Room for Improvement for the Young Socceroos
June 26, 2013 at 10:27 pm
Posted by Kate Cohen.


After a positive display against Columbia, the Young Socceroos failed to threaten El Salvador, who sat back and countered in a style reminiscent to Australia’s result against Oman.

Teams


Line Ups
Paul Okon named an unchanged XI, with the team retaining their 4-2-3-1 shape. Daniel de Silva, who impressed in the previous match by scoring a goal and being a constant attacking outlet, was again trusted in the important ‘Number 10’ role.

El Salvador played with two banks of four in a 4-4-1-1 without the ball and then quickly looked to get their wingers – Kevin Barahona and Jairo Henriquez – in advanced positions once possession was won, in a 4-2-3-1.

Pattern of the Match

As mentioned above, the approach of El Salvador was reminiscent of Oman’s – with two compact banks of four looking to restrict spaces for Australia when going forward and to frustrate them.

Tellingly, Australia had 61.6% of the possession, yet they only registered five shots on goal. El Salvador had nine.

For much of the match, Australia’s possession was purposeless – possession for possession’s sake. There was very little penetration with Australia’s possession, like against Oman, the ball was moved around in front of the opposition’s defensive block, as opposed to in between and in behind it.

El Salvador looked comfortable in dealing with Australia’s predictable possession.

El Salvador’s Approach

The most obvious element to El Salvador’s approach was that they looked to control space, leaving Australia to control the ball. They sat deep, sliding sideways and prevented forward passes into Australia’s front four, which limited Australia’s ability to go forward.

El Salvador especially targeted Daniel de Silva and looked to limit his involvement. One of their central midfielders, either Grannito or Gomez, positioned themselves to prevent de Silva from receiving possession – similar to how Mark Bresciano and Mark Milligan limited the impact of Keisuke Honda.

Their front two did not actively pressure the man with possession, instead occupying the most dangerous passing option. This meant that frequently, when Australia’s midfield two combined, the resulting pass would be backwards.


El Salvador closely watched de Silva and, when the midfielders looked to combine, forced Irvine and Brillante to pass backwards
In contrast, when El Salvador had possession, they moved the ball quickly and incisively and worried Australia with their movement off-the-ball.

Irvine and Brillante

Despite Brillante’s early goal, both he and Jackson Irvine failed to impact the game in an attacking sense. Both patiently circulated the ball in deep areas (including the back four and the two deepest midfielders) but rarely moved the ball beyond El Salvador’s defensive lines.

Both played ‘safe’ passes, with the intention of keeping possession, as opposed to offering penetration from midfield.

Brillante   Irvine
Total Passes (Successful)   87 (94.3%)   70 (77.1%)
1st Half (successful)    54 (94.4%)   42 (78.6%)
2nd Half (successful)    33 (93.9%)   28 (75%)

Irvine and, in particular, Brillante were effective in retaining possession, as the above numbers demonstrate; however, they were ineffective in when moving the ball forward.


Only one-in-four passes from midfield were classified as ‘forward’ passes.
By further breaking down the passing of Australia’s midfielders, looking at the intention of their passes and the outcome, it showed that Australia failed to move the ball through midfield and into advanced positions.


Possession Pass: (red) with the intention of keeping the ball
Penetration Pass: (blue) with an attacking intention which removes one or more active
Brillante   Irvine
Possession Pass (successful)   64 (98.4%)   47 (93.6%)
Penetration Pass (successful)   23 (82.6%)   23 (43.5%)
Forward Pass (successful)   21 (81%)   18 (38.9%)

Basically, whilst Brillante maintained good (‘raw’) passing numbers, only one in four passes actually impacted an opposition defender. Irvine was slightly better, with one in three passes being a ‘penetration’ pass. To have 71% of passes from Australia’s midfield not impacting El Salvador was a clear demonstration of the problems the Young Socceroos’ faced.

Of course, these numbers also show that those passes (in particular for Irvine) resulted in a drastic drop the success of that pass.

Irvine’s late substitution was warranted, given his poor performance in the match. The switch to a 4-3-3, with Brillante the deepest midfielder, gave Australia some very late life.

Cause and Effect

It’s easy to look back at the match, and to point the finger at both Brillante and Irvine as to why Australia looked monotonous and lacked creativity, but they were merely a symptom of the performance. Their inability to influence the game creatively, and to be the link from defensive possession to attacking possession, was because of other factors.

Firstly, Australia’s attacking patterns of play when the ball was in midfield areas was often static. There was little off-the-ball movement to open up spaces in El Salvador’s deep defensive unit.

Both Hoole and Pain stayed wide, with the intentions of knocking the ball past their defender and into the space in behind. However, this made them easy to contain for the fullback. Only on a few occasions, and early in the match, did Australia mix things up by playing early switches to the wingers, and Pain moved inside. However, as the match wore on, the attackers became predictable.

Similarly, de Silva struggled to receive possession and drifted into deeper areas, instead of looking to create space for teammates through coordinated off-the-ball movements. This just added to the cause – with Australia being unable to impact El Salvador’s deep block.

Another issue, which will come into question after this match, is (as a nation) Australia’s ability to problem solve when the opposition looks to limit space. The Young Socceroos, just as their senior counterparts had done against Oman, primarily focused on patience and maintaining possession – as opposed to actually working patterns of play to break their opponents down.

The speed of ball movement was too slow, with players often taking multiple touches and stopping the ball dead before passing. This was never going to move El Salvador’s defensive block around, and in fact played into their hands, because they were comfortably able to slide across and shut down forward passing options.

Spain, of course, are the international benchmark of modern possession football. When they pass with a slow tempo they do so for a reason – to get their attacking structures set to allow them to break open the opposition’s defence. As soon as they’re ready they play quick, incisive passes to create opportunities. Australia’s off-the-ball movement was too static to allow that change of tempo to occur.


Australia demonstrated an inability to change the speed of their ball movement. They failed to, after circulating the ball around slowly, coordinate off-the-ball movements to open up space in attacking areas

Conclusion

This performance showed that, despite the positives from the Columbia match, there is much development still to occur for the Young Socceroos.

The true representation of the performance will come the next time they face an opponent who looks to control the space rather than the ball. Will the players learn what is needed for next time? And, has Paul Okon and his team looked at this performance, and reflected on the possible changes that could have occurred?

At the end of the day, this competition, and youth development, is about just that – development. This is an opportunity to learn, tactically and technically, from this match and to improve for the future.


http://leopoldmethod.com.au/room-for-improvement-for-the-young-socceroos/