Berlin has its Royal Palace again. Bombed by the Allies and demolished by the GDR, it was rebuilt on the orders of Angela Merkel and now it shines in the splendour of a new building in the centre of the capital in these days of heat and the European Championship, just as Niclas Füllkrug has once again risen to the top of Germany’s attack like the old tank-forwards who resist extinction, victims of increasingly narrow spaces and teammates who prefer not to cross as in the past.
“It irritates me,” says Pierre Litbarsky, world champion with Germany in 1990, in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung; “I see players who dribble diagonally inwards despite having a good position to cross from the wing. Sometimes I think: ‘You could make things much easier for yourself with a cross from midfield’. But you have to bear in mind that we haven’t developed a classic number nine for a long time. Now, luckily, we have Füllkrug.”
Nostalgia is the general tone in a tournament where the Italians miss the counterattack and Roberto Martinez does not know how to revive Cristiano, who continues to have crosses sent at will without managing to head a single one into goal. Portugal is, by far, the team that has put in the most crosses, a total of 66 in play. A countercultural effort in the Euros that has seen the fewest crosses since the data began to be collected in 1980. Today, teams prefer to attack with inside passes: they are barely following the Manchester City trend.
Spain, Austria, Italy, England, and Germany until the record changed with Füllkrug in the last match, encouraged the use of full-backs, wingers, attacking midfielders and central midfielders who go inside in an attempt to reach the opponent’s goal by the most complex means, through balls, one-twos, drop balls and passes into space. After 30 matches played, the trend is a fact: according to Opta, since the 1980 edition, the record of the average number of crosses per game has declined: 9, 14, 10, 11, 10, 11, 12, 10, 9, 10, 8, and 8.
“I don’t like my teams to cross the ball,” says Ralf Rangnick, coach of Austria, the surprise team of the tournament, “because these shots are becoming easier for opponents to defend. Today, central defenders clear almost everything. I like my players to pass inside the box or do what Grillitsch did in the 2-2 draw against the Netherlands, lifting the ball inside the box for Schmid to finish off at the far post.”
“Ping-pong”
Like Spain, Austria can afford to attack from the inside because many of its players are trained to do so. They have spent their lives under Rangnick, practising together at the schools of Salzburg and Leipzig. The Italians try hard but the results are inconsistent. “We missed a lot of passes,” Jorginho repeated, after saying the same thing after losing 1-0 to Spain. The Italian journalists were alarmed: “Do we lack quality?” Luciano Spalletti, the coach, tried to be academic in explaining to them that football has become complicated: “A few years ago you could spend the game sitting in your area waiting for the counterattack. Today it is very difficult because all the teams have players who handle all the registers and you can no longer surprise them. You need to do more.”
“In all games there are tight situations, ping-pong, dirty play,” says Spalletti, who points to the revolution generated by pressure after a loss. “My ball, yours, nobody’s ball… Duels are created in which it is necessary to clean the ball in order to deliver it in time to a player who can think more. It’s not about technique. “It’s about experience playing under pressure.”
The spaces have been reduced so much that dribbling has also become a tool of little use if the dribblers do not also master the art of association. If in the 1980 Euro Cup an average of 57 dribbles were attempted per game, and in 1992 a peak of 60 was reached, now the average is 29.6, only higher than the 27 in the 2012 Euro Cup.
The only variable that increases is the pass. Teams make an average of 200 more passes per game than two decades ago and shots on goal continue to spread. If 20 years ago the average was more than nine shots per match, now that figure is rarely reached. England has suffered especially. Their captain, Harry Kane, put it down to the team’s inability to adapt to pressing and counter-pressing. “We’ve played against back three and we didn’t know when to jump into pressure,” he said. “That made us lose confidence when we had the ball, because we saw ourselves running out of position all the time. But now is not the time to panic.”
England and France, the teams of Kane and Mbappé, among the best strikers on the continent, have only scored three goals in six games, if own goals are discounted. The French coach is not worried that they have scored fewer goals on average so far in the Euros than last year: 2.12 versus 2.5 per game. “The only thing we lacked was efficiency, but the important thing, which is defending, we did well,” said Didier Deschamps, faithful to his old line.
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