Soccer tactics board ireland4/17/2024 His movement and understanding of when to drop in and when to step back out into a more traditional midfielder’s position was outstanding and he finished the game with a remarkable 101 successful passes played. Gudelj’s expertise in how he performed this role should not be undervalued. Once they exploited this, Serbia then had a man on the ball, driving towards Ireland’s goal and with four different options in front of him to make use of. The Serbia front four, featuring their two forward and their two wing backs, pinned back Ireland’s defensive five which created big pockets of space for the forwards to drop into and Tadic to advance into. The additional problem Ireland then faced was issue of the space between their two units. As the image below shows, the back three and midfield three made their half of the pitch too big for Ireland’s five players to cover. If you think back to the game last week where our front three and midfield two did such an effective job in stopping Portugal’s build up play, their approach was based on keeping those five bodies in central areas as much as possible.īut with Serbia’s outside centre backs playing so wide this became much more difficult to do. This movement caused big problems for Ireland’s attempts to press. This had the knock-on effect of allowing the outside centre halves, Strahinja Pavlovic and Nikola Milenkovic to pull out to the sidelines while wing backs Filip Kostic and Filip Djuricic pushed up high and wide, pretty much in line with their front two. This is due to the movement of their holding midfielder Nemanja Gudelj, who continually dropped in either to the right or left of their most central defender Milos Veljkovic. Serbia’s back three though could easily have been interpreted as a back four to the casual observer. Serbia lined out in what would probably be best described as a 3-4-1-2 formation with Dusan Tadic operating in the link role behind a front two of Aleksander Mitrovic and Dusan Vlahovic. I don’t think so and I don’t think Kenny will either. Is it patronising to Ireland and Stephen Kenny then, considering we drew the game, to say ‘let’s see what we can learn from Serbia and maybe implement in our own play going forward’? They worked with a very specific system of play, which like Ireland featured a back three, that was both effective and attractive to watch. Serbia’s real strength seemed to be in the collective. But most of their players wouldn’t exactly be household names to the average football fan. But sometimes the real learning is in looking at the opposition and trying to figure out what it was that they did so well.ĭo Serbia have a higher quality of player available for selection than Ireland? Without a doubt. Managers will instinctively focus on what their team could do better. When you are comprehensively second best in a game it always presents an opportunity to learn, even when you managed to get a result. Was it because we continued to try to play football? Or anyone still for Bazunu? Was it because the Irish players fought right to the end for their manager? Or was it due to the performance of Gavin Bazunu? Was it because Stephen Kenny deserved some luck? Or just Bazunu? In short, Ireland managed to draw a match in which, based on the numbers, they would expect to be beaten the vast majority of the time. So its worthwhile doing similar from the off here so that we can have an early picture of how this one went. I finished my analysis piece of Saturday’s Azerbaijan game by pointing to some of the statistics that showed just how dominant Ireland had been in that game. Serbia's Nemanja Gudelj and a number of Ireland players at the final whistle. With Serbia arriving to Dublin, how would the next chapter unfold? THE IRISH FOOTBALL team has been a cause for mass debate for as long as I can remember.īut the constant dialogue around this team and vastly differing narratives that come with it seems more plentiful than ever.Īre we that good that we almost beat Portugal? Or are we that bad that we can’t even see off Azerbaijan? Do the two performances actually tell us far more about where we’re at than either of the results do?
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