In my previous piece for These Football Times, I quoted a New York Times piece about how because in most games, no more than three goals are scored, and the typical margin…
Tag: tactics
MONEY BUYS QUALITY. Quality in football is, to a large extent, determined by the individual actions of a player that are measurable. Goals scored, passes completed, assists given, interceptions made; the list…
Since coming to Liverpool, eccentric German coach Jürgen Klopp has become somewhat of a darling of the written press. With his bubbly, likeable character and intensity winning over many onlookers, thoughts have since…
FOLLOWING ON FROM OUR RECENT INTERVIEW with former Liverpool, Wigan and Watford academy coach Tim Lees, we talk to the young trainer about tactics, formations and countering threats on a football pitch. *…
It was a majestic sight. Go back 30 or 40 years and watch teams defend. The majority of them will feature a type of player that seems to have been lost from the…
TODAY’S GAME IS DOMINATED by possession-orientated sides that methodically parse and splay opponents with surgical interplay and precision. Watching goalkeepers like Marc-André ter Stegen or Manuel Neuer collect and place the ball at their…
FOOTBALL HAS AND ALWAYS WILL BE a game of contrasting styles, evolving philosophies of play and trendy paradigms that captivate the world only to be emulated, bastardized, found out, and written off as…
Twenty-two years ago my brother and I bought our first console, the Super Nintendo, and our first game was Super Soccer. There were only eight directions you could run or pass in –…
As featured on Guardian Sport In the summer of 2001, I was fortunate enough to train in Holland for close to 16 weeks, playing with a local team from Enschede in friendlies and…