04 Jul 2010
Video Analysis of England’s defensive mistakes V Germany in the World Cup 2010
That’s it then. England’s World Cup is over. The inquests and rumours have started. There is no doubt that England’s overall performance during the World Cup was very, very poor.
As I have said in previous blogs. Football is a simple game. Players have to understand and then be able to do the basics of football. Which against Germany, from a defensive point of view, they failed to do. The biggest culprits were John Terry, Mathew Upson and Glen Johnson. In the first 30 minutes against Germany they totally failed to defend properly and apply basic defending principles.
The vast majority of goals scored in open play are scored directly in front of the goal being defended. Therefore, defensively, the team must be disciplined and get players in these areas so that they can defend balls that are played into this area and to cover runners that make runs into these key defensive areas.
If by defending these key central defending areas, the opposition pass the ball wide, square or backwards. That buys time for the team to get players behind the ball, get their shape and force the opposition to be creative and inventive.
Imagine locking all the windows of your house before you go out, but leaving the front door wide open. That effectively is what England did. They worried too much about the opposition players who didn’t pose a serious attacking threat, got sucked towards the ball and the players, got out of position and left the front door wide open
It is hard to imagine that the three of the England back four, who have so much experience and have faced the defensive scenarios they were confronted with in the Germany match, thousands of times, failing to adhere to basic defensive principles of defending key central areas.
Take a look at the video, where we have attempted to show what went wrong with England defensively. From a football coaching perspective, I hope that you can then work with your defensive players on understanding and applying key defensive principles of covering and defending these key central defending areas.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5P4I-TSR0E