In 1998, Dejan Stanković left Crvena Zvezda, the historic club at which he’d been playing since 1992 when he joined their youth academy, to embark on a playing career in Italy.
Initially joining Lazio, Stanković won a Serie A title, two Italian Cups, two Italian Super Cups, the last ever UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, and a UEFA Super Cup title with I Biancocelesti before departing Italy’s capital for Internazionale in February 2004.
With Inter, Stanković’s legend in Italian football grew further as he claimed five more Serie A titles, four more Italian Cups, four more Italian Super Cups, and a legendary UEFA Champions League title with José Mourinho in 2010, defeating Louis van Gaal’s Bayern Munich in the final after famously defeating Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona in the semi-final.
After earning ‘serial winner’ status as a player in Italy, the midfielder retired in 2013.
Since then, Stanković spent a year as Udinese’s assistant manager, a year as Inter’s team coordinator, and almost three years as a UEFA advisor before taking his first role in management in December 2019.
He returned to where it all started for him in earnest—Crvena Zvezda—to replace Vladan Milojević in the hot seat at Rajko Mitić Stadium, AKA ‘Marakana’.
81 games, 63 wins, and two Linglong Tire SuperLiga titles later, Stanković has established himself as a very promising young coach in Serbia’s capital.
As well as retaining a highly impressive 77.5% win rate at Zvezda, the ex-Inter man guided Zvezda to an exceptional 108-point, undefeated season in 2020/21.
He also led them to the Round of 32 in the UEFA Europa League—their joint-best performance in European competition following 1992 (the breakup of Yugoslavia)—where they were knocked out on away goals after drawing twice with one of Stanković’s old Italian enemies: AC Milan.
From all of this information, we can safely say that Stanković’s reign as Zvezda boss has been a positive one.
He’s achieved this success while endorsing what may be fairly described as a dominant, aggressive style of football.
This tactical analysis provides some insight into the playing style and principles of Stanković’s Crvena Zvezda.
My analysis dissects what I’ve identified as some key aspects of Stanković’s tactics at Marakana to share ideas about one part of what’s keeping this Crvena Zvezda side performing at such a high level—the tactics and playing style.
Build-up, ball progression, and the holding midfielder’s important role
Under Stanković, Zvezda have been more possession-dominant and high-scoring than they were before his tenure.
For example, in 2017/18 and 2018/19, Zvezda averaged 58.6% and 58.7% possession, scoring a total of 96 and 97 league goals, respectively.
Last term, however—Zvezda’s first full season under the 43-year-old—the Belgrade-based club scored 114 league goals while keeping an average of 64% possession—the highest in Serbia’s top flight.
Additionally, Zvezda made the most passes in the Linglong Tire SuperLiga (544.42 per 90), with the best passing accuracy (87.1%).
They played the fewest long balls (41.97 per 90) but the highest number of progressive passes (88.58 per 90), with the best progressive pass accuracy (84.6%).
Per Wyscout, a progressive pass is: ‘A forward pass that attempts to advance a team significantly closer to the opponent’s goal’.
This, along with the fact that we know they’ve played the fewest long balls in the league, starts to paint the picture of a team that is quite vertical in possession and very ball-dominant but tends to search for shorter, more accurate forward ground passes before opting for a less controlled long ball—the latter of which they resort to relatively rarely.
In this section, I’ll analyze Zvezda’s tactics during the build-up and ball progression phases to highlight some of the key tactics they deploy in possession to successfully move the ball upfield via ground passes. Ill focus particularly on the important role that the deepest midfielder plays in these two phases.
Last season, Stanković primarily lined his team up in a 4-3-3/4-1-4-1 shape, with the central midfielder naturally dropping deeper than the two wider midfielders.
So far this season, in what is still a young campaign, Stanković is yet to deploy the 4-3-3/4-1-4-1 of last term, generally favouring one of either the 4-2-3-1 or the 4-diamond-2.
Regardless of which base shape Zvezda have resembled more this season or last, some of their key principles have remained steadfastly consistent.
One consistent element of their tactics has been a preference for having one midfielder (one member of the double-pivot in the 4-2-3-1 or the naturally deepest midfielder in the 4-1-4-1/4-diamond-2 shapes) drop deep during the build—up—just in front of the two centre-backs who typically split quite wide.
Figure 1 shows an example of this shape forming in Zvezda’s build-up while they played with a 4-2-3-1 in their recent Europa League group stage win over Braga.
With the ball at the feet of goalkeeper Milan Borjan, Zvezda’s centre-backs split wide, making room for one holding midfielder to drop deep centrally while his midfield partner remains higher.
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