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Club Focus - Liverpool - Into the Twilight Zone
Wednesday 09 September 2009
In his Sky Sports analysis of Manchester City’s 1-0 win over Portsmouth last weekend, Andy Gray ran repeated slow motion footage of Emmanuel Adebayor’s headed winner from a Gareth Barry corner. The replays showed Adebayor timing his run to perfection, losing his marker and thumping home a header past keeper Asmir Begovic. Presenter Richard Keys then asked Gray: “What if it had been Liverpool there?” And so what followed was the mythical ‘39th game’ - Manchester City vs. Liverpool at Fratton Park - not exactly the exotic destination that Richard Scudamore had in mind. Gray asserted that Adebayor would still have scored against Liverpool due to the sheer height that he reached whilst climbing to head the ball, way above his nearest imaginary opponent ‘Jamie Carragher’ and so rendering the whole zonal marking debate that Keys was hoping to provoke null and void. For now.
Rafa Benitez’s decision to go against the less traditional manner of defensive set-up has been an ever present topic for debate since the Spaniard’s arrival in England in 2004. Everyone marks man-to-man from set pieces don’t they? It’s the done thing, the way that things have gone on for ever and ever, from the Sunday League to the Champions League. Anything else is nonsense isn’t it? Why do Liverpool insist on playing it differently?
Their manager’s preference for zonal marking dates back to his playing days. Aged just 26, injury cut short Benitez’s progress as a midfielder in the lower reaches of the Spanish leagues. He ended his career with an impressive 17 goals from 34 games for Linares CF, a club in a small town in Andalucía that is famous for its annual chess tournament. Benitez took a great interest in the strategies of the board game, and began to ponder just how tactics from other sports could influence football. He took a basketball coaching course on top of prolonging his education in football, paying particular attention to basketball’s half and full-court presses - defensive systems that can employ zonal marking to shut out the opposition and limit scoring opportunities by blocking out the space in which to create them. Benitez didn’t invent zonal marking but took an early stance that it was the right choice for him, and has implemented it ever since - but strange things can happen in Liverpool’s own twilight zone.
Contrary to popular belief, the stats will tell you that the Reds conceded fewer goals from set pieces than the rest of the big four last season, and have always been quite solid when it comes to defending corners and free-kicks during Benitez’s time in charge. So why is it always an issue with commentators and pundits? The answer is probably two-fold. Firstly, because it is a different and dare we say ‘un-English’ way of doing things, and second - and most relevantly - whenever the Reds do concede from a set-piece, they tend to do so at the worst possible times and in the biggest games. This may be a coincidence, but is perhaps best viewed as evidence of the better teams exploiting a system that, just like man-to-man marking, has its flaws. Think Branislav Ivanovic’s improbable Champions League double last season, Paolo Maldini in Istanbul, a plethora of Manchester United goals from set pieces whilst they held the Indian sign over Benitez between 2004 and early 2008.
A zonal defence involves much more than just players marking a space. Defenders have to stay in their zones whilst also keeping their eyes on the opposition attackers around them, picking up whoever is causing concern in the box - and picking up the slack if an opponent in their zone ends up scoring. The trouble with the system comes when someone makes a late run into the box from outside, bypassing the zones and sometimes ending up unmarked - Ivanovic’s goals being the prime examples of this. Three of the seven goals that Liverpool have conceded this season have come from set-pieces where the ball has been crossed into the box. Sebastien Bassong, Curtis Davies and Kevin Davies have all entered a defensive zone and emerged with the glory, once more casting doubt back to Benitez’s propensity for using this form of marking set-up.
These lapses in defence could largely be put down to early season rustiness, but they are cracks that need be ironed out quickly. Pundits who implore the manager to change his tried and trusted form of defensive marking are wasting their time - Benitez’s ideas go back to the chess boards of Linares in the mid-1980s. He won’t abandon zonal marking, but he does need to tighten it up to ensure that his team are more than just pawns in this season’s title race.
Liverpool Club Focus The People of Thailand & Singapore vs. Xabi Alonso - July 29
Should nobody expect a Spanish acquisition? - August 5
High hopes - August 12
False start - August 18
Plenty of bets, but no slip - August 21
Three games, two defeats and one big problem - August 25
It gets no easier - August 27
Smells like team spirit - September 1
Babel crows for return to homeland - September 4
Into the Twilight Zone - September 8
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