It has been quite the hectic season for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United, to say the least. After defeating Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc de Princes and humiliating RB Leipzig at Old Trafford, the Red Devils relinquished their lead on their UEFA Champions League group after losing to İstanbul Başakşehir, PSG, and Leipzig, setting up…

Matchday 15 of the 2020/21 Bundesliga season saw Borussia Dortmund travel to RB Leipzig looking to improve on their last away game where they lost 2-0 to high flying Union Berlin. RB Leipzig were the in-form side going into the game, having only lost once in the Bundesliga so far this season. The last time…

Tactical flexibility is vital in football. Being flexible as a team, whether this is through different personnel in different positions or team shape in and out of possession, allows you to be largely unpredictable and therefore adds great variety to football. It essentially makes you more difficult to defend against in the sense that it…

Chris Wilder was named the runner-up manager of the year by the League Manager’s Association last July. Less than 7 months later, his Sheffield United side sit bottom of the league with only 2 points from 17 games. The Blades took the Premier League by storm in the 2019-20 season as they finished 9th, on 54…

As the Copa Libertadores edges ever closer to its conclusion, two of the tournament’s juggernauts find themselves head to head in a two-legged semi-final. Those teams, Palmeiras of Brazil and River Plate of Argentina, are a couple of the most storied clubs in all of South America. To add an extra layer to the intrigue,…

Milan have enjoyed a rip-roaring start to the season under manager Stefano Pioli, currently atop the Serie A table after 16 matchdays and set to face Red Star Belgrade in the UEFA Europa League Round of 32 after topping their group of Lille, Sparta Prague, and Celtic. Whilst Zlatan Ibrahimović has received most of the…

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City set English football alight in the 2017/18 campaign, becoming the first Premier League team to record 100 points, whilst also breaking a host of records: most wins (32), most goals (106), most points ahead of second (19), and best goal difference (+79). The following season, City completed an unprecedented domestic quadruple,…

  By: Russell Pope Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Johannes Schmedt  – Getty Images

Three years ago, Lille Olympique Sporting Club were entrenched in a crisis. The appointment of Marcelo Bielsa as manager had not had the desired effect, with ‘El Loco’ freezing out experienced veterans such as Vincent Enyeama, Rio Mavuba, and Marko Baša and coming to blows with sporting director Luís Campos in a power struggle over…

One of the crucial concepts to understanding positional play is that of superiorities as they dictate in practical terms how to be decisive in the respective phases of possession. These superiorities are numerical, positional, and qualitative. In this article, I will investigate the process of how these superiorities are achieved.   Numerical Superiorities    This…