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Euro 2012 QF – Spain 2-0 France – Match Analysis

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Lineups

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Match Analysis

Spain win despite, rather than because of, del Bosque: As noted in their first group stage match against Italy, Spain are woefully lacking in attack when they play without a centre forward. Again del Bosque set up for this match with Fabregas playing as the notionally furthest forward of six midfielders, and again Spain were toothless. However, they are still full of excellent players, and that was enough to beat a France side who weren’t particularly interested in taking on their opponents. Spain’s approach plays into their opponent’s hands, as they become predictable, and the best way to explain why is to consider another type of football…

In the NFL, offensive plays are broken down into two categories: passing and rushing. Each team may favour one type or the other, but you never get teams devoted to only one style of play. This is because the defensive linebackers have two roles; to join the line of scrimmage on rushing plays to help stop the running back, and to drop deep on passing plays to pick up cross-field routes and make it much more difficult for the quarterback to complete passes. If the offence only passes, the linebackers can always drop back; if it only rushes, they can always push up. If the offence does both, then the linebackers don’t know which to do, and this can be taken advantage of by the offence by mixing plays and trying to fool the linebackers with different formations and fake handoffs.

Spain without a striker play like a NFL team that always rushes. The French defence pushed high up the pitch, condensing the midfield and causing Spain a lot of problems as there simply wasn’t the space for their six midfielders to create anything. France could do this, as they knew there was zero threat of anybody running in behind them, so they didn’t have to be concerned with being caught high up the pitch to a ball over the top to a pacey striker. Because del Bosque set out a team which had only one plan, France could commit to preventing Spain from making that plan work, which they did to good effect.

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Spain struggle to create anything in the final third. Only three shots on target, one of those was the penalty and another was a Xabi Alonso shot from the halfway line

As if to prove the point, Spain’s goal came from the one time they managed to turn the French defence in the first half, albeit on the wing, as Iniesta played a throughball to the overlapping Alba, and Debuchy’s stumble gave him the time to pick out Xabi Alonso whose run had been abandoned by Malouda. But even with a obvious expanse of space behind the French defence, and this example to show them the threat they could cause, Spain didn’t try a similar move until the hour mark, when Fabregas was released in behind but wasn’t brave enough to stick his foot in and win a penalty off Lloris. Spain turned the French defence only twice in 65 minutes, and both times caused France serious issues, but for the rest of the match to this point they were impotent.

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A rare pass that turned the French defence, leading immediately to a goal

Finally del Bosque removed Fabregas for Torres on 65 minutes. The chalkboards suggest that Fabregas was by far the better player on the night, but even though Torres offered extremely little himself other than getting caught offside regularly, even this was enough to cause the French defence some concern. Now they had a threat in behind, they couldn’t push up the field so far, and spaces began to open for the Spanish midfield. In NFL terms, even if your running back is awful, at least the defence have to consider him and that may leave gaps for your passing game to come to the fore.

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Passes received: short passes in front of the defence for Fabregas, direct passes through the defence for Torres

Del Bosque needs to realise this quickly if he wants to retain the title.

Blanc not as to blame as many might suggest: Although widely criticised for what many saw as a defensive team selection, it wasn’t as negative as it looked on paper. A lot was made of playing two right backs in front of each other to combat Alba’s runs forward, but it meant they could rotate, and modern full backs are used to pushing forward and providing crosses, so it wasn’t as defensive a move as it appeared. In a way this was proven as Alba created the opening goal with a forward run – it doesn’t matter if the tracking player is a right back or a right winger if he falls over. M’Vila was exceptional in the centre, while Malouda was anything but; Blanc’s biggest mistake was having him anywhere near the team. Ribery was also poor on the night.

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M’Vila exceptional, Malouda less so

Conclusions

Even if Torres is awful, he needs to be in the team to create space in midfield for Spain to utilise. If del Bosque doesn’t realise this in time for the final against Germany, Spain will struggle. They may be able to adopt this approach against Portugal and emerge victorious, by simply relying on the fact that the Spanish team has much more quality than the Portuguese, but against a relatively evenly matched opponent they will struggle. France mentally exited the tournament the moment they lost to Sweden in the final group game when qualifying as group winners (and avoiding Spain) looked a certainty. Had they played this game in a confident mindset, perhaps they could have taken advantage of del Bosque’s tactics and caused an upset, as this Spanish side looks a shadow of its 2008 self.

Euro 2012 D1 – France 1-1 England – Match Analysis

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Lineups

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Match Analysis

England’s defensive display: Hodgson drilled the England defence and midfield to pancake into two narrow banks of four when out of possession, leaving Welbeck and Young upfield as out balls. This allowed no space in between the lines for Nasri to exploit or Benzema to drop into. Most of the French possession (or which they had plenty), occurred in front of these 2×4 defensive lines, and they rarely managed to play through or around them. The French shots were generally from range, and they didn’t trouble the byline to get crosses in too often, either.

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France didn’t trouble the byline from the wings, and mainly shot from distance

Early on, the England front two adopted a method of preventing France from playing out from the back. Young and Welbeck alternated in closing down the centreback with the ball, while the other moved to pick up Diarra as the deepest French midfielder. Simultaneously, Milner and Oxlade-Chamberlain closed down Evra and Debuchy. This left the centreback with only one option – pass it to the other centreback – at which point Young and Welbeck would switch as the man on Diarra moved to close down the centreback receiving the ball and the other man would shuffle across to pick up Diarra. This continued for a while, giving France no option to play out of defence, and so while France had a lot of the ball in the opening 10 minutes, it was deep in their own half. However, while this was not particularly militant closing down – England were content to contain France rather than attempt to hound them – it was tiring for the front two to continually shuffle about and switch who was marking Diarra, and this approach became less effective as the game continued.

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France stuck in defence in the opening phase due to Young and Welbeck closing down Diarra

France mimic Spain: With England’s two banks of four so close together, there was never really any space between the lines. This meant that as Benzema dropped off in search of the ball, he had to drop beyond the midfield line, and there was little room for any French midfielders to run forward into the space he created, so all this accomplished was to add another French body in front of the English eight, and no frontman to speak of. Coupled with not much overlap from their wing backs, France began to look more and more like Spain with nobody up front and incessant sideways passing in front of their opponents. This limited almost all of their chances to shots from range throughout the match, which would have been perfect but for one Hart misjudgement as he read Nasri’s shot as heading for his left side and left too much of a gap at his near post.

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Benzema only received two of 55 passes inside the England penalty area. He had to come much deeper for the rest

French defence: Unlike England, France played one protective midfielder in Diarra and allowed Malouda and Cabaye to advance and help the French forwards in their sideways passing. This resulted in England playing out balls to Welbeck or Young in the channels, most often in the space behind Ribery. However, with England’s midfield four practically on top of their back four, there was precious little support for these two forwards and they were regularly unable to hold up the ball. Malouda and Cabaye were able to take up defensive positions around Diarra and France left three men forward for their eventual break when they won the ball back.

The best chances fall to England: In the first half, England twice managed to get players in behind the France defence with an out-to-in run from the right. First, Young played in Milner for by far the best chance of the game, where he rounded Lloris then nervously rushed his shot at an empty net and put it well wide. Then Oxlade-Chamberlain ran at the France defence and played the ball through to Young, who had strayed offside when he had no need to. That was effectively the sum total of England’s chances from open play, with only two blocked headers coming from corners plus a set piece header accounting for the goal.

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England: 5 shots, 2 from open play, 1 on target

Conclusions

England were the underdogs with minimal goalscoring threat, and played exactly like it. This is a good thing, as evidenced by the scoreline. They defended well, forced France to shoot from distance and scored from a set piece. This is perhaps the maximum that this squad could have hoped for, and they did everything tactically that they needed to to maximise the probability of this result. One could easily imagine Harry Redknapp approaching this game with one holding midfielder, taking the game to France and losing it 3-1.

France on the other hand became a mini-Spain. They had all the possession, but in front of the England team and never appeared to have the guile to play through, or the courage to use their wing backs to play around the bus parked on the England 18 yard line. Limited to shots from distance, they were lucky that a misjudgement allowed one of them to sneak in. France should advance from the group, England could become unstuck against Sweden, but I doubt group C saw anything to be concerned about here for the quarter finals.