Lieke Martens is a current Dutch international with 113 caps and 45 career goals, making her first appearance for the full national team in 2011. She joined FC Barcelona Femeni in 2017 from Swedish team FC Rosengard.
In 2017 she was awarded both the UEFA women’s player of the year award and the FIFA women’s player of the year award. Martens was part of the Netherlands team that won the European Championships on home soil in 2017, beating Denmark 4-2 in Enschede and was named player of the tournament.
This tactical analysis will provide a scout report on Lieke Martens. The system of play and tactics implemented by Barcelona will be analyzed and discussed as well as Martens’ role & responsibilities. Her main attributes of wide combination play, positional rotations, attacking on the dribble (both running with the ball and attacking 1v1) and crossing will be viewed in-depth.
FC Barcelona Femeni
Barcelona are currently in 1st position of the Primera Division de la Liga de Futbol Femenino with 19 wins in 21 matches. Under head coach Lluis Cortes, they are the highest-scoring team (86), have the highest goal differential (+80) and are currently nine points ahead of second-placed Club Atletico de Madrid Femenino. Barcelona typically employ a variation of the 1-4-3-3 system (41.1%) which includes 1-4-1-4-1 (45%). Martens is a key player for the Catalan team, occupying one of the wide forward positions in Barcelona’s system and positional play tactics. Barcelona look to dominate possession of the ball (67.3%, ranked 1st in league), they have the highest average duration of possession (20.5 seconds), the highest average number of passes per 90 (622.37) and the highest pass completion percentage (86%).
Wide combinations
Wyscout has defined ‘attacking contribution’ (xG chain) as “a metric that assigns an xG value of a shot to every player that made any action in the attack that led to the shot”. Martens ranks 8th in the league when comparing this metric (1.33 average per 90). Martens plays a key role in the positional play attacking tactics of Barcelona. Positional play refers to the generation of superiorities in order to progress the ball and eliminate lines of pressure. Barcelona utilize Martens in several ways in order to generate one of three specific superiorities. These are numerical superiority, positional superiority, and qualitative superiority.
In the above example, #11 Martens has been able to receive the ball facing forward against the wide left defender of UD Grandilla Tenerife. She is supported by the left defender of Barcelona, #3 Melanie Serrano to create a 2v1 situation and numerical superiority. Martens dribbles infield to create additional space for the overlapping player and dribbles directly towards the defender in order to provoke pressure (fix). In this situation Martens can select either option, cut further inside on the dribble or find the overlapping wide defender in space, depending on the position of the opposition defender and which option she attempts to eliminate.
The above diagram is the second example of a 2v1 situation created by Martens. Within this example, Barcelona have changed the angle of attack from the right side to the left side due to the numerical superiority in this area of the field. Martens has drifted into the interior channel to receive a horizontal switch pass from #6 Kheira Hamraoui. By moving infield, Martens has created space for herself to receive forward and be able to attack on the dribble. Again, in this situation, Martens attacks the defender in order to provoke pressure and create space for #3 Serrano to overlap.
