Since Maurizio Sarri has led Chelsea, theyre performing really well. Maintaining their position in the Champions League places in the Premier League and Manchester City the leader is still in close range. After 12 matches eight wins and four draws Chelsea have a wonderful stat, theyve scored 27 goals and only conceded eight. Although they have not shown many struggles, there is always room to improve. So in this piece, I am going to take a look at some of the tactical elements that Sarri used in his previous job, at Napoli.
In modern football, gaining space is a difficult task against most teams due to the tight and compact defensive scheme that a lot of teams use. Especially, when a team is maintaining a low or medium defensive line. Also, sometimes dismarking can be a highly problematic task against man-to-man coverage. However, manipulating the opponent’s defence could be a solution and there are tools that can help during the possession phase like:
- Switch to open man
- Vacating a position and filling it
- Vertically opposite movements
Switch to open man
Switch to the free man is a simple one, but can be really effective. Most of the time when the defending team are using tight marking around the ball or on the ball-side, they apply for zonal coverage on the far-side. Which means the defending players on the far side move infield to protect the space. (Unless it is a rigid system and the players stay close to the opponent on the far side too.) This led to a situation where the attacking players on the far-side get free. For example, against Juventus who used man-oriented defence this happened a lot. Like the instances below:
As you see, Napoli players are tightly marked near the ball, but the distance between themselves and the marker become bigger the further from the ball you look due to the defender’s movement. In these situations, Napoli exploit the space on the right side with a quick switch and pass combination.
I have to mention another scheme which is si
