Il Piano

England have reached the Quarter Finals and now have an Italian hurdle between them and the final. Judging by Hodgson's reactive tendencies and experience in Italian football they are going to have a clear plan, (il piano in Italian). Once famed for their defensive qualities, this current Italian side is lacking in its stereotypical World Class defenders. In fact, unlike the sides of old, the team lacks any established world-class players except Pirlo, Buffon and, arguably, De Rossi. What they do have, however, are options. 

Italy have a good selection of players with no particularly weak or strong areas but what they do lack is width. In the first two games they overcame this by adopting a 3-5-2 formation similar to that often used by Juventus this season and featuring several of these Juventus players in the same roles as at club level. Alternatively, against Ireland the Italians adopted the 4-3-1-2 favoured by AC Milan. The only real difference between these formations is whether the side plays with a 3^rd central defender or a trequartista between the midfield band of 3 and the front 2. The roles of the 2 wide players alter slightly between being wing backs and full backs but the midfield band of 3, which is the key to the side, remains unchanged. As a result, defensively England’s main focus should be upon disrupting Pirlo and limiting his influence upon the game. 

Pirlo is by far Italy’s best player on the ball and his role is the same in either formation as the deep-lying playmaker between 2 more mobile midfielders known as shuttlers or carrileros. The key to disrupting Pirlo is to pay him constant attention, he is not the most mobile player, however, due to his deep role he can be difficult to pressure. England can learn from Croatia in this area. In the Croatia game Bilic altered his side’s shape at half time in order to place Modric up against Pirlo. This allowed him to close Pirlo down quickly and restrict his influence as well as allowing Modric to move away and find space more easily when Croatia were in possession, something reflected in Modric’s 2 shots, 59 touches and 48 passes (the highest on the Croatian side). England, hopefully, can look to recreate this by asking Rooney to watch Pirlo, something Rooney attempted to do against Busquets in the 2011 Champions League Final.

Attack

Italy are far from free-scoring and England can try to put them under pressure, particularly in wide areas. The models for this approach are the Champions League second leg between Arsenal and AC Milan this season and the Second Leg between Chelsea and Napoli in the same competition. In both games the English side were able to use their numerical advantage out wide. Chelsea did this with Sturridge and Ramires out wide rather than proper wingers. Michael Cox at Zonal Marking highlights that, since Lavezzi played high up the pitch, “Napoli had little protection, with Walter Gargano forced to move across to that side. If he couldn’t, then the wing-back would move up the pitch and deal with the danger, and the relevant centre-back would move across into the full-back position.”

This involves drawing a centre back out wide or a central midfielder out there, creating space in the centre either way. Similarly, Arsenal placed an emphasis upon running at the Milan full-backs, an approach that was successful both in an attacking sense and in pinning back these players and making Milan even narrower than usual.

Lineups

 

A - This is the most likely formation for either side and represents the dream scenario for England. I'd personally choose Carroll as the target for crosses as England look to exploit the space out wide. The Italian wing backs will be forced deep to cover Young and Walcott, leaving Cole and Johnson free, or will have to leave them to the outer centre backs, leaving Italy without a spare man at the back. Either of these represents a clear advantage for England as they offer an attacking threat while nullifying Italy's midfield by going man for man.

B - If italy move to their alternative formation this represents a real problem for England. Even if Rooney marks Pirlo, Parker and Gerrard are outnumbered by the other 3 Italian midfielders (most likely Motta, De Rossi and Marchisio). Walcott and Young are easier to cover as the wing backs are now full backs and Cole and Johnson, while free, are unable to move upfield due to the numerical disadvatange in the centre of the pitch.

C - This is a very unlikely option but it's the one I would choose to react with. The two carrileros in the Italian system mainly offer energy and vertical movement, therefore they are suitable to being tracked by Gerrard and Milner who also offer energy and are a threat in attack as well. Rooney still marks Pirlo but instead of playing as a second striker he is in a role more focussed on playmaking. His job is not to be a direct goal threat but to feed Young and Walcott who look to find space behind Italy by playing as wide forwards rather than wingers. There is virtually no chance Hodgson would play this way as it offers no guarantee of sucess, means a switch to an untested system, moves from his preferred two banks of four and involves not playing a true striker.

Conclusions

With Chiellini likely to be out Italy can either play Barzagli alongside De Rossi and Bonucci at centre back, or move to their alternative 4-3-1-2 formation. Unfortunately for England I think the latter is more likely as that was Prandelli's choice for the game against the Irish who play a similar 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 to England.

Lines Lines Lines

Roy Hodgson's tactics are pretty well documented, particularly his preference to defend with 2 banks of 4 and not leave any space between the lines. This is something England did well the other day and largely restricted France to longer range efforts as they couldn't work the ball closer to the goal, a result of England's good work at closing off the space between the lines. Interestingly though, the goal France scored came from in front of the England lines after they had been thrown into disarray by the confusing positioning of Parker and Gerrard as shown below.

The goal was a result of the central midfielders crossing over, the midfield line being too deep and Oxlade-Chamberlain offering little cover. The likelihood is England may not have conceded were all 3 of these errors not to have coincided.
 
Gerrard and Parker Crossover
With Gerrard RCM and Parker LCM you can see that they begin in line, then cross over, then return to being in a line. When centre backs cross over they are rightly criticised and in this system Gerrard and Parker's positioning should be subject to similar criticism as in the defensive phase their roles are quite similar to those of centre backs in some respects. If they stay on their correct sides then Nasri will be faced with the two of them when he looks to shoot instead of just Gerrard, with Parker having been caught out chasing shadows toward right back.

Deep Midfield
This one is, ironically, recognised by Glen Johnson, frequently citicised for his lack of defensive skills. In the first picture you can actually see him pointing and he is signalling for pressure to be put on the trio of French players on the edge of the box. The English midfield begins the series of pictures with a slant leaving it very deep on one side. Gerrard positions himself deep so as not to allow Ribery (standing in front of Johnson in the first picture) to be between the lines. This aspect is not entirely an error as it is likely Hodgson instructed them not to allow any players to position themselves between the lines so Ribery forces Gerrard into that position. The picture below shows the ball in a similar position but the England midfield, despite Parker tracking back, is not forced so deep.

No Cover from the Ox
The picture above also shows that when a player has been dragged into the left back zone leaving the team shorthanded in the centre Milner comes across to cover and Gerrard is comfortable to move across to LCM. This isn't an entirely fair comparison as the goal came following sustained pressure whereas the positioning in this picture was taken up before they had come under any particular pressure. The difference is stark though and its notable that in the original series the longest line at every point is that between Oxlade-Chamberlain and Parker. Again this may have been under instruction by Hodgson with him wishing to have Chamberlain higher up the pitch as a pacy outlet for counter-attacks, particularly as he was on a yellow card by this point so not as useful defensively.

Conclusions
It's difficult to apportion blame here as Parker moved across to try and close down and wouldn't have done so if Gerrard wasn't so deep. Gerrard was deep because he was trying not to leave Ribery between the lines and Chamberlain didn't come across but both may have been following instructions. As someone who generally plays a more attacking role as either a winger or in an attacking band of 3 for Arsenal, Chamberlain would be unfamiliar with the position he was asked to play even if he was expected to come across making it, arguably a selection error. To put it simply though if a team is playing deep and not allowing space between the lines then they can't have that many complaints if the opposition score from in front of them, as that is the area they were looking to force them to play in.

Kagawa and Manchester United

Having been rumoured to have agreed a move to Manchester United the prospect of Shinji Kagawa in the Premier League is looking extremely likely.

While many have been criticising United’s apparent lack of creativity in the middle of the pitch for years, Kagawa does not really represent a straightforward solution to this. What he will bring to the side however is far more important. Despite the calls for a No. 10 in the vein of Sneijder or similar United are far from short of creative riches, Carrick and Scholes offer passing ability from deep, Nani and Young both offer creative wing-play with ability to come inside and Rooney offers creativity higher up the pitch. Adding another creative player could prove to be counterproductive as they may reduce the space for these other players. What Kagawa is likely to bring to the side is a different type of movement. Unlike Rooney, who drops deep to collect the ball, or Hernandez and Welbeck, who tend to play in advance of Rooney on the last man, Kagawa offers forward runs from a deeper starting position as well as lateral movement. While he is competent out wide, his best position is that which he plays at Dortmund, close to Lewandowski whose movement allows Kagawa to find himself unmarked on his runs from deeper. This point was illustrated extremely well in Dortmund’s first and third goals in the Pokal final against Bayern Munich that Ferguson attended.

In this sequence you can see Kagawa (circled in blue) begins moving laterally in a position deeper than Lewandowski (circled in red), drawing Jerome Boateng high up the pitch and causing him to take up a position in front of his centre back partner Holger Badstuber. While this is happening Lewandowski is forcing Badstuber deeper as he attempts to reach a pass from right back Lukas Piszczek. In the second part of the sequence we can see Kagawa has reacted to this by attempting to run past Lewandowski to receive the header, placing himself in a race with Boateng that he would be expected to win. Unfortunately Lewandowski’s header is not ideal and Kagawa isn’t able to attack this space directly, however, he is able to return the ball to Lewandowski in behind Badstuber instead to calmly slot the ball past Neuer.

This, depicting the opening goal, shows Kagawa far in advance of Lewandowski after a tackle on Lewandowski led to the ball arriving at the feet of Blaszczykowski who engages Neuer before squaring the ball behind Boateng to Kagawa (shown by the black arrows), who is again unmarked after a run from deep and slots the ball home easily.

The purpose of this series is to indicate 2 things. Firstly, unlike Rooney, who excels at it, Kagawa does not focus upon dropping deep to collect the ball and look to play a “killer” pass, something revealed by the fact he finished the season with more goals and assists and that his average of 37.7 passes per game is considerably less than Rooney’s 50.4 or the 51.9 of Sneijder who has long been linked with the same position at United. Secondly, Kagawa provides a different option from the other players at United. It is relatively easy to see Kagawa playing alongside Rooney, looking to move past him as he drops deep and then to receive the ball from him unmarked. It’s not entirely dissimilar to the roles of Vucinic and Mancini in Spaletti’s 4-6-0 at Roma around 2007 (albeit more central) , while Rooney would play the “False 9” role of Totti, something he has done well in the past . Additionally, with his preference to play behind the striker and burst past him Kagawa would offer an alternative option or cover for Rooney if required.