DISTANCES, PHASES & SPACES - ROBERTO MANCINI (ITALIAN SOCCER COACH)

These pointers come from an article on Italian National Coach Robero Manici, hot off the heels of a Euro Cup win a week or so ago.

I'm not a soccer fan at all but I do read a fair bit of tactical content on the game, of which a lot of has found itself into AFL circles in the last decade or so.

Alistair Clarkson probably started the trend when he returned from an off-season trip in the mid 200's where he visted a soccer club and was introduced to Gegenpressing which formed the base of the Clarko Cluster.

The Western Bulldogs under Luke Beveridge worked their angle on this after he came over from Hawthorn and most recently Damian Hardwick, another ex-Hawthorn assistant coach of the same era put his spin on it at Richmond.

All 3 clubs have been ultra successful in the last decade.

It's important that coaches look at other sports and see what they're doing and how they're doing it because if you can be the first to introduce it to Aussie Rules Football, then you'll be a year or 2 ahead the your competitiors.

Here are my favourite points from this article as they pertain to soccer but think about how they can or reference to footy.

• In both defensive and possession phases you want your team shape to be short and narrow
• During the possession phase you want leave and then occupy space, making it hard for the opposition to control your ball movement
• The distance between the ball carrier and receiver/s should not be more than 12 – 15m because if the distance is any greater then that then the pass needs to be more accurate, it will usually need to be kicked in the air and your also often kicking to an isolated player, who then can be outnumbered by the defense
• Pressure/preventative blocks allow for less running and saving energy for sprints, when your energy is really needed
• There is a time for multi-styled football in the one game so if we have to sit in deep and defend with organisation then counter-attack, we are Italian, if we win the ball and have no immediate opposition to counter then we are Spanish and if the best solution is to go as fast as possible then we’re German but we need to set our game up on who are as nobody can be better at that then us (be Italian)
• The further away from our goal the ball is, the safer we are and when you attack well, you’ll defend well and when you defend well you’ll attack better
• You need to travel together as a team with the ball so you can defend hard when you lose it but if you’re too far away from where you’ve lost it then you can’t press the opposition, so be together connecting with passes to be able to win it back immediately