UEFA Europa League 2019/20: Alkmaar vs LASK Linz – tactical analysis

At first glance, this match seemed to be one of the less interesting ones in the round of the last 32 in the UEFA Europa League. After we saw in this week the first four games of the UEFA Champions Leagues last round of 16, on Thursday evening all remaining 32 teams of the UEL were in action. The game between Alkmaar and LASK Linz was surely not the one which stood out ahead of this round, at least not as much as the Manchester United game for example, but at a closer look, it was quite promising as Alkmaar are in second place in the Eredivisie while LASK Linz are the league leaders in Austria since they bet RB Salzburg last week.

However, the game was especially interesting as Alkmaar played with an unusual starting XI since they currently have several injured players as we’ll see in this analysis. In this tactical analysis, we’ll look at the tactics which Alkmaar and LASK Linz used and explain why the final result was 1-1.

Line-ups

As already mentioned, Alkmaar have currently several injured players and the bad thing is that these are all centre-backs. With Stijn Wuytens, Pantelis Chatzidiakos and Ron Vlaar they missed three centre-backs. Due to that, one of their key players and the captain, Teun Koopmeiners, who is usually a defensive midfielder and important for the build-up, had to play as a centre-back next to Ramon Leeuwin who they bought this January.

The full-backs were the usual ones with Jonas Svensson and Owen Wijndal while Marco Bizot was in goal. The central midfield was made of Jordy Clasie (who joined them at the start of this season from Premier League club Southampton), Hakon Evjen and one of the stars of the team Calvin Stengs. The front three consisted of Dani de Wit, Mayron Boadu and Oussama Idrissi. The head coach Arne Slot usually lets Stengs play as right-winger since then he can dribble to the inside and create something dangerous with his strong left foot, but since Koopmeiners wasn’t available in central midfield, Clasie had to play there and Stengs as an offensive midfielder in 4-1-4-1.

On the other side, Valérien Ismaël went with his usual 3-4-3 formation and changed nothing compared to their victory against RB Salzburg last weekend in the Austrian Bundesliga. Alexander Schlager was in goal while the back three in front of him consisted of Gernot Trauner, Philipp Wiesinger and Petar Filipović. The central midfielders were Peter Michorl and James Holland while the wings got occupied by Reinhold Ranftl and René Renner. The front three were made of the wingers Dominik Frieser and Thomas Goiginger while Marko Raguž was the only centre-forward.

Linz’s basic idea out of possession

In their last game against Salzburg, Linz used an interesting man-orientated approach when their opponents were in possession of the ball. Salzburg used a similar formation (3-4-1-2) and because of that LASK could man-mark every single player of Salzburg during the high pressing without switching their positions. So, they stayed in their 3-4-3, used a high pressing and at the same time man-marked all options for the player on the ball.

Since Alkmaar used a back four and in general, a completely different system, LASK would have had to switch their formation during their press if they wanted to defend in a man-orientated system. Due to that, during their high and intense pressing, which is usual for them, they used a mixture of man-orientated defending and staying in their formation to cut off passing options. We can see their pressing if we look at the graphic below.