trouble if rushed. His long pass is also inaccurate and ineffective
Compare this to when we successfully moved the ball away from the right sided pressing trap to the left side, they left us a butt load of space
Or even if there were players around a player on the opposite flank they didn't swarm him. Burgess here is given time on the ball (after the photo, the players don't close)
In the second half, Souttar and Burgess created 2 big chances with long passes which is a real threat from them. Geria, unfortunately does not have a dangerous long pass in him and our team is not technical enough to play a series of short passes through a pressing trap. Here is an example where Geria had a dangerous long range option available in Miller, but he doesn't see him. Despite having time on the ball, he does not scan the pitch
In another case, Geria beats a player but does not see that they have left our left side unmarked
2) Cut out our threat from the wings
When most teams defend deep, they either do 2 rows or 4 or a row of 5 with 3 in front of it. The second line covers zone 14 which is the central region just in front of the penalty area where your most creative players like to pull the strings. Australia has no zone 14 threat, even long range shots tend to be both rare and ineffective, and almost all of our attack against a deep block comes from the flank. Saudi had a backline of up to 8 and only 1-2 players defending the second line, almost always defending the half space rather than z14. This meant that any attack from the wings had to beat 4 players rather than 2 which completely nullified us
On the right, there was a single player defending the half space and 8 (1 off screen) defending the backline. This also meant that our aerial threat was nullified as they could double team any defender. Interestingly, they would commit an additional defender to the second line of defence when we went down our left. See for instance
Perhaps this is a compliment to riley mcgree who is in form at club level.
3) Our threats on goal
In this match up we have 4 plausible avenues to goal
1) transitions resulting from excellent defensive work
2) set piece and aerial threat
3) long passes from souttar and Burgess
4) creative play on the flanks, occasionally using the half spaces
By tempting us to play out through our right hand side then swarming our players when we did they managed to successfully nullify our 3rd threat, but also turn over a lot of ball which nullifies our 2nd threat since we had little ball in Saudi's half. In the 2nd half we were able to better use Souttar and Burgess' distribution and bring this threat back. By avoiding the tradition 4-4-2 deep block formation for and 8-1-1 on the right flank or 6-3-1 when we were on the left flank, they nullified our threat from wings and were able to avoid any aerial threat by having more numbers in the middle. Saudi were not able to nullify the 1st threat - I think we are one of the best teams without the ball in the world and we might surprise people again if we get to the world cup. In the end we didn't take our chances and you have to applaud the tactics of Saudi arabia...
1) Forcing us to play out on our right flank.
This takes out some of our best attacking weapons. First Jordy Bos hardly saw the ball and souttar and Burgess both have deadly long passes that can unlock a defence. The latter was particularly important for Saudi to cut out, as they needed to play a high line to implement their high press. They also had a back up against Jordy Bos by putting the lightening quick Abdulhamid at rb in place of their usual Hamed.
So how did they force us to play out from the right flank? In setting u they would overload the middle and have more numbers defending their right side of the pitch than their left to tempt us to play through geria and miller. See for instance below (there were multiple examples of this)
Then once the ball goes out to our right, they up the squeezing intensity. The in particular team to rush geria and gauci everytime they have the ball. Here is a photo of everyone rushing geria (just before the pass, the set u was asymmetric to cover the other side of the pitch)
And here they rush gauci. Gauci has a good first touch but seems to like to change to his preferred foot sometimes which can get him in trouble if rushed. His long pass is also inaccurate and ineffective
Compare this to when we successfully moved the ball away from the right sided pressing trap to the left side, they left us a butt load of space
Or even if there were players around a player on the opposite flank they didn't swarm him. Burgess here is given time on the ball (after the photo, the players don't close)
In the second half, Souttar and Burgess created 2 big chances with long passes which is a real threat from them. Geria, unfortunately does not have a dangerous long pass in him and our team is not technical enough to play a series of short passes through a pressing trap. Here is an example where Geria had a dangerous long range option available in Miller, but he doesn't see him. Despite having time on the ball, he does not scan the pitch
In another case, Geria beats a player but does not see that they have left our left side unmarked
2) Cut out our threat from the wings
When most teams defend deep, they either do 2 rows or 4 or a row of 5 with 3 in front of it. The second line covers zone 14 which is the central region just in front of the penalty area where your most creative players like to pull the strings. Australia has no zone 14 threat, even long range shots tend to be both rare and ineffective, and almost all of our attack against a deep block comes from the flank. Saudi had a backline of up to 8 and only 1-2 players defending the second line, almost always defending the half space rather than z14. This meant that any attack from the wings had to beat 4 players rather than 2 which completely nullified us
On the right, there was a single player defending the half space and 8 (1 off screen) defending the backline. This also meant that our aerial threat was nullified as they could double team any defender. Interestingly, they would commit an additional defender to the second line of defence when we went down our left. See for instancePerhaps this is a compliment to riley mcgree who is in form at club level.
3) Our threats on goal
In this match up we have 4 plausible avenues to goal
1) transitions resulting from excellent defensive work
2) set piece and aerial threat
3) long passes from souttar and Burgess
4) creative play on the flanks, occasionally using the half spaces
By tempting us to play out through our right hand side then swarming our players when we did they managed to successfully nullify our 3rd threat, but also turn over a lot of ball which nullifies our 2nd threat since we had little ball in Saudi's half. In the 2nd half we were able to better use Souttar and Burgess' distribution and bring this threat back. By avoiding the tradition 4-4-2 deep block formation for and 8-1-1 on the right flank or 6-3-1 when we were on the left flank, they nullified our threat from wings and were able to avoid any aerial threat by having more numbers in the middle. Saudi were not able to nullify the 1st threat - I think we are one of the best teams without the ball in the world and we might surprise people again if we get to the world cup. In the end we didn't take our chances and you have to applaud the tactics of Saudi arabia...
