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In the autumn of 2017, goal kicks began to be seen as a genuine offensive tool.
After his signing from Benfica, it quickly became clear that Manchester City’s goalkeeper, Ederson, possessed a left leg more akin to a catapult than a human limb, capable of launching the ball 80 meters over the opposition defense to create a scoring chance.
Teams were baffled by this tactic, as they had never seen it before. The entire City attacking trio positioned themselves 20 meters beyond the opponent’s goal line, confident they could not be offside from a goal kick.
Sam Lee (@SamLee)
“This City goal kick setup is brilliant. Players are scattered all over the field; the opposition has no idea if the pass will be short, into the big hole in the middle, or straight forward. Ederson really changed the game.”
On average, there are 16 goal kicks in a Premier League match, making it the third most common set piece after throw-ins and free kicks.
Until 2017, however, presumably because geographically speaking in terms of the pitch they start as far away from the opponent’s goal as possible, goal kicks were typically taken haphazardly and without much thought, seen as nothing more than a necessity to restart the game rather than a set piece that could be planned and used against the opposition.
For decades, goal kicks had invariably been taken long and with little strategic attention. Then, in the summer of 2019, the IFAB, the body responsible for the rules of the game, changed the rule on goal kicks, stating that the ball no longer had to leave the executing team’s penalty area before a player could receive the first pass.
Football has changed the offside rule and VAR has transformed the spectacle, particularly for those watching the games, but the change in the goal kick rule is the most radical change in playing style since goalkeepers were banned from picking up back-passes in the early ’90s.
There were some immediate, though expected, changes in behavior now that the first pass could be controlled anywhere within the penalty area. The number of short goal kicks in the Premier League has steadily increased and is now more than double the 2018-19 figure, when around three-quarters of them were taken in open play.
An additional 44 × 18 yards of space in which to receive the ball doesn’t seem transformative, but over the past five years, it has played a significant role in accelerating the rise of man-marking, emptying the midfield, and the tactic of playing over the opposition’s press.
These are three of the themes highlighted by the UEFA technical observer’s tactical analysis of this summer’s European Championship, exemplified by Slovakia forcing England into a high press and nearly scoring with a direct play to their forward, and the Netherlands creating an overload in midfield against Austria, who pressed intensely.
That is why the scenarios described below – a cluster of players around the executing team’s penalty area, another just inside the opponent’s half, and a sea of emptiness in between – have become common sights across all major leagues.
The impact of the rule change has been underestimated by many, said Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager and now head of global development at FIFA, the world football governing body, in a review of the rule last year.
“It was introduced to make the game faster and more spectacular, but it has changed even more. The main attraction is to draw your opponent as far from the goal as possible and try to play. If you manage to play despite the first pressure, you have the whole half of the pitch to be dangerous. That’s what’s at stake from the start.”
But how could a trend like this begin to proliferate in such a short time? And how did it become normal to see a central defender passing the ball to the goalkeeper and vice versa?
It’s a move that Arsenal regularly use, with defender Gabriel playing to goalkeeper David Raya before the latter launches it long to Kai Havertz up front, and the midfield cavalry surges forward in supporting runs.
“What happened initially after the rule change was that it was easier to build the ball up because you no longer had to play long passes across the box, which gave the pressing team the chance to get there first,” says a first-team coach/analyst at a major European club, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak.
“Back then, if the goalkeeper played it to a center-back, you were stuck on one side of the pitch, whereas now if the defender plays it back to the goalkeeper, you are completely central.
“Most teams now bring their midfielders into the box and that makes the space much bigger to defend. It’s so hard to be compact because if you want to press high, the midfielders have to be on par with the midfielders, which naturally opens up space behind them.
“The question you ask your opponent is, ‘Are you so keen to press us that you leave yourself three versus three or four versus four in defense?’ Teams have realized they need to involve more players to force the press, which explains the rise in man-to-man pressing.”
However, every action requires a reaction, and that’s what happened, with teams realizing they could create false transition moments by isolating their attackers.
“The attacking team’s response was, ‘If you’re going to release six or seven players into the final quarter, we’re going to get a goalkeeper who can put the ball over your defense,’” says the same coach/analyst. “There’s no longer space between the lines to be static and turn the ball around. The concept has changed to one of leaving large spaces where you want to be free and then arriving at the right moment so you can run and your marker has to react.”
One of the most effective teams in the early seasons after the rule change was Inter, under Antonio Conte. As a coach whose preferred style of football is based on tried-and-true play, Conte capitalized by manipulating the opponent’s setup to give his attackers space to run into.
More recently, the German national team has shown creativity in their use of goal kicks, and in friendlies in March this year, they demonstrated how many levels of thinking are involved.
In this example against the Netherlands, goalkeeper Manuel Neuer advances with the ball while his midfielders move out from the center to drag their markers and open up a central passing channel for Havertz. Neuer’s ball is the trigger for the supporting cast to join around him, with Havertz’s pass triggering a four versus four opportunity.
The new rule gave coaches a blank canvas to work with and produced numerous variations on how to try to gain an advantage in the build-up phase.
Southampton manager Russell Martin was one of the coaches who tried to overhaul the organization.
A center-back lines up with the goalkeeper, receives the ball, and then waits for the opposing forward to press before passing the ball to the goalkeeper, who has moved 10 meters forward to be used as an extra man, along with another center-back.
New Marseille coach Roberto De Zerbi had the audacity to opt almost exclusively for short goal kicks in his previous job at Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League, but experimented even more at his two previous clubs, Sassuolo in Italy and Shakhtar Donetsk in Ukraine.
In his debut 2020-21 season with the latter, he regularly had his team play with four players inside the penalty area, drawing pressure before finding the spare man after drawing the opposition players to one side.
Last season, Hamburg St. Pauli, whose coach Fabian Hurzeler succeeded De Zerbi at Brighton, attempted a variety of high-risk exercises to secure promotion from the second division of Germany, but the common theme was the motivation for the goalkeeper to advance with the ball after receiving it from a defender.
This meant their long kicks went even closer to the opponent’s goal, with the team positioned higher up the pitch competing for a possible second ball.
All these teams have a different approach, as does new Liverpool manager Arne Slot.
However, when his team, Feyenoord, played short with the intention of forcing their way through the crowd, they did so much more boldly than most.
Here, against NEC Nijmegen in the Dutch top flight earlier this year, Feyenoord ensured goalkeeper Justin Bijlow stayed with the ball and delayed his pass until the last moment, while center-back Thomas Beelen was tasked with dribbling inside his own penalty area and waiting for the space to present itself.
This is a freer approach, but there are clear risks that come with playing this way inside your own penalty area, as many teams have discovered over the past five years. That’s why deception with a pass to the goalkeeper and then going long has become the preferred strategy for most elite teams.
Football underwent a significant change five years ago, and only now are we beginning to understand how much tactical variety has been possible.
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