Examples of horrible soccer journalism

Option B with the possibility of two midfielders no more than ten yards from the CB's during defensive phases.

My idea for this would be to tie some sort of elastic ropes to the players so that when a player moves up to challenge a ball carrier, the midfield and defensive line respond in kind, either by shifting ballside as a unit, with a midfielder shutting down a passing lane to the ball carrier, or with a midfielder covering the space and another midfielder covering midfield runners.

Option A sounds like suicide as well as a way of destroying a team's hamstrings.

I can't see the argument for option A regardless.

In case I wasn't clear, what I mean is that if a left winger receives the ball on that flank, the right back has to step up to challenge him. Given that this team is athletic, the right sided central midfielder would either cut the passing options for the winger while the defensive line would shift towards the RB, keeping proper spacing throughout, or the right sided central midfielder could slot into a sort of shaded RB position, effectively blocking that channel as well as supporting the RB. Or you could have the CB move out to the RB position with the CM dropping into the CB, but I think this second approach would require lots more drilling.

This guy played and has been involved with soccer for 20 years

It kind of blows my mind. He thinks teaching the team to keep the ball and switch the point of the attack gives a bigger tactical advantage than spending the effort teaching zonal marking.

I think that if they're 14-18 years old and are still technically raw, you aren't going to turn them in to Thiago Alcantara. Teach them a defined role on defense and let them get out and run when they win the ball back.

Mother of god. How does he suppose a team can keep the ball if their are almost assuredly going to be out of position during a transition phase? That's almost negligent. He's going to destroy those kids' legs.

Giving players a simple framework has benefits at basically every level. I mean, option B is just basic defensive work. There is nothing revolutionary suggested there. Option A is literally something Bielsa tried and destroyed Bilbao in the process. And even he had a basic framework.

quote:

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Charles Reep, the father of soccer analytics — and a guy who made one big, glaring mistake that changed the course of English soccer for the worse.

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This statement has the feel of a scapegoat to it.

Not only that, it is not as if the English used the long ball by itself. I mean the English really didn't use the long ball from 76 to 83 when they won 7 out of 8 EC's. The English team hasn't really used the long ball at all, even under Taylor, when they had a shite ton of injuries and retirements. They didn't use it in 90, or 96, 98, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010 or even under Hodgson. They were just a terrible counter attacking team under Woy.

Not only that, long ball as a tactic works. It is why Pulis and Allardyce have never been relegated to my knowledge. Atletico Madrid use long ball, or did during the 2014 CL, better than any English team ever has. The English game for me is one with an emphasis on wide play supported by athletic and technical play from midfield. Crossing the ball in isn't long ball. Even Leicester City didn't use long ball. They just realized English teams are shite at possession, so they skipped that phase altogether and focused on creating mistakes and breaking at speed.

I really despise a lot of these soccer analyists who use stats as a crunch. There is a long and deep history of why the possession game fell out of favor (as evidenced by the career of Pep) and then came back into favor. I wish they would use context rather than shite headlines and revisionist history.

TL;DR version: Charles Reep did early statistics and formed the work behind Long Ball. It had success in one or two places but the author says it ruined England's National team in the 90s. Does he go into any significant detail? Not really. Can you get a better summary on why Reep was incorrect from his wikipedia page? Yes.

So unfortunately, the article is written as the equivalent of having a two inch penis, but pointing out that your friend has a one inch penis, in order to pick up chicks.

Also, despite several mentions of three passes, there was no Hoosiers reference. Potential is wasted in spades.