Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea team can keep dangerous opponents at arm’s length, an unusual asset in the modern eraStep back from football and amid various ups and downs, backs and forths, check-backs and dead-ends, the first 100 years of its development after the modern laws were first drawn up in 1863 can be seen as comprising roughly linear development. We started with seven forwards and one defender and we slowly moved players back until we had four defenders and two forwards. We went from a chaotic charging game, through man-marking to zonal marking. By the mid-1960s, football was mature.The changes since have been incremental. There is far less sense of forward momentum. A style of play or shape becomes modish and...
Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea team can keep dangerous opponents at arm’s length, an unusual asset in the modern eraStep back from football and amid various ups and downs, backs and forths, check-backs and dead-ends, the first 100 years of its development after the modern laws were first drawn up in 1863 can be seen as comprising roughly linear development. We started with seven forwards and one defender and we slowly moved players back until we had four defenders and two forwards. We went from a chaotic charging game, through man-marking to zonal marking. By the mid-1960s, football was mature.The changes since have been incremental. There is far less sense of forward momentum. A style of play or shape becomes modish and...
Mikel Arteta’s side made basic errors in a predictable 2-0 defeat but it is the culture behind the scenes that is the real concernArsenal fans: honestly, what did you think was going to happen? Probably, in fairness, exactly that. Indeed, had you simulated this game several thousand times in advance, “an easy 2-0 milking for Chelsea with Romelu Lukaku running riot” would probably have been among the more common outcomes.All the same, there was a startling quality to the way Arsenal lost here. Not simply the speed of their capitulation but the sheer stupidity of it, the bone-headed determination to keep making the same elementary mistakes, the way the 11 on the pitch were pretty much the only people in...
The Euros showed that conservatism still dominates international football, but there are signs the club-style cohesiveness shown by Spain and Italy may be taking overThe broken glass has been cleared. Wembley Way is no longer sticky underfoot. As the sense of shame and disappointment fades, and the knee-zjerk panaceas melt away, it is perhaps worth reflecting that Euro 2020, however disgracefully it ended, was one of the great tournaments, perhaps the best since Euro 2000, and asking what that might mean for next year’s World Cup and beyond.There was a long period in which international football represented the pinnacle of the game; that was where you saw the greatest concentration of the best players. Then in the late 70s, as...
Gareth Southgate’s choice of formation was understandable but there was no doubt England lacked creativityAs England dropped deeper and deeper in the second half, as they succumbed to the same problem holding a lead that had beset them against Colombia and Croatia at the World Cup, the temptation was to wonder if anything had really changed. Why is it that England so often take the lead in big games and so often end up turning in on themselves, as though every battle must be turned into a re-enactment of General Gordon’s defence of Khartoum?But perhaps that is unfair, or at least to oversimplify the issue. That England failed to hold a lead – again – does not mean that caution...