Direct Football Is Back, And Better Than Ever? | OneFootball

In the Pep Guardiola era of the last decade or so of football, the art of the long ball and direct play had begun to dwindle slowly out of the game. Gone were the days of the direct lump up to two big centre-forwards, or one small and one large, and in came the art of playing out from the back, baiting the press, and exploiting the most important area on the football pitch, the half space.

But football, like everything, evolves, and sometimes even reverts to old habits, and that’s exactly what seems to be happening over the last year or so. My team, Ely Woodlawn, played a game on Saturday that tested both these strategies, and the direct game provided a harsh reminder of how challenging it is to face a team that knows how to capitalise on going long at every opportunity, or even mixing it up between the two.

The emergence of the direct long ball again

The long ball, especially delivered by players with cannons on their feet, is an extremely difficult task to handle, particularly if the opposition is gaining control of the game through the two centre-backs, and your team is pressing with just one player in the front line.

It’s a tactic that a number of teams are increasingly deploying. For instance, in the Premier League this season, passing is at a 15-year low. Teams are adamant on going long and bypassing the press to big men up top, with Manchester United being an example under Ruben Amorim in recent weeks. In games against Chelsea and Sunderland, United often goes long to Benjamin Sesko, with a red card coming from the link between Sesko and Bryan Mbeumo for Chelsea in the opening minutes of the game.

In the Sunderland game just gone, United completed 33 long balls from their goalkeeper, Senne Lammens, 9 more than any other game since the start of last season, and placed Mbeumo and Sesko very close to one another to try and play off when the ball went long. It seems to be a dynamic similar to Mbeumo and Ivan Toney that United are attempting to emulate, and the more it works within games, the less likely Amorim is to deviate from it.

This goalkeeper trend is across the board, with long balls from goal kicks on the rise. If a team excels at going long and can adjust a possession-based game that’s not working, turning it into a long-ball game mid-match can be extremely challenging. Even Manchester City, while they aren’t directly going “long” as it were, have become a much more direct side this season under the guidance of Pep Ljinders as Pep Guardiola’s assistant manager.

The decision to pivot from James Trafford to Gianluigi Donnarumma rubberstamped the exact way City intend to play this season, with Donnarumma significantly less comfortable than the former with the ball at his feet.

The trend is impossible to ignore, and at times it can be impossible to stop. As per Opta, 51.9% of goalkeepers have played their kicks long this season, up from 47% last season, hammering home the clear data that the direct game is making a major comeback within this season.

how difficult is it to defend?

What makes long balls difficult to defend is whether the opposition consistently does so across the 90 minutes or tweaks their system to do so for 45 minutes. Defending meteor after meteor plummets into the sky and getting every single one of them right can be difficult, even for the best headers of a ball. Pair that with tall and even small strikers who are clever at moving their bodies into you to stop you from heading the ball at the right moment, and you have a tough day at the office for even the best defenders in the world.

It can work well when a team is down in a game and is looking to climb back into it. It’s a tale as old as time that a team will drop further into their box when defending a 2-0 or 3-0 lead, and this can allow the opposition centre-backs to gain control of the game. Making the decision to pump the ball long from these situations can eliminate the need to break down a mid/low block and cause chaos in the defending team’s box every time you get an opportunity to launch the ball into it.

Of course, one way to combat this is to take a more proactive approach when defending a lead, but for whatever reason, that is always a challenging task for a team looking to protect its advantage.

the second ball

The second ball is also a crucial aspect of teams playing long in the Premier League. A common misconception is that going long requires winning the first contact to be successful. This could not be further from the truth. In fact, many teams play long with the knowledge that they will miss the first contact, and instead drill and prepare their teams to be ready to collect the second ball, and try to play and score from that situation.

The second ball gets you up the pitch without having to bait a press or play through a press, and if you can catch a team at the right moment, it will allow you to pick apart their vulnerabilities if they are not prepared to realise the second ball is what you were playing for all along.

As of September 3rd, data collected by analyst Chunhang on Twitter shows that Manchester United leads the Premier League in second-ball wins. It’s likely that data has only gone up since then, as Amorim’s games against Chelsea and Sunderland are not involved in those metrics. It’s a clear deviation in tactics from Amorim, with someone like Sesko’s aerial prowess a trait the side from Old Trafford is attempting to make the most out of this season.

A significant number of teams have increased their reliance on long balls this season compared to last year. As per the Athletic, the likes of Bournemouth, (12.7% last season), (13.7% this season), are among those who are changing their style to cope with the evolution. Manchester United have created the most chances in the Premier League from long balls this season (6).

It’s a forgotten beast, the long ball. Guardiola’s influence meant people may have forgotten just how effective it was for some time, but many are starting to remember now. The Bolton teams of the past were successful solely due to this tactic. The Stoke Cities of this world made it difficult for some of Europe’s elite clubs in the Premier League during Tony Pulis’s reign at the Britannia, and while it may not be as purely effective as possession-based suffocation and domination, it can be an effective alternative to gain control in a game.

the sunday league variant

On Saturday, we played against a side called Roc Celtic, who were unbeaten in our division prior to the game, as were we. We are a possession-based side by trade, but at times do rely on long balls at difficult periods during games. Our issue is that we lack the profiles for a long ball, given our striker’s small size and the wingers’ unconventional profile for a long ball side. This is why the possession-based game suits us more.

Roc, by trade, are also a possession-based side, but at the weekend, they realised very quickly that in the first half, they could not break us down. Our man marking in central areas made it impossible for them to sustain pressure and progress the ball. With zero clear-cut chances in the first half and trailing us 2-0, they came out in the second half with a completely different approach to the game.

The management took advantage of the fact that we only pressed with one player in our 4-2-3-1, and decided to move the ball quickly between their two centre-halves, who would either deliver the ball long from deep, or progress and try to go long from a bit further up to the park.

This allowed them to consistently create situations like this, and in one of these situations, minutes later, they forced a goal from us by going long. This one in particular, though, saw them overload the right-hand side, but for an interception from our centre-back, would have seen them through on goal.

Throughout the second half, the pressure from the long ball and our failure to adapt to it forced the game into a 2-2 draw. It showcased to us just how truly effective the tactic can be for creating opportunities without needing to build up, and the issues that a team can pose by not adapting to that change in tactical instruction from the opposition mid-game.

Alas, in the world of football, we did end up winning the game due to a 91st-minute 25-yard lob into the top corner, so I guess it may be down to what the script writers decide at the end of the day, aye?