Following our analysis of NK Rijeka and Osijek, we now turn our attention to Igor Tudors Hajduk Split – one of the largest teams in 1 HNL and a squad still fighting for the second spot in the table, behind Dinamo Zagreb, Croatias only consistent participant in the Champions League.
This article will dissect Tudors philosophy and tactics at Hajduk Split, dividing the analysis into both data and tactical components to provide a clear overview of the club.
Data analysis
Before delving into the tactics, we have to go through the purely statistical part that will help us determine some general trends of the team, their overall style in both attack and defence, and also identify key figures in all phases of play.
As was the case with all of our previous 1 HNL pieces, we’ll start with determining the team’s style of play by measuring the number of lateral passes they make against the long balls per 90 minutes.
While this is only a general overview, those two metrics can still help us divide the teams by positional and direct styles of play, and Hajduk are among the teams who clearly prefer the former approach.
But it has to be said that among the top four positional teams from the graph, the team from Split deploy the most long balls per 90 minutes, suggesting that despite mostly having a positional approach, they are not complete strangers to a more direct approach when necessary.
Next, we will
