Is there a right (or wrong) way to play football? As long as you (a team) have a reasonable strategy to score more goals than your opponent, play anyway you like. But is every strategy or tactic a viable option that permits you to score more goals than your opponent? Surely if you throw on ten center forwards and a keeper, you don’t stand a chance – or oppositely ten center backs and a keeper may yield a fair share of clean sheets, but it’s hardly a viable solution to tilt the goal differential in your favor.
Above illustrates the obviousness and necessity of balance. Yet how a team tweaks the balance among the eleven men on the pitch is a finer detail that the greatest football minds will forever argue. However, before delving deep into tactical setups, it’s very important to strip down to the basics of what happens in a football. Goals aside, the simplest way I like to think about football is minimizing errors over 90 minutes and maximizing opponent’s errors over 90 minutes. Realistically how many legitimate chances does a team get to score per match, maybe 5-10? And that’s for a team with superior players and skill.
Perhaps your team has 1 chance every 12 minutes to score per match – that’s an awful lot of time spent on the ball where nothing of inherent value is happening – but two important latent things are most definitely brewing under the surface. First, your team is working through its offensive playbook to create all-important opposition errors. Second, you’re inviting the opposition to punish any mistake you happen to make while on the ball.
Offensive Speed Elicits Chaos
These two factors always seem to be in balance and can swerve to the side of disaster within a moment’s notice. Just look at a classic Jose Mourinho side and the extremely effective counterattacking football that has won him the biggest prizes in European football. Even still in his current stint at Roma, he punished Atalanta; his defense biding its time and striking when La Dea was forced into an error. Most importantly in his tactic, players know what to do and where to be when possession is won back, and look to force errors in the most compromising areas on the pitch.
Mourinho almost adopts a cynical look at football, inasmuch he knows the opposition will make a mistake, and he would rather be the beneficiary of an unforgivable mistake rather than have his team create one. There is a method to this madness, as so many goals in football occur in the chaos of a change of possession, and much more infrequently come from a methodical build up that is worked up through exquisite and pristine passing. It’s much harder to string together 12 perfect passes rather than 2 or 3 open field passes with defenders scurrying to get back and protect their goal.
Finding data to illustrate this point was difficult, but there are a few data points out there that confirm that speed and directness is good when looking to score. Statsbomb posted an article eight years (the data is still relevant) analyzing attacking speed in the Premier League.
The biggest indicator of goal success was attacking velocity (in meters per second) in which vertical distance traveled is divided by seconds in possession. So, traveling 5 meters in 1 second will yield the same velocity as a possession that traveled 50 meters in 10 seconds. The success of goal scoring chances is resounding between the fastest plays and slowest plays leading to shots. In fact, the 10% fastest possessions delivered nearly triple the success rate in scoring than the slowest 10% of plays. Even the 50th percentile cutoff has a stark difference in conversion rate, which is still probably more of a symptom of the greater effectiveness of high velocity goals.
Overall, the trend is obvious – as you move down the chart (aka faster plays) the conversion rate is much more positive, and teams should always be looking to charge forward. Or as the great John Wooden said, “be quick but don’t hurry.”
The graph below analyzes La Liga data over the past years, and it cannot be any clearer that goals come from next to no time spent on the ball by the scorer. Its not a direct complement to the velocity data above, but it does drive home the fact that goals do not come from slowing the game down. Here’s looking at you Ruslan Malinovskyi!
How Does This Translate to Offense, and Atalanta
So what do we know so far? Goals come through speed, and they infrequently come from the shooter dwelling on the ball. This may suggest that hoofball or Route 1 football is the most effective strategy in the game, and while it may have its moments a good defense will be able to sniff out these prayers in the long run.
What it suggests to me is, you have to mold the playing field to alter the velocity equation in your favor. A possession ending in a goal that travels 60 meters over ten seconds may have a decent chance of converting, but what about a possession that moves a mere 30 meters over five seconds? It has the same possession velocity, but everything is set up to a) regain possession in a more dangerous area; and b) take advantage of a defense’s lack of cohesion after turning the ball over. You create velocity by shrinking the racetrack, not doping to run faster.
There’s nothing new and profound in this style of thinking, and you may be able to think of double digit times where this happened to Atalanta after being caught with its hand too deep inside the cookie jar. Nonetheless, it helps set up the framework of how a team could set up tactically, and how and when it decides to press to create chances as close to the opposition’s goal as possible.
In fact for Atalanta it can set up synergistic benefit, as it still allows Gian Piero Gasperini’s men to furiously press as we all have grown accustomed to; yet, it only requires his team to press in the most inviting moments, simultaneously having the opposition create its gravest errors in moments that permit Atalanta to create the highest velocity possessions. The two goals below personify the basic building blocks of possession speed, pressing, and opposition error that lead to repeatable goal scoring possessions – and even a blueprint to trap teams going forward.
Duvan Zapata’s goal is more of a symptom of a Juventus error (nothing wrong with that). However, what ensues is key. Berat Djimsiti, wastes no time getting the ball forward to the wide open Zapata. The Colombian is wide open due to the furious exchange of possession, giving Leonardo Bonucci and Mattijs De Ligt no chance to recompose themselves. The whole passage of play from Djimsiti’s pass to Zapata finding the back of the net is only 5 or 6 seconds, and Atalanta traveled less than half the pitch to score – a velocity score that would probably be upwards of the 80% decile on the previous chart.
Second is Ruslan Malinovskyi’s thunderbolt against Inter. This goal more combines a nice defensive setup that permits a fast transition in which Inter cannot get numbers back to adequately defend. It all starts with stuffing Matteo Darmian in the corner, who has no chance but to hoof it long (not long enough), right into the inviting trap set up by Jose Luis Palomino – who gets the ball up to Zapata in holdup. Perhaps a lucky touch lays the ball up perfectly for Malinovskyi who strikes it perfectly. But again, the whole passage of possession takes about 5 seconds for the ball to travel less than half the pitch – nowhere near enough time for Inter to properly transition back to defense.
These two goals illustrate the beauty that can result from putting yourself in a position to succeed and capitalize on opposition errors. Atalanta frequently does this with its fervent press and hassling of opponents. Just look at poor Marcelo Brozovic last week in Atalanta’s match against Inter. The Croat had all three of Atalanta’s midfielders dogging him close to his own eighteen yard box, and after he lost possession only a brilliant save by Samir Handanovic prevented Atalanta from going up one goal. Again, it only took five seconds of possession for Atalanta to come agonizingly close to taking three points away off Inter.
A few goals or instances in isolation are not indicative of a whole body of work, but the point remains that good things happen when possessions are quick, and shrinking the size of the pitch (north to south) elicits a more effective velocity, rather than rapidly working the ball out of the back. An effective press can help make speed more dangerous (which will come in the next article). Atalanta knows how to convert in these situations, but given that so few dangerous possessions come per match – how does La Dea cope with the other 80-85 minutes of matchtime? This is where the press compliments the velocity, and ultimately overwhelming the opposition with quantity. Until next time let’s watch for how Atalanta does offensively with fast transitions, what works for them, and maybe what can be improved. But as always, Forza Dea!!!
