Was watching repeat of Southampton vs Liverpool yesterday. Though I dont watch European football like I used to years back couldnt stand but be amazed and impressed by the type of tactics and philosophies that European Football adopts as opposed to Zambian football at times. In the first half of the game with the score in favor of Liverpool 1-0, Southampton were making a number of dangerous crosses on the left wing, they did it via a tactic called overloading where a team puts more men in a certain zone to have more numbers and disadvantage the other team, so everytime Southampton attacked they added 3 men to their rightwing to Liverpools 1 or 2 men, giving Southampton an extra man to use. Southampton managed to get 3 or 4 dangerous crosses from the leftwing using this tactic. Brendan Rodgers noticed this and did 2 things, he placed a 3rd man in that area everytime Liverpool defended, and also got another player closer to block any passes. In the second half this greatly hindered Southampton as they got only 1 dangerous cross in the box, but within 10 minutes Pochettino??? ( Southampton coach) also changed tactics as well. Contrast this with the Zambian league were some coaches will stick to the same tactic that is not working for them the entire 90 minutes. One good example is during the game between Green Buffalos and Red Arrows. With about 15 minutes to go Red Arrows made a change in defence and brought in Joseph Zimba as a centerback. Well logic would dictate that the Green Buffalos technical bench would notice that Joseph Zimba is not the tallest of defenders and they would bring on Felix Sunzu or another tall striker with the intention of getting crosses in and exploiting this weakness. Instead Patrick Phiri brought on a midfielder for another midfielder who did not change the game at all. Tactically some Zambian coaches can improve. Though its not all Zambian coaches who fail to read games. We have a number of brilliant tacticians.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 05:26:57 +0000