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The technician has understood that he has to vary a lot and he is doing it. Taking advantage of the squad, he won a dirty game against Sampdoria
Talent and variations
We must value the victory that Napoli has obtained against Sampdoria dirty. The celestial team, in fact, only canceled a very negative result in the second half, but above all a poor performance in the first 45 minutes of play. The three points came thanks to the changes made by Gattuso in the intermission and the (inevitable) descent of Sampdoria, and for this reason they have a certain specific weight: the Calabrian coach has understood that the strength of his team is in the depth and the amplitude of the workforce, in the value and technical characteristics of the people. In the enormous amount of talent that you have at your disposal, a raw material that can be processed, added in many different ways, depending on the needs.
Against Ranieri’s team, in the first official match of Serie A at the Maradona stadium, it was exactly like that. The insertions in the recovery of Lozano and Petagna have caused enormous changes in Napoli. Not so much in the game system, as in the way of thinking, building, completing actions. Likewise, the urgency of having to recover the result also determined a -necessary- increase in intensity in the race, in the plays. At that moment, Sampdoria could not / could not react and hold on, exhausted as it was after a first half played very well and at a very high pace. Let’s try to reconstruct this development and explain all these concepts in detail.
How to defend against Naples
In the first half, as mentioned, Sampdoria applied a perfect strategy to inhibit Napoli’s game. Ranieri applied very simple defensive principles: close the central passing lines in the first building; immediate return and search for compactness between lines after initial pressure; obstruction of spaces and concession of bands to force opponents to actions and games that are not very dangerous, not very effective.
All these are movements that worked very well, also in relation to the problems expressed by Napoli, to the characteristics of the players deployed by Gattuso in the first half. The impossibility of transmitting easily and quickly the possession of the central to the two men of the double pivot (Fabián and Demme) didn’t allow Napoli to quickly cut the lines and / or verticalize, as seen in the first image below; In the second frame, we can see how the same dynamic was repeated even when possession was handled by Demme or Fabián Ruiz: the only unattended support lines were those of the four external ones; only that everything that was done on the flanks was without exits, because both Politano and Insigne were lined up with inverted feet, so they inevitably tended to come towards the center and close on the grip prepared by Sampdoria (seen in the third picture).
Three eloquent frames.
Even if Napoli had managed to cross into the box, the blue forwards – Mertens (169 cm), Insigne (163 cm), Politano (170 cm) would have had to win their physical / aerial duels with rival defenders. That’s with Colley (191cm), Yoshida (189cm), Ferrari (191cm) and Augello (180cm). In short, Ranieri had found a way to make Napoli harmless. As expected, Napoli’s statistics in the first half were really disappointing for the Azzurri: of the 9 total shots, 4 came only after the 35th minute; of these 9, even 6 were shot from outside the area; 14 crosses attempted and 5 aerial duels won out of 13 committed.
Sampdoria’s game plan has not only perfectly limited Naples, but it also determined a context in which counterattacks and overturns in the face of attack were very dangerous for Gattuso’s defense. Jankto’s goal was born exactly like this: Napoli tries to attack, overtakes many men but hits the Sampdoria barrier; Ranieri’s team quickly climbs onto the field, at which point sadness is discovered; the first long pass is rejected, but the blucerchiati recovers the second ball and throws it into the field on the weak side; Meret guiltily delays the start, Jankto scores.
Napoli, in this action, is a long team, actually split in two.
What happened in the recovery
Gattuso understood that that game system with those men could never have undermined the defense of Sampdoria. And then the blue coach went from 4-2-3-1 hybrid – with Zielinski wedge man between mezzala and sub-tip roles – to a 4-2-3-1 pure, with Mertens behind Petagna. It could also be defined as 4-4-2, but in reality the most shocking substitution was Politano and Lozano. The entrance of the Mexican did not change the game because Lozano is Stronger compared to Politano, but because Lozano is a player different.
Maps of the Politano (above) and Lozano (above) passages.
First of all, as can be clearly seen in the two images just above, Politano is left-handed while Lozano is right-handed. It is not a detail, because the very concept of inverted winger (the “classic” role of the former Sassuolo and Inter Milan) presupposes their movement to converge from the outside towards the center – to seek dialogue with their teammates, the cross Cut , the conclusion, all on a strong footing. Lozano, deployed on the right, on the other hand, unleashes another dynamic: in the first place, he widens the field of his team but also that of the rival, that is, he forces the two left wingers of Sampdoria to cover the depth of the wing, no longer or more. not only the central spaces; then, as a direct consequence, it generates a greater number of crosses to exit, towards the center of the area and not towards the area near the second post. All these dynamics were clearly visible, and decisive, on the occasion of Petagna’s goal:
Napoli builds on the left and then passes to the other side; Di Lorenzo manages to serve Lozano; the Mexican who points to Augello, overtakes him in speed from his side and then brushes the cross; an inverted winger like Politano, inevitably or almost, would have tried to turn on his strong foot, slowing down the maneuver, therefore easier to cover the wing and also the possible duplication of the midfielder.
The key to this goal is speed: Lozano did not stop Napoli’s action, on the contrary, he made it faster, more direct and immediate. After all, Sampdoria’s 4-4-1-1 / 4-5-1 had been designed to cover mostly the central spaces, which is why they often concede individual duels outside, where they are often it determined two against two (full backs and offensive outside). from Napoli against outside midfielders and wingers from Sampdoria). The fatigue of Augello and his teammates, plus the presence in the area of a physically structured forward like Petagna did the rest.
Occupy the area
Only this other aspect was fundamental. Unlike Politano, Lozano plays more aggressively inside the penalty area. He has much faster insertion and completion times, but most of all his readings are often anticipated, and this ability allows him to compensate for the physical gap with his opponents – he doesn’t reach 175cm either. If Napoli has the historical Tendency to build game on the left wing (against Sampdoria, 39% of offensive maneuvers were built on the Insigne-Ghoulam / Mário Rui side), Lozano on the other side can be lethal. Not surprisingly, the Mexican is the Azzurri’s top scorer of the season, with seven goals scored, six in the League, one in the Europa League.
Lozano does not anticipate Augello, he was already in that position, he occupied the area, sharing space with Petagna
On the occasion of this goal, Lozano thinks, moves and hits the ball as a pure forward. He’s offside, returns at the right time, defends his space from Augello’s return. Then jump up and hit the net hard. They are plays and actions different from those of Politano, comparable only in part to those of Callejón: the Spaniard was / is better in cuts, insertions, than occupying the penalty area.
With Lozano (and Petagna, and the Mertens sub-point, and Zielinski moved to double pivot) Napoli has changed registration. And this time it is not a way of saying or a cliché, it is a literal consideration: if in the first half the maneuver necessarily proceeded seriously, in the second half other mechanisms were implemented. At least to the right and in the penalty area. As we mentioned, it is also the “fault” of a Sampdoria much less intense from an athletic point of view: the continuous accordion movement that Ranieri asked all his players in the first half would have been – and was – unsustainable and unrepeatable even in the second. part. At that time, Napoli had new weapons and a margin of fresh, physical and nervous energy, to be able to exploit them. And he did really well.
The data for the second half are completely overturned, thus confirming this feeling: in the second 45 minutes of play, Gattuso’s team tried 9 shots towards Audero’s goal; of these, 5 were fired from inside the area; one of the attacks from outside the area, that of Lozano, was printed on the post to Audero’s right; on the other side of the field, Meret only had to make one intervention, plus a shot from outside Candreva.
Conclusions
Before closing, let’s quickly go back to the beginning, to the concept of dirty victory: How much is there to worry about the future of Napoli? Not much, because Gattuso himself was aware of the difficulties related to the game against Sampdoria. And the fact that Napoli could only win by changing the cards on the table. The words after the game of the Calabrian coach convinced us of the maturation of this awareness. Interviewed by SkyGattuso explained how he was the first to know that “Naples could have suffered today after the Europa League game. The difference is made by the squad: in the second half we changed a lot and managed to win.
Here, that “much changed” is an important step. In fact, fundamental. Because it confirms what was said in these pages and in this column a few days ago, after the match against Real Sociedad: “Gattuso’s Napoli is a team close to Allegri’s Juve. He has a hybrid squad, so he has to play hybrid football. Hybrid in the sense of changeable. Nothing is coincidence: after all, Juventus is historically “the team that knows how to win dirty games”.
Beyond certain simplistic labels, the point is just that: understand how dirty games can be won, which obviously happens to anyone. The great “identity” teams – such as Napoli de Sarri, for example – triumph thanks to the awareness and knowledge they have acquired regarding a certain tactical system, with all its facets and internal alternatives; but it is a difficult condition to achieve, the necessary prerequisite is to have a consistent template in all elements. Naples no longer has this feature, it is a hybrid team. Hybrid teams, in fact, can win these games by taking advantage of what makes them stronger than others: in the case of Gattuso’s Napoli, quality and the possibility of variation make the difference. I am the extra resource.
Of course, perhaps not all matches can be played / recovered / won like Sampdoria’s, also because not all opponents will dissolve after the first half like Ranieri’s team. But it is also true that very few coaches who can or will have to face Napoli, in Serie A as in the Europa League, have the ability / possibility to insert such strong, so different players from the bench. Gattuso seems to have understood Really that this is the wealth of your team. He’s having fun changing, he said / explained in post-game. And the best news from Napoli-Sampdoria is this.
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