After Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and Quique Setién’s Barcelona suffered humiliating eliminations in the Champions League quarterfinals, many were quick to claim that this was the end of Positional Play, or Juego de Posición in Spanish, as we know it.   This isn’t even remotely true, as Thomas Tuchel’s Paris Saint-Germain and Hans-Dieter Flick’s Bayern…

After spending the past two years managing Chinese Super League side Beijing Guoan, Roger Schmidt, who captured the imagination of thousands with his gegenpressing and beautifully aggressive and direct offensive patterns during his time at Bayer Leverkusen and Red Bull Salzburg, has returned to Europe. This time, Schmidt is with PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands. …

Antonio Conte’s Inter Milan trounced Luís Castro’s Shakhtar 5-0 in the Europa League semi-finals courtesy of two braces from Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martínez as well as a goal from Danilo D’Ambrosio. The Nerazzurri pressed Shakhtar high up the pitch, forcing them to play either risky short passes or wayward long balls.   Inter closed…

Going into Paris Saint-Germain’s first Champions League semi-final in 25 years, Thomas Tuchel made four alterations to the side that beat Atalanta 2-1 in the quarterfinals. However, only one of those changes can be considered tactical, with Kylian Mbappé and Ángel Di María taking their regular place in the front three beside Neymar, after returning…

Two of Europe’s biggest titans took on each other for a spot in the Champions League semi-finals on Friday. Both teams had sacked their managers and appointed a new manager midway through the season, but their fortunes couldn’t be more different. Since joining as manager in November, Hans-Dieter Flick had revived Bayern’s ailing season, with…

When Mikel Arteta joined Arsenal as manager, he knew his work was cut out for him. Stepping into a team with a paltry win percentage of 34.6% while conceding 1.5 goals per game, the former Manchester City assistant coach initially sought to make the Gunners harder to beat with a 4-2-3-1.   While this raised…

“Great defensive play is mostly organisational and positional in the modern game,” argued Carlo Ancelotti in his 2016 autobiography Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches.   Perhaps the most frequent gesture that comes from a manager on the touchline is a compressing of the hands to signal to a team to remain more compact.…

The 2020/2021 Brasileirão Série A season kicked off on Saturday night and the highlight fixture of Matchday 1 was the match between Flamengo and Atlético Mineiro at the Maracanã Stadium. The Alvinegro went on to beat the defending champions in a fixture that lacked its predicted galore of goals, but certainly not a lack of…

Hellas Verona was one of the surprise packages of the 2019/20 Serie A season and one of the main reasons for its overachievement was its coach Ivan Jurić. The former Crotone and Genoa tactician was appointed days after the Gialloblu had earned promotion through the Serie B play-offs under caretaker manager Alfredo Aglietti in 2019,…

After a disastrous start to the 2019/20 season, Marco Giampaolo was sacked from his position as Milan manager. The Rossoneri had picked up just nine points from the first seven league matches of the season and were sitting in 13th place, trailing league leaders and eventual champions Juventus by 10 points. The Milan leadership made…