¿De verdad fueron las rotaciones?

    La humillante eliminación mexicana de la Copa América Centenario empezó en los botines de Gary Medel. Corrían los primeros 20 minutos del choque cuando el Pitbull había proyectado ya un par de pelotas largas buscando la espalda de la dupla de centrales mexicanos. La primera de ellas forzó una barrida de último hombre de Néstor Araujo mandando a córner mientras la segunda exhibió a Héctor Moreno corriendo hacia atrás para el 1-0 de La Roja. Evidentemente, Osorio dispuso jugar con la línea defensiva muy adelante para presionar la salida desde atrás por tierra de los de Juan Antonio Pizzi.

¿Cuál fue la respuesta del campeón defensor? Salir desde atrás, pero por aire. Las primeras veces fue Medel, algunas Marcelo Díaz, otras el Rey Arturo, y algunas, menos acertadas, fueron de Claudio Bravo: todas buscando la superioridad en velocidad y en técnica de recepción de Alexis Sánchez y Edu Vargas sobre sus marcadores. Un éxito rotundo.

La equivocación de Osorio no fue de método (rotar alineación o no rotarla), sino de estrategia (jugar adelantado o esperar organizado atrás). El patrón táctico del 7-0, por ejemplo, fue sorprendentemente similar al de las golizas que solía llevarse el técnico portugués André Villas-Boas en su fugaz paso por la Liga Premier dirigiendo al Chelsea y al Tottenham. El blog británico de debate táctico, ZonalMarking, concluyó sobre la propuesta fallida del portugués y sobre su despido tras un 5-0 frente al Liverpool de Luis Suárez:

[Jugar con línea defensiva adelantada] es la característica definitoria de su estilo como entrenador, y aunque no es una táctica equivocada por sí misma, Villas-Boas repetidamente la usó en situaciones donde no cuadraba bien con sus propios jugadores, regalando mucho al rival. Eso, en otras palabras, es lo opuesto al objetivo de la táctica...

A pesar de que el debate de las rotaciones es el ariete más popular para golpear la joven gestión de Osorio, una crítica mucho más robusta a sus decisiones es que él pecó de obstinado por no adaptar su idea al material humano a su disposición, en vista sobre todo del material humano del rival. Jugar adelantado requiere de futbolistas capaces de cumplir con funciones adicionales a las que dicta su posición. Con el 0-0 aún en el marcador, México lanzó un trazo largo para buscar la espalda del propio Medel y fue entonces que Bravo salió de su área, bajó la pelota con el pecho para hacerse de ella y salió jugando por abajo vía Gonzalo Jara.

El fiasco significa reconocer los límites de los jugadores mexicanos seleccionables. Y también los límites que esto impone sobre los modos en que México puede jugar. Hay defensas disciplinados pero desorientados a campo abierto, porteros con mucha reacción bajo palos pero sin juego de pies, medios fantásticos que como por acto de magia desaparecen, delanteros letales dentro del área desprovistos de las virtudes para salir de ella. Los recursos futbolísticos del Tri obligan a otras estrategias. Los pies en la tierra.

Bien podría pedirse la cabeza de Osorio y traer en su reemplazo a alguna de las mentes maestras de la táctica contemporánea como Diego Simeone o Massimo Allegri y, no obstante, habrían de vérselas con la misma materia prima. Si el mea culpa del técnico colombiano es sincero y ha aprendido la amarga lección, conservarlo en el cargo al menos garantizará decisiones más sensatas y respuestas menos rebuscadas frente a la prensa. A final de cuentas la paliza que se llevó su equipo nos la llevamos y merecemos todos nosotros también.

What is Miguel Layún's best flank on the pitch?

In view of the goal-scoring tally Miguel Layún had with Porto departing from the left towards his natural and strong right foot against Maccabi Tel Aviv and Vitoria Setubal, all talk about putting him back to the right flank seemed nonsense. Having him playing inverted, the argument says, adds an important offensive threat by enabling Layun to cut inside and try from long range or even reach goal-line, check back, and cross immediately: the Porto experience was doubtlessly demonstrating so.

Let us recall Layún's conversion from average right winger towards outstanding left wing-back for Club América. After a short-lived journey in Serie A with Atalanta, he returned to Mexico and endured personal tough times when people tweeted constantly #TodoesculpadeLayún (#BlameitallonLayun), until the arrival of Miguel Herrera. Herrera had brought solid Adrián Aldrete to play left wing-back for main league competition while handing to Layún the Copa Mx minutes. Playing the cup, Layún managed to score screamers outside the box departing from the left and also learned slowly to use his left foot to launch more or less acceptable crosses. By the summer of 2013, Layún had claimed for himself Aldrete's starting spot and begun his assault on the national team for the World Cup.

Layún's offensive contribution from the left in Brazil 2014 was nonetheless poor. His military discipline and endless energy helped Mexico to remain compact and cohesive versus top opposition at the biggest stage, but it was all about defending. A good explanation of the rise of Layún is that he was in fact part of a global trend of inverted wingers and inverted full-backs. Attacking wingers drifting inside not only enabled them to find space and reach for target with their strong natural foot, it also enabled the full-backs to make overlapping runs and add unpredictability, penetration and width (a classic example of this was pre-Guardiola Bayern Munich: Robben would cut towards his left foot from the right flank while Lahm would surge and cross with his natural right foot). Hence, a tactical development to counter inverted attacking wingers was to place inverted full-backs as well, able to deal with dribblers with their strong foot (Spanish right-footed full-back César Azpilicueta claiming Ashley Cole's starting spot on the left for Chelsea remains a great antecedent for this Layún-esque development). In this light, the deployment of Layún on the left flank of the full-back spot was always a defensive resource against stronger sides which sometimes -and only sometimes- went offensive against weaker ones.

It took the challenge of an old-school right-footed winger to test Layún's defending on the left for Champions League level. Dynamo Kyiv's victory in Do Dragão was as much about undoing Porto in the middle as about exposing full-backs Maxi Pereira and Layún in the channels. While Pereira dealt with Paraguayan inverted winger Derlis González, the Mexican man dealt with Ukrainian Andriy Yarmolenko. Barring the penalty kick that Yarmolenko himself scored, his continuous runs towards goal-line on his right foot produced the best chances in the first half that made the away side fully deserving of their lead. Layún was powerless.

For the second half, the Porto boss Julen Lopetegui took Pereira (number 2) off, moved Layún (number 21 encircled in yellow) to the right, and placed central defender Bruno Martins Indi (number 3) to the left full-back spot in order to deal with Yarmolenko. Lopetegui's improvisation did not work either since Derlis González found even more space between Danilo and Layún to increase Dynamo's lead to 2-0 (graphic taken from UEFA's full-time tactical lineups).

What is thus Miguel Layún's best flank on the pitch? He has proven such a versatile, functional and fast-learning footballer that the actual answer is: it depends. It depends on whether his team plays with possession or plays at the counterattack, on whether he should overlap upfront or should stay tight at the back, whether he faces inverted wingers or natural ones. Noteworthy is also the fact that Layún himself playing for Watford was placed advanced on the field by Quique Sánchez-Flores in the inverted winger spot; there, Layún cut inside while left natural full-back José Holebas overlapped. The goal he scored against Everton at Goodison Park in the first match of the Premier League demonstrated so: it added an offensive threat without compromising defensive cohesion.

Layún is truly a man for all seasons. Not only does his football accept questions of left or right, but also questions of defense and attack, width and depth.

Honduras 0-2 México: Osorio outfoxes Pinto

  Call it lackluster and dull, but every analysis of the Mexico victory in Honduras should take into account the astute tactician seated in the other bench. By the implementation of strategies and tactics which appeared counterintuitive, Jorge Luis Pinto outfoxed all of his peers between 2013 and 2014 at the helm of Costa Rica. One good example of this was his use of a three-men defensive line: the tactical textbook says a third central defender becomes redundant when playing against a lone striker formation and thus becomes one player less in midfield.

Well, during the World Cup the man stuck to his plan and his success even forced Italy and Uruguay to play Pinto's tactics facing each other to claim the last berth to the last 16 after Costa Rica's early qualification. A recall of that match's tactics by Michael Cox might help us at understanding why El Tri's show in San Pedro Sula made a great deal of Mexican fans fall asleep:

You can’t judge any match purely – or even primarily by formations alone. But if there’s one formation match-up that should be avoided at all costs, it might be 3-5-2 against 3-5-2. It tends to produce slow, frustrating matches with neither side capable of finding space in the opposition half – both sides have a spare man at the back, the wing-backs run up and down the line with one another all game so there’s no outlet on the flanks, and the midfields tend to cancel each other out.

In other words Mexico and Honduras were playing the same formations. Those might have been 3-5-2 against 3-5-2 making the boredom Cox notes, or 3-4-3 against 3-4-3 (evidence suggests this latter was the precise case here), but the fundamentals remain the same: it was a squad matching up another squad on a football field and vice versa. Miguel Layún knew he had to cover Emilio Izaguirre, Hugo Ayala knew he was there for Érick Andino, Héctor Moreno knew his man was Mario Martínez and so on. At times, both teams were actually man-marking instead of zonal-marking and that became fatally evident within the open angle that captured the whole pitch in the build-up towards Garrido's devastating knee injury:

Honduras playing with three center backs like Mexico, Oswaldo Alanís makes a decoy run on the left wing to lure Wilmer Crisanto on him and open space for Javier Aquino to pick the ball, Aquino does so and gets past his man-mark (Johnny Palacios); Crisanto suddenly realizes a central defender has get caught up in the field and runs frantically to tackle Aquino and stop him. Crisanto gets Aquino down and involuntarily injures his teammate. In the frame, one even can see Mexico and Honduras playing 2014 Costa Rica tactics: Javier Hernández is alone in front of three defenders like the Honduras nine, Rubilio Castillo, in front of three Mexicans.

Juan Carlos Osorio was clearly deploying attrition warfare against Jorge Luis Pinto. In a game of equal formations and man-marking, the side better prepared physically and with more individual quality usually beats the side less prepared and with less talent. Pinto, strategically speaking, used to beat bigger sides (Uruguay, England, Italy) harnessing on their need to get past a lesser side, but Osorio here outfoxed him harnessing on Honduras' need to get the three points after their loss to Canada.

  

In spite of Osorio appearing now as a boring and gray man in the eyes of many, his first away victory in Concacaf proves him a coach that does study his bench rivals no matter how humble the opposition might appear.

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.

Osorio's Atlético Nacional goes conservative in La Plata

  The 3-3-4 formation which the Atlético Nacional de Medellín boss, Juan Carlos Osorio, deployed for the home match against Ecuadorean Barcelona de Guayaquil was indisputably the main factor behind the most vibrant Libertadores match so far. Atlético Nacional had thrown punch after punch, worked both the inside and the outside of the pitch to attack, showed energy and courage. And, at the end, nevertheless, the Ecuadoreans took the best out of the tactical imbalance of the Colombians and collected the three points with a 3-2 victory that uncovered the ugly face of Osorio's romanticism.

That ugly face was almost crystal-clear: those who should have been the wing-backs within a traditional 3-4-3, Venezuelan wingers Alejandro Guerra and Jonathan Copete, were pushed so high up that, while both helped to connect with the forward partnership of Pablo Zeballos and Luis Ruiz through their mobility and dribbling (Guerra was unstoppable on the right), the three-man defensive line and the holding midfield duo were left alone against Barcelona's 4-2-3-1. Sometimes, Atlético Nacional had a spare man on the back and often that wasn't enough as the opposition's attackers were faster on the counter. Therefore, it was easy for the Ecuadorean side to harm Atlético Nacional with simple transitions.

The romantic mistake was not to be repeated yesterday in the away game at La Plata versus former Valencia CF manager Mauricio Pellegrino's Estudiantes. Osorio moderated his approach, although 'moderate' might sound euphemistical if one considers that Atlético Nacional only managed to make one shot on target -the winner by Jonathan Mejía- during 90 minutes. Indeed, he went conservative by reverting to a typical 4-2-3-1 shape with four natural centre-backs (Murillo, Henríquez, Peralta and Nájera) in the back line. Osorio also dropped Zeballos and lined up Ruiz as the lone forward whereas Alejandro Guerra was fielded on the right wing and Mejía in the number ten role behind Ruiz himself.

Osorio's caution is illustrated in the above image: despite the fact that the eleven players of Estudiantes appear in a defensive 5-3-2 shape on their own half, just eight field players of Atlético Nacional appear in the offensive phase of the 4-2-3-1. That is, the centre-back pairing, Peralta and Henríquez, are on their own half with no one to mark and thus the system is quite cautious                      

Tellingly enough, the only goal of the match came from a quick counterattack in which Estudiantes' own wing-backs (Rosales and Álvaro Pereira) didn't track back with enough speed and hence the centre-back trio of Seba Domínguez, Jonathan Schunke and Leandro Desábato was exposed by the mobility of Ruiz making a great decoy run. And the lone Estudiantes holding midfielder, Gastón Gil, was easily beaten by Mejía as well as by Guerra a few minutes later for another dangerous Colombian attack.

What one can draw from Osorio's counterattacking strategy against Pellegrino is his faithfulness to the tactical textbook of conventional wisdom. When the opposition lines a centre-back trio, the textbook says, a lone striker is to be flanked by wingers on either side so they can drop to help in the midfield battle and this makes one of the enemy three centre-backs redundant. The opposition may have possession but will be vulnerable to counterattacks at pace as the wingers can surge and create one-on-one situations: exactly the same that Barcelona de Guayaquil did to Atlético Nacional in Colombia.

In order to equalize, Pellegrino also attempted to play textbook strategies by switching constantly to the many variants of 4-4-2 after half time, but his tactical shifts were frankly confusing. For instance, he deployed Seba Domínguez, a heavy defender now on his 34, on the right full-back spot to no offensive avail. Having observed Domínguez's situation, Pellegrino subbed him off for a classic Argentine trequartista, Román Martínez, and thus placed an otherwise young forward, Carlos Auzqui, on the void left by Domínguez's departure. Confusing and chaotic. Dominant but unable to penetrate.

By the final whistle, Osorio celebrated effusively, for his tactical and strategic shifts towards conservatism proved fruitful. This Colombian coach, who in other scenarios likes to make risky bets and produce enthralling football, is learning quick how to play round-robin tournaments with caution and patience.