Uruguay 3-0 Colombia: Tabárez's solutions, Pékerman's troubles

 The decision-making of Óscar Tabárez and Néstor Pékerman in Uruguay and Colombia can't be more dissimilar now: the former copes with the absence of his world class Cavani-Suárez striker partnership due to suspension, while the latter enjoys such a deep pool of talent in quest for a way to fit it all within the same squad. The Montevideo clash showed a Uruguay of no glare, but cohesive and ruthless, and a Colombia of glare, but too imbalanced and fragile.

Although the Colombia boss didn't have James Rodríguez, he used instead decent playmaker Edwin Cardona from the start and later in the second half introduced another ball-playing midfielder in MacNelly Torres without subbing Cardona. Indeed, the use of Freddy Guarín shuttling to the right of holding midfielder Carlos Sánchez was reminiscent of the midfield diamond used by Roberto Mancini at Internazionale with Guarín in the very same role. Juan Guillermo Cuadrado, however, began the match wide on the left wing flanking Cardona and thus it was an unorthodox (and tipped) formation. Cuadrado's spot on the left, being right-footed himself, raised controversy amongst Colombian twitters, but Colombia's underperformance first and foremost was about tactical imbalance and just then about individual performances.

                                             

The image that heads this story is eloquent: whereas left full-back Frank Fabra is well protected by Cuadrado's tracking back, right full-back Santiago Arias is alone in front of oceans of space with no winger to double protect his channel. It only took some audacity by Uruguay's full-back Álvaro Pereira (as Martín Cáceres was early replaced through injury) to gain the bottom line and cross or provoke set pieces. All in all, Pékerman was justified to deploy two numbers nine - Bacca and Teo- with a complete platoon of creative players behind them as long as he surely expected Uruguay to seat deep with two banks of four and soak pressure up with 0-0 still on the score. Colombia's tactical imbalance became an issue when Uruguay took the lead via a Godín power header and thus Colombia had to chase the match. The home side sat deeper and exploited the wings yet again for the successive goals as Carlos Sánchez and Guarín were clearly outnumbered at covering the the pitch to the right. Teo should have tracked back, but he's proven great at running horizontally, not vertically.

The new troubles of Pékerman with Colombia seem rooted in his persistence on playing the whole offensive arsenal at expense of balance and width. The Copa América elimination to Argentina a few months ago was a similar match to this one in Montevideo: Pékerman fields a lone holding midfielder -that time it was Alexander Mejía- who clearly gets outnumbered by default formations such as 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1/4-3-3. Against Argentina, his squad bled in the center of the pitch; with Uruguay, it bled over the flanks (see heatmap).

                             

The old solutions of Tabárez with Uruguay, as usual, seem rooted in the boss's recognitions of where Uruguay as a team has world class talent and where it has just decent players. It's noteworthy, however, that both Suárez and Cavani were absent and anyway the block remained cohesive and well organized. One is even tempted to say that, had Uruguay played a strikerless formation of 4-4-0,  they anyway would have relied on set pieces to score and on their two banks of four to maintain their lead and alienate the opposition. Formation and strategy permit the return of both strikers with the minimal previous work allowed by international football.

The Montevideo match between Uruguay and Colombia gives credence to South American qualifiers' reputation as the toughest of all. For they demand quick solutions and punish dearly those who get into tactical troubles.

The tactics of Juan Carlos Osorio

British journalist Carl Worswick has it at the Guardian pages that Juan Carlos Osorio used to prowl and spy Gerard Houllier's Liverpool during his stay at Britain completing a university degree. Osorio had managed to rent a room in a flat neighboring the club's training facilities and would wake up early to watch and take notes for almost two years. His English days -the Man City spell in particular- would make of him such a meticulous trainer concerned with keeping his players fresh and healthy by rotating his lineups systematically. "I would die for the opportunity to one day manage there."  

Come the chance to take the Mexico job, the name of Osorio says far too little for several Mexican players and commentators who have been as quick to confess they knew nothing on him as to openly attack his signing. In order to know tactically speaking who is Osorio,  his 'British' upbringing tells just as much as his 'Colombian' stride, being runner-up to Marcelo Gallardo's River Plate, both in Copa Sudamericana and Libertadores.

Is Osorio a staunch pragmatist tailored in the fashion of the early Premier League in which 4-4-2 was the golden standard, speed and quality the only variables, and results all that were to be sought for? or is he a progressive Latin American ideologist who likes his squads to attack constantly through a possession style?

The actual answer is that he rotates himself between the pragmatist and the ideologist. The semifinal victory with his Atlético Nacional against Brazilian giants Sao Paulo FC for Copa Sudamericana got locked into a midfield battle in both legs and thus had to be decided in penalty kicks (which then was remarkable as the Paulistas counted with better individuals). The two-legged final against River Plate was a battle equally deaf and gridlocked in midfield only decided through the Argentine ruthlessness in set pieces. In that respect, Juan Carlos Osorio is a cold calculator who understands that direct elimination stages demand organization and physicality: if you can't beat the opposition straight away, then remain competitive and wear them out in the middle of the pitch, not in your own box.

The group stage of the last Copa Libertadores, however, enabled Osorio to deploy his side in full capacity at playing enthralling, vibrant football. There was this match in Medellín against Ecuadorean Barcelona de Guayaquil in which Osorio fielded a three-man defensive line and -instead of flanking it with wing-backs who theoretically have primary defensive duties- flanked it with attacking wingers pushed so high up as to widen the pitch and jail rivals in their own box: a de facto 3-3-4 hardly seen in any Premier League side. Atlético Nacional aesthetically executed their high-speed combination game, but, truth be told, got exposed by the Ecuadorean wingers who needed little to wreck havoc and the score hence ended in a 2-3 defeat for Atlético Nacional. For the next match, in La Plata against an Estudiantes side which also used a three-man defensive line, Osorio went pragmatic with a conservative formation that scrapped and had the vital three points from Argentina. That's Osorio: able to fathom all possibilities.

There's also a feature that might make Osorio a Latin American romantic: his reliance on enganches or old-school playmakers. From Edwin Cardona, Sherman Cárdenas and Yulián Mejía at Atlético Nacional to Paulo Henrique Ganso at Sao Paulo FC, Osorio likes that one kind of player not seen at all in the Premier League who dismantles a packed defense (like the ones Mexico will face for World Cup qualifiers) either with a through-ball or a long-range shot. Will Osorio find a Mexican able to play enganche in a possession-oriented squad?

The tactics of Osorio are so complex that they do escape the reach of traditional Mexican football punditry insofar as this is a man who rotates between the European and Latin American diverse schools of play. His rotations and experiments will certainly cause unconformity, but, all in all, this seems a coach flexible enough as to understand the difference between strategies needed for elimination stages, group stages, and scenarios posed by a Concacaf hex: the very same hex where counterattacking and conservative Mexican coaches have proven short of flexibility.

Osorio's signing is already testing how flexible (or inflexible) Mexican football is.