AS Monaco currently sit fourth in Ligue 1 and four points from leaders Lille, with Niko Kovačs first season seemingly showing some progress after Monaco finished only 9th last season following a disappointing campaign. One of the leading successes behind AS Monacos performances this season have been their set-pieces, with WhoScored registering Monaco as scoring 18 goals from set-pieces this season. Kovač attributed much of this success to his brother and assistant coach Robert Kovač, who had been tasked on working on this part of Monacos game on the training ground.
This set-piece analysis will analyse the key trends and concepts behind Monacos success from corners this season, with The Monegasques displaying clear ideas which have allowed them to become one of the deadliest set-piece teams in Europe.
General structure
Monaco are not a team that surprise the opposition with innovative routines involving intricate movements. Instead, like most teams. they hold a general structure when attacking corners and have principles and variations within this structure. The structure they hold is a 3-2 shape, with three deeper runners and two higher players in the six-yard box- the roles of these players will be explained and broken down within the analysis.
We can see this shape below, with usually two players on the edge of the box, three players acting as deeper runners, and two players higher in the six-yard box. The higher players in the six yard box are smaller attackers, and so are usually former Bundesliga ever present Kevin Volland and ex Sevilla striker Wissam Ben Yedder, but thanks to their movement and positioning, they are still very useful in these parts of the game. The three deeper players are most commonly variations of Axel Disasi (1.93m), Guillermo Màripan (1.93m), Benoît Badiashile (1.94m) and Aurélien Tchouameni (1.87m), and so we can see Monaco clearly have height available in the team.
The key variable in their corners is the staggering and spacing of those three deeper runners, and we can see below it becomes almost a 1-2 triangular shape, with one player staying deeper. This allows the deepest runner to create more separation from their marker, and also gives the angles and opportunity for the other two players to block or create traffic. In this example above we can also see that because the runners are so deep, while the two higher players are pinning the defence in the six yard box, space between these lines opens, and so if a deeper runner can dismark they have space to arrive into and head.
We can see the structure again here, with the spacing slightly different but the structure the same 3-2 again. The higher players can be more involved in the corners at times, sometimes acting as the target player by making movements from in to out, and so we see a striker starts behind the goalkeeper initially here. The deeper three space differently here, with every spacing having an advantage or aim to it, as Ill discuss in detail later in the analysis
