Football can be tough to pin down. With so much happening on the pitch, we tend to talk about tactics at a high level — they played on the front foot in a 4-2-3-1 — without really getting down to how the game actually works: roles, runs, rotations, reads, assignments, triggers, timing, angles, distances and all the other details that make up a style of play. Where would you even start?
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In this ongoing series, John Muller takes a closer look at the mechanics of the game, one little piece at a time, comparing how different teams play — and why — to help make football make sense.
Each edition can be found below.
Wall passes, pressing triggers and jumping your opponent
Third-man combinations in the double pivot
Cutting the pitch in half
Keeper-backsMidfield pivots and receiving the ball across the bodyDiagonalsThe triggers, traps and tempo of pressingSeam runs and what they do to defencesWide rotations to disrupt defensive structure
Attacking runs by centre-backs
(Header: design by Eamonn Dalton)