Changing strategies in crucial knockout matches !
Two recent knockout matches in Euro2020 had my head banging in despair ! Both of the teams that I were supporting went out of the tournament – one through the cruel penalty shootout, the other simply outplayed tactically by their opponents. The defending world champions France could have done much better with the quality of the players they have as compared to their opponents Switzerland. On the other, Germany did face a much more formidable opponent of England in the latter’s home ground at Wembley – so the challenge was much harder.
However, what frustrated me was that there seems to be some experimentation done by the managers of France and Germany at crucial knock-out matches. I felt that there was definitely change of strategies in the round of 16 matches for both these teams – change with respect to the way the teams played in their earlier matches in the tournament, where they were quite successful. So, why on earth, would you like to disturb your style of play when you were playing quite good in the group games ? Questions which I still grapple to answer !
France – changing to a 3 men defense
In all the group matches of France (won against Germany 1-0, drew against Hungary 1-1 against a hostile 60000+ home supporters at Budapest, followed by a 2-2 against a formidable Portugal), they played with a 4 man defense which has always been the “baseline” formation for France. Even when they won the world cup in 2018, it was their standard formation. All the players were used to that and so was their manager Deschamps.
Come the knock-out match, the team was still the same, the manager was still the same. But suddenly, they start playing with a 3 men defense line to the surprise of many ! The result was obvious – the gaps in the wings grew and those spaces were so effectively exploited by Switzerland, primarily driven midfield by Xhaka, who probably played the match of his life.
So the sudden comfort zone was destroyed, France became vulnerable through the wing play and the writing was on the wall. Even though Switzerland played unexpectedly well, still, why would anyone try and make his own team vulnerable, specially when the team was playing good, effective football with their earlier formations !
Germany – stopping the overlaps of wing backs
Whenever Germany played well in this tournament, a key success factor was the overlap of the wingbacks, viz. Kimmich and Gosens. This resulted in fluidity of play, effective and speedy passing in the final third and then the option of penetration from the center as well as from the wings using Kai Havertz, Gnabry, Mueller effectively. It is true that Germany played in patches throughout the period, but when they did excel, the roles of Gosens & Kimmich were absolutely stunning. This effectively helped Germany destroy the formidable Portuguese side and quite impressive performances against France, even though they had lost the match.
Now, when you put a curb in the movement of the wingbacks in a knockout match against a strong English side, buoyed by a partisan home crowd at Wembley, you are smelling danger! Either Germany was in “fear” of the English side, or they thought that they will play a more defensive game and get a goal through counter attacks. However, this went horribly wrong at the end of the day.
Kimmich and Gosens hardly went up the field, Germany hardly played their natural passing and attacking style of play and the result was Mueller and Timo Werner were without any supply. It was strange to see Germany playing the traditional English way of long balls – even when those landed to Werner or Mueller, they were woefully out of support from the wing backs, who were not crossing the half-way mark.
Hence, it became evident that Germany was not playing to their strengths – rather they played to the hands of England, whose defensive players were getting relief from the whipping centers and fast penetration from the middle. Strange tactics to me ! No wonder, Germany looked totally out of their zone and they lost convincingly 0-2 in that match. This must have been a big low to Joachim Löw’s career in his last match as the manager of Germany!
Conclusion
Changing strategies is important, provided the team has been playing miserably in any tournament. But when a team has been playing above average to good football, why should a manager experiment something, specially in a knock-out match ? I don’t have an answer – probably the managers can explain the rationale.
Irrespective of the reasoning, the impact of such changes can be huge and that is now being felt by both France and Germany, who had been projected to reach at least the semifinals !
Acknowledgement: heat map pictures taken from whoscored.com