Technical Defending

10 Seconds Of Not-Quite-Good-Enough

Aston Villa and Southampton 

Demonstrate Proper Defending, Mostly

Aston Villa, home to two American boys, Brad Guzan, the GK and Eric Lichaj (lee-high) the left back, battled Southampton on September 22 and in a frantic, high pressure game, lost 4-1.

From that game, however, some useful images of individual defending could be found.  Below, some screen grabs that show good defending, and good defending gone just slightly wrong...

It's the look we see the defender taking here that makes this top-class.  He isn't just watching the ball, he's evaluating what's coming next.  If the central player turns, he's going to cover his central partner.  If the ball comes back wide (which it does) he knows he can tackle because he has his two center backs in a 2 v. 1 and cover inside from his central mate.

The AVFC players collapse hard on the pass back to the touchline, and should walk away with it...but the center back starts waving his arms about complaining about some contact (think the opposing coach Sept. 22, 'Boks readers) and before he can drop them, the S'ton player has nicked the ball and is off to the races...

Now, because he reacted fastest and kept his head, the S'ton attacker has created a fine chance for his team.  While the game was not a thing of beauty, there was much high-speed defending and it was clever reads and reactions like this one that lead to the win for S'ton.  What is very striking, however, is when watching top-level soccer, how rarely players "take on" defenders.  There is lots of 1-2-3 touch passing, never really engaging the defender so much as inviting him to step and getting rid of the ball before he can challenge.  There is a significant amount of dribbling to escape pressure (not the same as dribbling to break down a defender) but only rarely do we see attackers truly running at defenders with intent to break past them.  It's a statement on the quality of the defending, the patience of the attackers, and the value of possessing the ball.

Here's one more way of saying it: the six forward players for S'ton attempted to dribble by a player 14 times as a group.  They beat that defender 8 times.  Puncheon and Lallana attempted 9 of those 14 (they are the right and left wingers, respectively) and succeeded 4-of-9.  Outside backs, we might conclude, must be lock-down 1 v. 1 defenders...4-1 to Southampton indicates that Lichaj is under some pressure after Puncheon beat him on 75% of his attempts.  Conversely, attackers must be able to make the most of the times when it is appropriate to take on a defender, 'cause it sure ain't easy.

Here's their head-to-head comparison:

(legend to interpret this mess is here)