Crystal Palace also take a 1-0 advantage gain during their semi final vs Cardiff City.

By Tim NashDo you ever watch a game and leave feeling you missed something, usually the exact things you came to look for? Have you ever gone to scout a team and come away thinking you haven’t gotten what you need?

You should be able to learn something about every game you see. That’s the nature of soccer. Every match is unique, every player is different and no two situations are ever duplicated exactly.

You also should be able to scout a team and be able to enter a match with that team at least knowing what to expect. There should be few surprises.

There is a science to watching a game, and it involves careful observation, a keen eye and the ability to concentrate on specific areas as well as the big picture. Keep in mind that good scouting can minimize the opponent’s damage. But what are you trying to find out? What do you want to bring back to your team?

“You want to be able to expose weaknesses and take away the other team’s comfortable tendencies,” says Jim Lennox, coach of Hartwick College. “Whatever the other team’s rhythm or pace, you want to get them out of it. To that, you have to assess a team collectively and individually.”

Check out the defense
“When you look at a game, the first thing you want to do is identify the team shape, starting from the back,” says Lennox.

Knowing the formation of a team’s defense will enable you to understand how the opponent can be exposed by your attack. To fully grasp what the team is trying to do defensively, first check out the numbers.

“When I look at the defense, I look to see if they play flat across,” adds Bob Gansler, coach of the USISL’s Milwaukee Rampage and former U.S. National Team coach. “Do they play with a sweeper? Do they play with three or four in the back?”

While you are studying the team’s defensive shape, you will get a superficial view of how your own team’s attacking tendencies relate. But there is much more to be determined before you move on. For example, what do the players in the back do with the ball once they win it?

“I like to look at team tendencies — do they like to build it out of the back or go over top?” says Gansler. “If they have a combination of both, what percentage of each do they use?”

In this area, you should also pay attention to what the goalkeeper likes to do with the ball. Does he/she usually throw or punt, and what percentage of the time does he/she do each?

Willy Roy, coach of Northern Illinois and former coach of the NASL’s Chicago Sting, offers another potentially helpful bit of information you can acquire from observing the keeper — where does he/she set up on corner kicks or free kicks and in what instances is he/she more likely to come off the line? Knowing the keeper’s tendencies can help you decide if you can adjust your set plays to capitalize on his/her positioning.

You can also leave a game with some useful information if you can identify the team’s weak players. For instance, it fits your team’s style to allow them to slowly build it out of the back, but two of the three backs are very capable ball-handlers and distributors. The third back is somewhat of a nightmare with the ball at his feet. By knowing the third back is not very adept with the ball, you can try to force the team to give it to him.

“Any time I can get the ball to the opponent’s bad player, I’ll try to do that. There is a reason he is a bad player.”

Watch for midfield tendencies
When scouting a team’s midfield, it is perhaps most important to find the impact players. These players are quite possibly the easiest to spot and they will stand out at some point within their team’s first three possessions.

“It’s important to find out who the key individuals are, the ones who decide the tempo and pace,” says Gansler.

The pacesetters are the ones who are going to require most of your team’s attention, so it is important to study their habits, good and bad.

“You need to know if they like to receive the ball at their feet or if they like to run on to it in space,” says Gansler. “If you know this, you can adjust to take away what they are comfortable doing.”

After identifying the key midfield players, move on to see how the players around them are positioned and how they interact with their teammates.

“Find out the shape of the midfield,” says Lennox. “Do they have two center mids, and how do they play together? These are things you can’t get from watching tape.”

Watching a game in person also enables you to see more of each player’s nuances. As Roy says, the little things make the biggest differences.

“It’s important to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of individual players,” says Gansler. “A lot of times players don’t know enough about the players they are up against.”

There are always one or two players on a team who won’t jump out at you when you sit down to analyze a game. And these are the players who will end up killing you — the workhorses, the ones who do the dirty work, the ones who start things off in the right direction. What can you do to ensure that you don’t overlook these players?

“With a defensive midfielder, you can notice running ability, work rate and someone who is not afraid to go into 50-50 battles,” say Roy. “You might find someone who can do everything at 80 percent, instead of someone who can do a few things at 100 percent.”

Analyze attacking patterns
When viewing a game, you should try to determine the pattern of a team’s attack. Find out where it usually starts and how it proceeds up the field. Maybe it flows up the field in a gradual procession of short passes, maybe the backs ease the ball to the midfielders who thoughtfully seek the goal scorers. Or maybe the ball soars up field with one big bang.

Don’t try to get this information first, however. You should understand the team’s formation before looking at its attacking tendencies.

“Once you know the shape, then you look and see how the shape is altered in attacking and defending,” says Lennox. “Then you are moving into style of play. What are the tendencies? Do they bypass the middle half of the field? Do they use long vertical balls?

“You want to see how they achieve penetration,” Lennox adds. “Are they successful at holding the ball and how? Then look at the block of front-runners — how many are there and how are they positioned?”

When watching the front-runners, it’s a good idea to see what they are comfortable doing, and hopefully, you’ll discover what they are uncomfortable doing. Then you can try to force them into situations in which they are not at ease.

“When I look at a team’s attack, I like to see how the front-runners receive the ball and what their tendencies are,” says Gansler. “Do they like to receive it and go, lay it off to a teammate or play off of other forwards.”

As important as what they like to do is where they like to do it.

“I look to see if they like to attack down certain sides, or through certain individuals,” says Gansler. “It’s important to see who the receivers are — which players they like to play the ball to.”

Roy remembers his days with the Chicago Sting and how scouting enabled his team to effectively mark the New York Cosmos star striker Giorgio Chinaglia.

“He liked to get the ball on the run on his right foot,” says Roy. “He would start his run from way out on the left and move into the middle to receive it on his right foot so he was facing the goal.”

Knowing that, the Sting was able to force him away from those areas and cause him to try something less effective, Roy’s scouting was effective because he understood not only what Chinaglia liked to do, but he has a good idea of his own team’s strengths and weaknesses.

“You know your team’s weaknesses, and maybe you can camouflage them,” he says.

You can also provide some helpful information back to your own defenders by paying attention to the front-runners on the team you are scouting.

“Players often don’t know the ‘footedness’ of an opponent,” says Gansler. “If I am marking someone, there are two things I need to know -— which foot he likes to use and how much speed he has.”

Studying set pieces
During the course of a game, coaches and scouts should also look for specific trends of the team they are watching. How do they arrange different set pieces, who takes the free kicks, where do their goal kicks usually go, etc.

When Roy was with the Sting, he had an extremely dangerous goal scorer in Karl-Heinz Granitza. Granitza was also deadly on direct kicks from 40 yards in. But Roy held his breath every time Granitza displayed his proclivity at finding the net on a restart.

“When Karl-Heinz Granitza took a free kick, he was very effective,” says Roy. “But when he took a penalty kick he struggled. He could curve the ball around a wall perfectly, and the goalkeeper had very little chance at it. But put him 12 yards in front of the goal with nothing between him and the goalkeeper and that was a different story.”

Granitza needed that wall in front of him to be effective. Without it, the shot apparently wasn’t as easy for him.

“If someone would have caught on to it, they never would have formed a wall when he was taking a free kick,” says Roy.

Editor’s note: Tim Nash is the editor of Soccer News, where this article appeared in May 1996 issue. It was reprinted in the January/February 1998 issue of Soccer Journal. Since then, Gansler became the coach of the Kansas City Wizards and won the 2000 MLS Cup.
]]> http://footballasiknowit.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/scouting-a-team/feed/ 0 jimmyessential http://footballasiknowit.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/glory-glory-man-utd/ http://footballasiknowit.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/glory-glory-man-utd/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:34:23 +0000 JimmyEssential http://footballasiknowit.wordpress.com/?p=400 […]]]> After another weekend of games in the EPL we have seen some great goals (Modric for Spurs) some great misses (Torres for Chelsea)  some red cards (Liverpool) own goals (Arsenal) teams staying undefeated in league to far (Newcastle) and teams winning all their opening games (Man Utd)

Game of the weekend had to be Man utd playing host to Chelsea.  Man utd stormed into a 3 – 0 half time score.  Only 20 seconds into the second half and Torres scores to breathe life back into the blues.  From then the game turned out to be more about missed goals then goals scored.  Torres somehow rounded the goalkeeper and then missed the goal!

Arsenal went down 4 – 3 to Blackburn after leading 2 – 0, they then decided just to score on their own goals, noticing 2 own goals in the game

Man City looked to keep up with the red side of Manchester and went easily into a 2 – 0 lead over Fulham.  Only to be clawed back for a 2 – 2 draw and leave the red at the top alone!

Tottenham took care of Liverpool with a 3 – 0 win and Liverpool finishing the game with only 9 players.

PWDLFAGDPTS Last 6

1		Manchester United	5	5	0	0	21	4	17	15
2		Manchester City	5	4	1	0	17	5	12	13
3		Chelsea	5	3	1	1	8	6	2	10
4		Newcastle United	5	2	3	0	4	2	2	9
5		Stoke City	5	2	2	1	3	5	-2	8
6		Aston Villa	5	1	4	0	6	4	2	7
7		Everton	4	2	1	1	6	4	2	7
8		Liverpool	5	2	1	2	6	7	-1	7
9		Queens Park Rangers	5	2	1	2	4	6	-2	7
10		Wolverhampton Wanderers	5	2	1	2	4	6	-2	7
11		Tottenham Hotspur	4	2	0	2	7	8	-1	6
12		Sunderland	5	1	2	2	6	4	2	5
13		Norwich City	5	1	2	2	5	7	-2	5
14		Swansea City	5	1	2	2	3	5	-2	5
15		Wigan Athletic	5	1	2	2	4	7	-3	5
16		Blackburn Rovers	5	1	1	3	7	10	-3	4
17		Arsenal	5	1	1	3	6	14	-8	4
18		Fulham	5	0	3	2	4	7	-3	3
19		Bolton Wanderers	5	1	0	4	8	13	-5	3
20		West Bromwich Albion	5	1	0	4	3	8	-5	3

The pick of the games saw defending champions Barcelona open up against Italian giants AC Milan  it took only 23 seconds for the first goal of campaign to come, the quickest goals in any champions league game and the quickest start to the tournament.  Alexandre Pato picked the ball up in the center of the field burst right through a static and cold defense.  a bit of composure and 1 – 0 Ac Milan.  As you would imagine Barca came back and went into a 2 – 1 lead.  Only to be denied all the points with an equalizer from Milan deep into stoppage time.

Chelsea and Arsenal were bot in action.  Arsenal where held away from home to  Borussia Dortmund with a 1 – 1 score line.  Chelsea picked up all the points with a home win over Bayer Leverkusen.

All the games:

Group E
Chelsea 2 Bayer Leverkusen 0
Genk 0 Valencia 0
Group F
Borussia Dortmund 1 Arsenal 1
Olympiakos 0 Marseille 1
Group G
Apoel Nicosia 2 Zenit St. Petersburg 1
Porto 2 Shakhtar Donetsk 1
Group H
Barcelona 2 AC Milan 2
Viktoria Plzen 1 BATE Borisov 1

Team Manager….what does one really do

For those of us that have the pleasure of being a team manager, you may not like your role particularly this time of the year.  I would imagine depending on the size of your soccer club, you team manger role varies.  Speaking for myself, our team belongs to a very small club that requires me to wear many hats.  The biggest job of a team manager is getting the team registered with their league.  Year after year the process is pretty much the same and year after year I try to start earlier and earlier to get the paperwork signed from parents to get it submitted to the league by the required deadline but …year after year you always have the last minute nellies that wait to do as requested and you find yourself scrambling to get everything together.  There is no greater feeling than to submit your paperwork to the Registrar and get the e-mail your team has been approved!  However, that is only the beginning.  As you are sending out paperwork to get the parents to complete for their player for registration, you are working with the league to schedule games, schedule field time, set up scrimmages, research and register for tournament, collect fees from players for uniforms, referees, fields, tournaments scheduling practices and sending e-mail and e-mails and e-mails to parents regarding the above.   Once the actual season starts you have to make sure you have roster, players cards available for refs for every game, pay the refs and if by chance the weather causes the game to be cancelled you need to work with the opposing coach, field coordinator, ref coordinator, players and  parents  to come up with another play date.

Do I sound like I hate the above and wish I never had any part of it, quite the opposite?   I have been doing this for the last five years and trust me it if was that god awful I would of walked away long ago.  Maybe it is because we have a great team with great coaches, trainers and parents.  We are all out for the same common goals, be competitive, practice hard, play hard and be your best but in the long run….keep it fun!   Do not always worry about making sure everything is all about soccer.  Plan some gatherings with the team and parents, have a holiday party, when you are attending an away tournament, find a local establishment that you may be all able to go too socially in the evening after a long play day.   Participating in a tournament at the beach, plan a bonfire.  This is more that you have to coordinate and plan but history has proven, at least on my end, doing these extra things along with “soccer detailed musts” makes your parents cooperate with you more, allows the girls to become a team as a whole and makes your season one that when it is over, you can’t wait to start the process all over again!

Guest Post by A Delaware Travel Team Manager

On Sunday morning Man City stormed to the top of the league with an impressive 5 – 1 win over Tottenham.  The game saw Spurs miss many chances at the beginning and looked to be a great close game.  Man City then took the lead with an assist from their new signing (another story) Nasri .  It then became a game of “taking your chances”  Full game stats here .  Dzeko scored four of the five 34,41,55,90 leaving the best till last.

This put Man City top of the league with 3 wins from 3 and a nice little goal difference of  +9  …… Until Man Utd took on Arsenal at Old trafford

10 goals, I can not remember the last time I saw 10 goals in an epl game.  Man U started very well and shoot into a 1 – 0 lead when Anderson “scooped” the ball over to Welbeck.  Ashley Young (what a great signing) then opened his old trafford account with a text book right foot far corner shot in the 29th.  Arsenal were then thrown a life line in the shape of a PK.  Robert Van Persie stepped up and the New goalie for Utd dove low to his right and saved it.  Utd proceeded to go into the break at 3 – 1.  The second half got worse and worse for Arsenal and the final was 8 – 2.  8 you say wow! Yes 8 just enough to give Man utd a goal difference of +10 and move back top of the league

Full Premier League

1		Manchester United	3	3	0	0	13	3	10	9
2		Manchester City	3	3	0	0	12	3	9	9
3		Liverpool	3	2	1	0	6	2	4	7
4		Chelsea	3	2	1	0	5	2	3	7
5		Wolverhampton Wanderers	3	2	1	0	4	1	3	7
6		Newcastle United	3	2	1	0	3	1	2	7
7		Aston Villa	3	1	2	0	3	1	2	5
8		Wigan Athletic	3	1	2	0	3	1	2	5
9		Stoke City	3	1	2	0	2	1	1	5
10		Bolton Wanderers	3	1	0	2	7	6	1	3
11		Everton	2	1	0	1	1	1	0	3
12		Queens Park Rangers	3	1	0	2	1	6	-5	3
13		Sunderland	3	0	2	1	1	2	-1	2
14		Norwich City	3	0	2	1	3	5	-2	2
15		Swansea City	3	0	2	1	0	4	-4	2
16		Fulham	3	0	1	2	1	4	-3	1
17		Arsenal	3	0	1	2	2	10	-8	1
18		West Bromwich Albion	3	0	0	3	2	5	-3	0
19		Blackburn Rovers	3	0	0	3	2	6	-4	0
20		Tottenham Hotspur	2	0	0	2	1	8	-7	0

My name is David King; I am a member of the Chestnut Hill College Men’s Soccer Team. I am an original member of the Hulmeville Sting, and a current member of the YMS Thunder. At YMS, I am a two-time PA east State Cup Champion, a Region 1 champion, and just recently a National Champion. When my sister Lindsey, who is one year older than me and plays on the Women’s soccer team at St. Joe’s University, told me that college preseason is physically the hardest thing that she has ever gone through, I figured it was similar to high school preseason. My sister also explained how your best friends are your teammates. Obviously, I knew I would be spending most of my time with my soccer teammates, but I really underestimated how close the whole team would become. Being a freshman can be very difficult, but since there are 14 total freshman on the men’s soccer team, 12 of which all live on the same floor of the same dorm building, it really is tru…e that we are basically all best friends. We’ve spent practically every waking second together, whether we are running our behinds off during the 7 AM to 9 AM session, working on our tactical and fundamental footwork in the 1 PM to 3PM session, or working together as a team in the 7PM to 9PM session, we are always together. When not supporting each other during soccer, we are kicking back at the dorms playing FIFA 11 on PS3, while listening to music, and talking about all the incoming girls that we have to meet.
My sister also explained how your best friends are your teammates. Obviously, I knew I would be spending most of my time with my soccer teammates, but I really underestimated how close the whole team would become. Being a freshman can be very difficult, but since there are 14 total freshman on the men’s soccer team, 12 of which all live on the same floor of the same dorm building, it really is tru…e that we are basically all best friends. We’ve spent practically every waking second together, whether we are running our behinds off during the 7 AM to 9 AM session, working on our tactical and fundamental footwork in the 1 PM to 3PM session, or working together as a team in the 7PM to 9PM session, we are always together. When not supporting each other during soccer, we are kicking back at the dorms playing FIFA 11 on PS3, while listening to music, and talking about all the incoming girls that we have to meet.

Even though college preseason is the hardest thing to get through, the accomplishment of making it through preseason feels so good. It’s also true that it gets easier, as long as your work ethic stays intense. As long as the will to win and the will to not quit is in your body, college soccer is the best thing to happen to a person. There are also so many benefits of being a collegiate athlete. Fo…r example, our whole team had to help the other freshman on move in day; we had a great time with joking around and meeting new people. When people meet us they automatically look up to us and are impressed. We are looked at a certain way, there is such a level of respect and everyone is impressed. So although college preseason is practically Hell, everything works out in the end and it is so worth it.

David King

Little Kickers is the UK’s leading provider of football classes because unlike the County FA, Local authorities and local football clubs we SPECIALISE in providing football classes for children age 18 months – 7 years old. Our programme has been created by children’s health specialist and is continually developed with the specific needs of these younger age groups in mind and although football is the theme there are many hidden benefits of a Little Kickers class.

Our philosophy is “Play not Push” and we use football as a theme to help children to improve their physical development like balance, co ordination and of course ball skills. These are the obvious benefits of the classes but it is the hidden benefits that set Little Kickers apart, and it is these hidden benefits which are regularly overlooked by coaches working with these younger age groups.

Because we do not have a desire to create a winning football team or teach the latest skill or fancy trick we are able to enthuse the children and create an atmosphere where they are encouraged to use their imagination and have ownership of the class. Skills are taught through fun game and stories which sparks the child’s imagination and helps them to develop creativity, social skills, self confidence and the ability to empathise with their peers.

Our goal is to provide a fun, safe, learning environment which gives the children a positive introduction to sport. This will grow and blossom into a passion which will hopefully stay with them for the rest of their life.

With less than 1% of children worldwide who regularly play football or soccer becoming professional players it seams crazy to me that the focus of most clubs and coaches is on achieving this goal.

We believe the focus should be on FUN and providing the children with a positive and rounded programme where winning is a by product and success is measured by the numbers who graduate to becoming healthy, happy individuals.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

If you love LKFC please become a fan of our face book page!

Scott Cormack t/a Little Kickers Cumbria
scormack
www.littlekickers.co.uk
Tel; 01539898195 or 07811454377