UEFA EURO 2024 Semi-Finals: How man-orientation and a pendulum-pivot helped England to prevail over the Netherlands – tactical analysis

The semi-finals of big tournaments like EURO 2024 are usually fought out between the four strongest teams. This year, however, the second semi-final features two teams facing off who have had some struggles over the last couple of weeks.

For the Netherlands and Ronald Koeman, there have been a lot of injury concerns during the tournament. Frenkie de Jong and Peer Koopmeiners were both injured just before the start of the Euros, and it hurt the Dutch. Being drawn into the Group of Death with France, Austria and Poland, the Dutch barely managed to get out of the group stage by being one of the best third-placed teams. After the groups, Koemans men managed to convincingly beat Romania in the Round of 16 and scraped by an emotional Türkiye side to qualify for the semis.

On the other hand, England have been one of the biggest favourites to lift the trophy from the start of the Euros, and while their squad is loaded with talented players, their manager, Gareth Southgate, has had to face a lot of criticism for his work. Even though England managed to qualify for the semi-final in Dortmund, their performances have been rather lacklustre, and the English have been bailed out by the pure individual class of their superstars multiple times.

In this tactical analysis, we will provide an in-depth analysis of how England prevailed in the grand final in Berlin and how Gareth Southgate got the desired result against a formidable opponent in Ronald Koemans Dutchmen, with a focus on the Three Lions tactics.

Englands development in possession

For the past few weeks, the English team has been criticised extensively by pundits worldwide. Uninspiring play with the ball was one of the major points of criticism many experts used to describe Gareth Southgates style of play.

His men had struggles creating chances throughout the tournament. Their positional play has always focused on minimising risks. While they have been relatively solid defensively with that approach, their offence had to be sacrificed in some capacity. England have not scored multiple goals in regular time at the Euros. It has been very reliant on the brilliance of a couple of individual players to create goalscoring opportunities.

Against the Netherlands, however, England played a very dominant first half of football, especially in possession. Southgate adapted his tactics earlier in the tournament by switching to a back three instead of his usual back four, which opened up a bunch of new opportunities for his team.

England had multiple good opportunities during the first half yesterday, and a very good way to create those chances for them was to use a fundamental principle of modern football: Overload to isolate. While Bellingham was playing on the left and Foden was on the right, Foden tried to overload the left attacking flank most of the time. England were gaining a numbers advantage on that side of the field, but that wasn’t the only positive thing about it; they managed to get Bukayo Saka in isolated 1v1 situations on the far side of the field.

Walker also pushed up into midfield to open up the opportunity to play a two-pass switch and have an out-option if the space was too condensed to make combinations. In the first image, the Dutchmen failed to rotate in their defensive shape, and Harry Kane was left wide open in a central position, which led to a decent attempt by the England captain that Verbruggen was barely able to save.

England were able to tear apart the Dutch defensive approach by overloading the left side because Koeman was trying to play a man-oriented press in midfield, with Tijiani Reijnders and Jerdy Schouten playing man coverage against Bellingham and Foden. This led to them chasing around the midfield with no chance of recovering the ball while leaving the far half-space completely vacated. Kobbie Mainoo was able to exploit these parts of the field well multiple times during the game while pushing forward.

Another advantage was their movement i