After their promotion to the Belgian First Division A, OH Leuven had a difficult task of not getting relegated again.
At the moment of speaking, they have already done a great job in achieving that goal.
With 18 points out of 11 games, Marc Brys’s team are on their way to not only secure a place in the top flight for next season but are even fighting for the European places at the moment.
Credit has to be given to Brys, who implemented an energetic playing style since arriving at the club that shares the same owner as the Premier League side Leicester City.
But when we take a look at the stats, their other coaches also deserve a bit of credit.
OHL found the net 19 times thus far while nine came from set-piece situations.
But even more impressive are the variations OH Leuven perform during a game.
The mind behind these variations is Bram Verbist, the goalkeeper coach.
Having said that, we believe it is worthwhile to analyse OHLs set-pieces thus far this campaign.
This OH Leuven tactical analysis will take a look at the key principles and tactics in set pieces and corner variations OH Leuven apply to be unpredictable yet so effective and dangerous at set-piece play.
OH Leuven Key principles
The first key principle OH Leuven apply in most set-pieces is blocking of the opponents to isolate a free man in a good scoring position.
The aim of the blocking principle is to prevent defenders from covering spaces and consequently creating space for an attacker to exploit.
Here we can see a rehearsed set-piece against Oostende where two OHL attackers block two Oostende defenders.
This frees up the attacker between the two blockers who Xavier Mercier easily finds with a simple pass and sends into a scoring position.
As discussed above, blocking players helps to create space for other players.
This brings us to OHL’s next principle when approaching set-pieces.
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