Posts Tagged ‘Napoli’

Wigan Athletic: The revival of the back three in the Premiership?

Posted: April 18, 2012 by Salim Masoud Said in English Football
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The majority of teams in England’s top flight utilise the same formation. Since December, Wigan have used a 3-4-3 system that has finally become coherent in recent weeks and seen them have the upper hand over the bigger teams. Salim usually doesn’t like to write about anything to do with the English Premier League as it’s well-covered, but the footprints of Wigan’s haven’t been so well-covered so, naturally, he has decided to write this.

The three-man defence has been ubiquitous with the Italian Serie A in recent times with relatively unfashionable teams, notably Napoli and Udinese, using wing-backs to take advantage of the lack of width in a league where the 4-3-1-2 system was king. Last season, Walter Mazzari’s Napoli finished third and qualified for the Champions League group stages using a 3-4-2-1 system, whilst Francesco Guidolin’s Udinese finished fourth after adopting a 3-5-1-1 system, notably scoring 4 goals at the San Siro in a 4-4 draw against eventual Champions AC Milan (who also had the best defensive record in the league). There was further relative success in the relegation fight, too, as Cesena’s adoption of three at the back  saw them finish seven points above the relegation zone.

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Ghana v Tunisia: The Battle of the Counter-Attackers

Posted: February 4, 2012 by Salim Masoud Said in African Cup of Nations 2012, African Football
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Tunisia versus Ghana promises to be the most fascinating quarter-final, tactically. Don’t hold your breath, however, for promises are often broken. This promises to be a fascinating encounter because both of these sides are predominantly counter-attacking sides.

Will Ghana come out?

Being the favourites, the onus will be on Ghana to take the game to Tunisia. However, taking the game to the opposition is the exact problem the Black Stars have been facing since the 2010 World Cup. Since the success of the counter-attacking strategies at the 2010 Cup of Nations, where they reached the final, and the2010 World-Cup, where they were a Luis Suarez handball and Asamoah Gyan missed penalty away from reaching the semi-final, they have been unable to change from counter-attacking team to a more dominant team.

Why should they change what’s been working? Well, the disadvantage of being counter-attacking is the short-termism of it all –it only works if you’re the underdog. After a short while, opponents begin to figure you out; they’re happy to sit deep and let you attack them.

(A current example is Napoli in Serie A who were relatively successful with their countter-attacking 3-4-3 formation for large parts of last season but began to struggle towards the end the season when teams were happy to sit back, maintain their shape and let them do the attacking. Consequently,  this season they’ve been unable to replicate the form of last season. Despite that – and more tellingly, perhaps – Napoli have been successful enough to make it into the knockout stages of the Champions League where in a ‘Group of Death’ they were perhaps the ‘underdog’.)

Back to Ghana, the Black Stars are no longer underdogs and since the World Cup they’ve at times looked short of ideas and struggled to impose themselves in games due to the lack of a true playmaker in the team. Even if they go on to win the whole tournament with these tactics, it remains a problem that could cost them in the long run.

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