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.

Argentina 1-1 Brazil: Dunga beats Martino

Such was the intense play that broke lines at peaks during the first clash between Argentina and Brazil for World Cup qualifiers, that one is left wondering whether the insipid countless friendlies that take South America's ultimate derby elsewhere across the globe taint the quintessence of the rivalry. In what is dramatically becoming the watermark of Gerardo Martino's tenure, Argentina indulged in its raw talent (even without Messi) producing vibrant counter-attacking football which must have created a bigger lead than 1-0, only to fade near to collapse when Dunga introduced Douglas Costa, Brazil equalized, and must have got the three points from Buenos Aires before David Luiz's red card.

Both managers used roughly the same formation, 4-2-3-1. Mystifyingly enough, Dunga resorted to Brasileirao names in key spots with mixed results: Santos FC's reborn Ricardo Oliveira and Lucas Lima were picked ahead of Costa himself and Oscar, thus meaning Neymar was deployed in the very same channel occupied by Ángel Di María. Barring some sparks from both, however, their contribution was rather scant in spite of the fact that having the two superstars on the same side of the field implies a gamble that was barely tested throughout. It was people like Willian, Dani Alves, Ever Banega or the Argentina central defenders -Funes Mori and Otamendi- who were most willing to ride their luck over the slippery turf.

A game of identical formations means identical duties and identical liberties. The full-backs (Alves, Filipe Luis, Roncaglia and Rojo) should cover the wingers (Willian, Neymar, Di María and Lavezzi) and the wingers should track back the full-backs. For this case, the free men were located in the holding midfield and in that number ten spot behind the lone striker. That is, the nominally free in either side were Lucas Lima and Éver Banega; the dominance of Argentina in the first stages of the match is thus explained by Banega's ample expertise over young and still untested Lucas Lima. While this latter made way more passes than the former, the bulk of his passes were backwards as the Sevilla FC man dropped deep and launched incisive through-balls to the front. Argentina's goal came after Banega cleared the ball from deep towards Di María forcing Luiz Gustavo out of the center and opening space for Lavezzi's run.

Lima, on the other hand, remained as isolated as Ricardo Oliveira upfront and this appeared explicitly instructed by Dunga, for this "immobility" was the key factor for Brazil's equalizer when Lima caught a rebound from the bar following a Costa's header inside the Argentine box. Had Lima dropped deep like Banega the whole match, he wouldn't have been fresh enough to be in the right place at the right time. The Canarinha rallied back and Neymar got activated attempting target twice within Argentine chaos. In that moment, Dunga subbed Lima off for Renato Augusto and modified from 4-2-3-1 to the 4-3-3 Corinthians normally use (with the same shuttlers: Elias and Augusto) in order to slow down the tempo and control the midfield.

Martino perhaps realized that he had awaited far too much for refreshing his side when he made a late double substitution (Paulo Dybala and Erick Lamela on for Higuaín and Banega). Having too little time to introduce a new tactical plan, the only two sources of hope for Argentina to get the first victory were set-pieces and David Luiz being sent-off for reckless tackles. Although this was a fair draw, Dunga departs reinforced from Buenos Aires and Martino is now more weakened than ever. 

The Argentine boss now heads to Colombia in a match that promises deep emotions and dire consequences for hosts and guests.

The amazing proliferation of playmakers in MLS

The one and only feature that shocked most during the first-leg clash between Seattle Sounders and FC Dallas was the presence of a clear-cut pattern in almost every goal threat. Whether it was Mauro Diaz spraying accurate through balls towards the channels worked by the Colombian speedy pair of Michael Barrios and Fabián Castillo -even unlocking Seattle's defense towards David Texeira-, or Andreas Ivanschitz getting past Cirigliano for the home side's eventual equalizer, the evidence is conclusive: traditional number tens surprisingly thrive in Major League Soccer.

Long thought as an obsolete interpretation of the position -mostly in Europe-, the old-school playmaker, enganche or trequartista, as it's called in Argentina and Italy, for all of his technical virtue, guile and flair, demands constant movement and pace by his forwards, shuttlers and full-backs. This player became endangered in the European game since it usually implies the deployment of two strikers that, by themselves, should provide the attacking width: which is fine in offensive phases, but becomes problematic at defending against wide formations such as, say, standard 4-4-2. Thus, classic tens like Francesco Totti or Luka Modric found place either as "false nines" (that is, an strikerless formation for possession-oriented sides), or as holding midfielders (deeper, they face less pressure, the argument goes).

Part of the above point also applies to our case-study playmakers: Diaz and Ivanschitz. In the first case, the Argentine occupied the number ten role in a modern 4-2-3-1 that has become default formation everywhere insofar as the wingers - for this specific, Barrios and Castillo- are willing and disciplined to track back and form two banks of four that make life impossible for the opposition. The downside of this approach is that it puts a considerable work load on the wingers' legs, exhausts them and risks losing cohesion (which actually happened when Sounders staged the 2-1 comeback). During the first stages of the match, however, Mauro Diaz and the Colombians were stealing the show and FC Dallas should have taken a bigger lead. Ivanschitz, on the other hand, was placed by Sigi Schmid on the left wing in an otherwise crystal-clear 4-4-2. There, the Austrian charged towards the center making overloads and helping Seattle to retain possession (Dempsey and Martins provided width).

Ivanschitz's equalizer is most illustrative the way playmakers operate in MLS. The Austrian overloaded the midfield (three men from Sounders, holding midfielders plus Ivanschitz against Ulloa and Cirigliano from FC Dallas), received the ball, beat Cirigliano and -astonishingly- found oceans of empty space in the spot that should have been covered by Jamaica full-back JV Watson. Ivanschitz pulled the trigger and netted home past Jesse González. What Ivanschitz did with his interior movement, tactically speaking, is a gamble: invites his full-back to make overlapping runs but entices Watson to do the same and leave a massive void in FC Dallas' defense. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires.

                                                

The underlying reason for the proliferation of old-fashioned playmakers is that MLS full-backs more often than not get caught too up in the pitch. Reading a piece on Borussia Dortmund's new boss Thomas Tuchel (who had Ivanschitz at Mainz in Bundesliga), one discovers that his predilection for playmakers (now he uses Shinji Kagawa) actually lies in the German trend of pressing relentlessly the opposition build-up play: the number ten harries the holding midfielder to force him to lose possession and produce an instant goal opportunity. An alternative to counter this kind of pressing is using a three-men defensive line that transforms full-backs into wing-backs and covers for their overlapping runs. It's fair to say that it's matter of time to the number ten's proliferation in MLS to provoke tactical developments similar to other leagues everywhere else.

Until we reach that point, nonetheless, virtuous playmakers like Michael Bradley or Nacho Piatti too will remain a huge attractive for a league that, for now, resembles something of a lost paradise.

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.

Are Chivas and Club America that different beyond Vergara?

In the midst of the endless scandals, resentful remarks, lies and sackings which permanently surround Chivas more or less since Jorge Vergara got married and divorced, Club America could be pictured as totally different simply by opposition. Two Liga MX titles, one Concacaf Champions League, no relegation troubles and the likes of Diego Reyes, Miguel Layún and Raúl Jiménez departing for good to Europe after completing successful cycles in Coapa. América, the brightest of sunrays; Guadalajara, the darkest of shadows.

The board headed by Ricardo Peláez (who as a striker played for both classic rivals in the nineties), however, has never been exempt of Vergara-esque controversy.  While Miguel Herrera was given up to two short tournaments of tolerance in order to build his summer of 2013 side of champions, the succeeding two America managers - Antonio Mohamed and Gustavo Matosas- were given scarce months to deliver or go away.

Just in the fashion of Florentino Pérez's Real Madrid, Peláez began talks with Matosas a year ago to replace Mohamed while El Turco was on the path for glory. Right after America finished that title's celebrations, Matosas was announced. Managing a team reinforced specifically at request of his predecessor, the Uruguayan struggled in the domestic competition but anyway achieved the berth to the Club World Cup in which the Mexican champions will face Barcelona next December. Matosas had made his own number of requests to Peláez after being painfully eliminated by Pachuca... and the America chairman politely refused them, showing Matosas the exit door.

Then, what's precisely that which differentiates the recent trajectories of Chivas and Club America? Both clubs are no models of public relations, calm, diplomacy and crisis management when things don't come their way, yet both have fared so radically different that a simple look at the relegation table tells the whole story. One could well argue that Chivas' sole reliance on Mexican talent makes them victims of a global trend of which America benefits by playing with seven or eight footballers not born in Mexico ("the team of the Americas", yelled Carlos Reinoso). That might be a legitimate claim, but nonetheless that's one claim played systematically by Jorge Vergara at trying to excuse his own poor work ethics.

Poor work ethics is of course a quintessential lubricant within the system in the Mexican league. No club is exempt, not even America. But perhaps Vergara has raised the standards of poor work ethics to new levels not known in other Liga MX clubs. Somehow, it's telling enough that Major League Soccer had to acquire the Chivas USA franchise after bad results, a shrinking fanbase, and discrimination-related scandals.  

When Vergara took over in 2002, his phrases were heard as flamboyant, audacious, exuberant and politically incorrect -which many believed a good thing to rejuvenate Mexico's top flight-. Now instead, many question Vergara's ability to handle such an important club and there are some who even question his wholesale ability to run the business which allowed him to purchase Chivas in the very first place. Are Chivas and Club America that different beyond Vergara? Not much, but Vergara is certainly an edge enough as to battle for relegation.

Sacking Klinsmann now? the case of Tabárez's Uruguay

 US Soccer always differentiated from the rest of the hemispheric national teams in terms of the durability of its technical staff. Unlike Mexico, Brazil or Argentina, sides which have had half dozens, if not complete ones, of managers throughout the past decade, the USMNT can boast to have had only Arena, Bradley and JK in charge. Path dependence is certainly a good thing from a managerial point of view in football as the staff and its leadership are given time to learn by doing, change, develop and improve.

During the nineties, old-guard world beaters Uruguay were enmeshed into mediocrity, anarchy and absolute failure at trying to qualify to any of that decade's World Cups (if Italy 1990, to which they did qualify, is taken as one from the eighties). Coaches came and went to no avail: La Celeste's exodus far from World Cups lasted 12 years until qualification happened just to endure a group-stage exit in Korea and Japan 2002 to Denmark and Senegal. After that, Uruguay's FA didn't seem to change that much and the unsuccessful path to Germany 2006 was divided between the tenures of Juan Ramón Carrasco and Jorge Fossati.

Following the loss to Australia in penalty kicks in Sidney for the WC continental playoff, Fossati remained but soon he got sacked in favor of Óscar Washington El Maestro Tabárez, whose first challenge in the national job was the 2007 edition of Copa América. There, Uruguay gained momentum and fell short to reaching that tournament's final when Dunga's Brazil beat them... in penalty kicks. As Conmebol's deadly qualifiers loomed for South Africa 2010, Tabárez began introducing young talents like Palermo's Edinson Cavani and Ajax's Luis Suárez. La Celeste finished fifth and sealed its qualification dramatically against a Costa Rican side that just needed one away goal in the continental playoff second leg in Montevideo. Anyway, Tabárez's guys made it to South Africa and the rest is well-known history.

What few see beyond the diehard style and ruthlessness of contemporary Uruguay is that Tabárez actually took the whole shop apart. El Maestro isn't only in charge of the senior squad, but also of the grassroots levels within an integrated and vertical structure of scouting, applied technology and communication with the coaches of the under-age national teams. For all of its old glory, Uruguay was almost nonexistent in junior competitions and following 2007 they can mention more than decent participations in u20 and u17 World Cups: 2007 in Canada, 2011 in Mexico, 2013 in Turkey. The durability of Tabárez's second tenure is certain to generate the path dependence and positive feedback much needed at infusing new generations with the best of the old national identities and styles of play to look forward into future.

The lesson for US Soccer is that no matter what happens in the October 10 showdown against Mexico for the ticket to the 2017 Confederations Cup, Klinsmann must remain in charge. The two successive WC qualifications of Tabárez's Uruguay were possible too with massive doses of good luck: both achieved through continental playoffs, the berth to Brazil 2014 just clinched in the Conmebol's fifth place spot as the host country was already qualified. In the almost ten years since Tabárez took over the national job, Uruguay also suffered an ignominious early exit in the 2012 London Olympics and, at the end of the day, the Uruguayan FA stuck tight with El Maestro.

Sacking Klinsmann and bringing in a new coach perhaps could provoke a rush of blood to the squad that might yield good results on a temporary basis. Those good results, however, are to be expected irrespective of the coach as the only competitive matches coming in the horizon are Concacaf WC qualifiers. Sacking Klinsmann now would equate to having sacked Tabárez after any of the many bad results Uruguay got in its respective paths to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. If that little country's case has some thing to offer to the enormous US Soccer, that some thing is that path dependence and durability in football are good things.