KRC Genk have become a staple in the highly coveted Championship Playoff of the Belgian Pro League over the last few seasons, qualifying for international competitions multiple times.
Under manager Wouter Vrancken, the club finished first in the 2022/23 regular season, but in the end, the team of the long-time Mechelen head coach failed to secure the league title in the playoffs.
After a rather underwhelming follow-up season, Genk barely scraped by and got into the Champions Playoff on the last matchday.
Still, Vrancken openly spoke about his desire to leave the club for the upcoming campaign and was fired three weeks before the term ended.
Not only did the coach wish to leave the club, but multiple players followed suit.
With earnings of about €86m, the club had plenty of money but suffered a sharp decline in quality after a disappointing season.
The team hired Thorsten Fink from VV Sint-Truiden as a replacement.
Fink has had an up-and-down career to date; after a strong start to his managerial career at Red Bull Salzburg and Basel, He had an average stint at Hamburger SV and failed to have a lasting impact at Austria Wien, and was therefore fired from both jobs.
From then on, Fink travelled the footballing world, working in Cyprus, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Latvia, and Switzerland before joining Sint-Truiden.
Now, at age 57, he leads the league with KRC Genk.
In this tactical analysis and head coach analysis, we will examine Thorsten Fink tactics that he implemented at Genk to help them improve their situation in the summer.
Stretching & Long Balls
There was a reason why Genk brought in Thorsten Fink, even though the season of VVST ended in a rather expected way.
The German manager implemented a possession-based style of play at the small Belgian club and surprised many teams during the season with his side’s excellent passing play.
Fink usually preferred a 4-3-2-1 formation and brought that over to KRC Genk as well.
Still, after a series of problematic defensive performances to start the season, he decided to return to a back four and a 4-2-3-1 formation that his predecessor, Vrancken, used during his tenure, simply because his players are more used to it.
Looking at their possession tactics, Fink still implemented many of the positive strategies he also used at VVST last season.
One thing that catches the eye right from the start is their very narrow shape in possession.
The centre-backs stay close to the centre of the pitch, with only the two full-backs providing some width.
They do not hug the sidelines either, staying a couple of steps away to the inside.
Even their two wingers are not positioning themselves on the wings but rather in the half-spaces, forcing a very narrow backline for Royal Antwerp here.
Out of this positional play, Genk overload one side of the field heavily.
As we can see from their midfield structure, all midfielders are on the left side of the field when the left centre-back has the ball, and even their striker moves to that side in a fairly wide position.
What’s interesting about their overload is something else, however.
While Fink has his men play their ball to the overloaded side, they just wait until Antwerp move collectively as well.
From there on, even though they have passing options on their left side, they switch play with two passes back to the right centre-back here.
But why are they even overloading one side then?
To open up space on the other side.
In this situation, the right winger Steuckers can move out of the front line to receive a pass from his centre-back in the right half-space that was vacated by Antwerp for their press earlier.
With their right-back making a run behind the defensive line at the same time, they force the Antwerp left-back to stay back and prevent him from following Steuckers into the midfield, and with the midfielders being on the other side of the field, the Belgian attacking midfielder can now turn towards goal.
If the left-back follows here, they can simply play the long ball over the top.
While a long ball over the top obviously would be very nice, getting Steuckers to turn in the half-space with the ball at his left foot is also dangerous.
The Belgian’s biggest strengths are his exceptional deep vision for his teammates and his ability to find progressive solutions in these situations.
While the Antwerp backline now reacts to what happened with these passes, the remaining players in Genk’s frontline are pretty much staying where they are on the field.
This now puts them in the position to make runs in behind their respective defenders.
Steuckers now scans the field, sees the opening on the far side, and plays a switch against the direction of Antwerp’s movement.
While the Antwerp defender now gets a head to the pass, his body position is just b, ad, and he can’t clear the ball away.
Genk win the ball right at the edge of the box and score.
While Fink’s team is excellent in possession, these long balls are a common pattern in their attempts to progress the ball.
Deadly Wing Play
Genk are a very good possession team, not just when building up against a deep block but also when playing against one.
In these situations, Fink has his men play through the wings, which is not unusual for possession-based teams over the last couple of years.
With many teams crowding the centre of attack against a strong attacking team like Genk and their best goalscorers all playing in the middle of attack, Fink tries to stretch out opposing defences to open up spaces.
Many teams in Belgium need to focus their attention on Tolu Arukodare, especially when defending.
He exerts some form of gravity on the players around him, which Fink uses well.
Here, we can see Genk playing against a deep block.
Anderlecht are dropping back to the edge of their box and playing in a 4-4-2 formation, keeping the distance between the midfield and defensive lines very close.
Genk stretch out play the same way they did in their build-up, with the centre-backs staying close to each other and crowding the centre in the final third.
One midfielder is dropping back diametrically and is able to receive the ball and drag the first line of press out of their position.
The team now likes to keep the ball moving, not necessarily to progress the ball but just to get the deep block moving.
The near-sided full-back
Once their opponent has committed to one side, Genk switch through their central defenders to the far-sided wing, where the full-back is not just very wide but also very high up the pitch.
From then on, Genk created a 1v1 situation on the right flank.
With their pacey, agile wingers and full-backs, the team often wins these duels and crosses the ball into the box instantly.
In the centre of the field, the team is moving extremely well to create opportunities for the crosser to pick out targets.
In this situation, they are acting like the two strikers are just going to move in a straight line towards the six-yard box.
In reality, Arukodare is going to move into his marker and then make an explosive step right into where his teammate was just making a run and pulling away his defender.
Now they only need to cross, and Arukodare can score an easy goal after the dummy from his teammate.
These situations with quick 1v1s into a hard and low cross with a dummy by the striker at the near post are happening very often in Genk’s games, and Arukodare has scored multiple goals out of this pattern, making him the top scorer of the Belgian Pro League so far this season.
Press & Quality In Possession
Another thing that Thorsten Fink’s coaching style has improved at KRC Genk so far this season is their work ethic against the ball.
While the team was really good in pressing in the 2022/23 season, they struggled with that last season, and even after Fink arrived, their first couple of games this season were rather shaky.
Therefore, Fink opted to change back to a back-four instead of the back-three he usually prefers to help out his players a bit.
Overall, the team has the fourth-best defence in terms of expected goals allowed, and combined with their amazing attack, this is deadly for the rest of the league.
Fink and his men are usually the favourites in the league games this year, and they play like it.
They use an attacking press that puts pressure on the opposing team as soon as the opposing team leaves their box.
They usually do this in a very aggressive, even risky, way.
By committing many men forward, Fink kind of forces a stalemate between the teams in a man-coverage situation.
From then on, he has his striker and one of his wingers cut off one side of the field by pressing the opposing centre-backs heavily in one direction.
This creates this 3-2-3-2 shape, as seen in the picture above, which puts a lot of pressure on the build-up and reduces the backline numbers.
Still, they usually manage to cut off one side of the play anyway, so covering all of the far-sided players here is not important.
From there on, they are man-marking the players on the near side of the ball from the centre-back up until the striker.
This forced opposing teams into 1v1 duels all over the field if they want to find a solution against the high line of pressure.
Here, Antwerp decided not to take any risks and punted the ball downfield towards their target man, Janssen, in attack.
Still, even here, the Genk centre-backs are ready to follow the opposing team‘s attacker deep into their own half and are not allowing any control of the ball without a duel.
While it works out very well here, this reckless way of defending is not without risk at all.
If Genk loses a key duel in these situations, they are exposed and often struggle to recover their position behind the ball.
What’s also really interesting is that Genk has very clear principles of play after recovering these balls.
Here, Janssen loses the duel and the Genk defenders are easily able to recover the ball, but they are already forward-oriented and are playing a deep pass towards the left wing.
Here, they always use these deep passes combined with a one-touch lay-off back towards the midfield; in this situation, they even use it twice in a row.
This allows them to progress the ball in a very efficient manner and travel the distance of the field in a few seconds while also freeing up players between the line with their faces already turned towards the goal.
Genk has an incredibly high ball security and passing rate after winning the ball.
They are elite at finding soft spots in the unorganised defence and play liquid football with many quick and hard passes down the wings.
Here, they once again manage to play a ball inside to Arukodare, this time as a cutback towards the edge of the box, where he gets the shot off and forces the goalkeeper into a good action.
Overall, it’s impressive how much they commit to the press, but Thorsten Fink has his men completely locked in, and it usually goes well.
After winning the ball, the clear principles he implemented allow for very good attacking football, which is a pleasure to watch; Fink has also done a great job here.
Conclusion
In the end, Thorsten Fink has done a phenomenal job in his first six months at KRC Genk.
With a huge personal overturn in the squad and coming off a rather disappointing season with more chaos than the club expected, Fink turned the team into a contender for the league again.
However, the margins are thin.
Yes, Genk have the best attack in the Belgian Pro League so far this season and have an absolute standout player in Tolu Arukodare.
Still, they are very reliant on the individual class of their top attackers.
Leading the league is always nice, but Club Brugge are only one point behind Fink’s men at the moment and do not seem to slow down anytime soon.
With the points being halved entering playoff time, the margins between the teams are getting so close once again that one might say the current lead could be gone with just one or two bad games, and that has been a huge problem for KRC Genk in the last couple of years.
Therefore, seeing how Thorsten Fink and his team will finish the season will be very interesting.
