Analyzing Artem Dovbyk through his goals

Artem Dovbyk had a breakout season last year playing for Girona; a season which allowed him to be the Pichichi of La Liga and his team to reach the qualification to the next Champions League. With his national team did not perform well enough in the last European Championship in Germany, therefore many doubts arise in relation to his transfer to AS Roma.

In this post I will try to find out in which way Girona allowed him to score and to perform at his best. Given the fact AS Roma is very close to sign him, It would beneficial for giallorossi supporters to understand which efforts on a tactical point of view Daniele De Rossi is required to do in order to allow the Ukrainan forward to be the right investment for the team.

In order to perform this analysis I tried to dissect the open-play goals scored by Dovbyk in the last season in La Liga in order to describe the pattern who allowed him to score. Together with this I will show some interesting stats which explain his style of play.

Austria's strategy under Ralf Rangnick

 

Austria was one of the national team participating at EURO 2024 which was within the list of potential surprises of the competition. It is difficult to consider a surprise something you expect to be a surprise, however the fact that Austrian team was able to win the Group D on top of France and Netherlands is definitely a huge achievement for this team.

This result has been obtained through a strategy which is recognizable and that gave identity to a team which now mirrors the whole Austrian football movement. The father of this movement is Ralf Rangnick, the creator of this identity at Red Bull group and now transferring this into the national team.

Let's give a look how this strategy worked in the match against Netherlands, the match won by Austrian team 3-2 that gave them the first place in Group D.

England still needs to find the right tactical solutions

 

After three days of European Championship where many important teams showed some tactical identity, the opening game for England did not provide the same feeling. Southgate's team started the game well and found the net with an header of Jude Bellingham, however after scoring the Three Lions struggled a lot in creating opportunities, especially through positional attacks. In this article I will try to give some quick examples of what went wrong.

Davide Possanzini and De Zerbi legacy

 

We everybody know the style of play promoted by Roberto de Zerbi in his journey from Italy to Ukraine and now to Brighton in Premier League. During this years the Italian manager was supported by many young coaches is his different experiences; those coaches are now manager and they use Roberto de Zerbi vision as a base for their football.

One of them is Davide Possanzini, assistant of De Zerbi at Sassuolo and that is impressing a lot with Mantova, an Italian Serie C team which is now on top of the tournament due to his work. And in this article we are looking at the similarities between the Brighton manager and the current Mantova manager. A similarity which is showing how De Zerbi is creating a coaching tree.

Is Pochettino choosing the best options for Chelsea?

We are going towards the first international break of the season: Chelsea closed this first stint of games in Premier League with just 4 points in 4 matches. For the Blues we are all aware this could be a difficult season (especially at the beginning) considering the new massive revolution they had during the transfer market.

The other curiosity around Chelsea was the appointment of Mauricio Pochettino as manager: after Tuchel, Potter and Lampard, this is the fourth manager in less than one year sitting on bench at Stamford Bridge and after the bad experience of the Argentinian coach at Paris, the main demand is if he can be able to give a tactical identity to his team.

I will analyze some situation Pochettino is implementing at Chelsea based on the last match lost at Stamford Bridge against Nottingham Forest in order to understand what is going good and what is going wrong.

Norwich: the best attack in Championship?

 

Photo Source: @NorwichCityFC Twitter account

13 goal in 4 matches is the score collected so far by Norwich: the Canaries, after the managerial change from Smith to Wagner, seem have changed their approach, moving from a conservative one to a more proactive behaviour, which is taking some dividends, considering that they are the best attack in the league and they earned 10 points in 4 matches, getting the second place behind Leicester.

I try to figure out which are the solutions adopted by David Wagner in order to unlock the firepower available upfront. 

How Japan and Sweden approached their Quarter-Final clash

Source: @svenskfotboll

Fifa Women World Cup reached the quarter-final stage and one of the more interesting clash was between the Japanese team, who dominated its group also thanks to a 4-0 win over Spain, and the Swedish team who eliminated from the competition the US team after a dramatic sequence of penalties.

Both team are recognized as having a clear identity on the pitch while also able to be very pragmatic during each match by accepting both scenario in which they are deemed to play the ball or leave the control of the play to the opponents.

The clash ended with Sweden winning 2-1 thanks to a better interpretation of the match for about 70 minutes, the last third of the match was quite dominated by Japanese team helped by a physical (and mental?) drop of Sweden team. However it was not enough to change the outcome, with yellow-black girls reaching the semifinals.

This article wants to describe the main pattern of both teams.

Positional Play, Progression Boxes, Fluidity: Enzo Maresca at Leicester

Photo: Twitter account Leicester

My first post in this blog in English is dedicated to the first official game played in Championship by Leicester who appointed Enzo Maresca to try to get the Foxes back in Premier League.

I analyzed some patterns which was implemented by the former assistant of Pep Guardiola at City last year, a collaboration fully visible in the Leicester's structure during the match.