In Serie A, Caligari occupy 16th position with 26 points after 29 matches, far only by two points from the relegation zone, where Frosinone currently resides in the eighteenth position with 24 points.
On the offensive front, Claudio Ranieris side has scored 29 goals, in the seventh position as the worst attacking line, with a seven-goal difference from Empoli, who possesses the weakest defensive line, conceding 22 goals. However, defensively, the situation is dire as they have conceded 50 goals, marking them as the fourth worst defensive line after Frosinone, Salernitana, and Sassuolo, who have conceded 60, 59, and 56 goals, respectively.
Upon closer examination of the defensive statistics, it has been discovered that they have conceded 14 goals out of the total 50 goals from set pieces, accounting for 28% of the conceded goals. Moreover, it is noteworthy that they are the team in Serie A that has conceded the most goals from set pieces, further accentuating the issue at hand.
Most of these conceded goals have been through corner kicks, and upon examining their defensive system, it was found that they employ a hybrid system, utilising a blend of zonal-marking and man-marking players. However, throughout their journey, changes have been made to this structure, whether in the number of zonal defenders or the roles of the players ahead of them, yet the problem persists. Upon further examination of this issue, we perceive from our standpoint that the problem lies not so much in the scheme itself but rather in the references that the players adhere to. It seems they struggle in certain situations, unsure of how to deal with them regardless of the initial defending structure.
In this tactical analysis, we will discuss the various tactics employed by Caligari in dealing with different situations regarding defensive corner kicks, aiming to uncover the root cause of the problem, which appears to be unrelated to the type of defensive system being used.
Leaving the rebound zone empty
The first problem we are going to mention is that the rebound defender leaves the rebound zone empty for many reasons, such as helping the man markers, standing more forward, aiming to exploit counter-attacks or acting with a reference of man-marking with any attacker starts on the rebound zone so that he can be dragged easily and this caused many problems to them, as we will explain with cases below.
In the photo below, their recent defending system is clear by using five zonal defenders on the first zonal line, a zonal defender in front of them to defend flicks and go to help in case of short corners and three players whose role is to block any runner trying to run from the area around the penalty spot toward the six-yard aiming to prevent them from reaching there or at least prevent them from jumping from movement achieving dynamic superiority against the zonal defenders on the six-yard, so they leave any player between the penalty spot and the zonal line free where he will face a zonal defender, as in the second photo below.
Going to our problem, which is leaving the rebound zone empty, you can notice that there is only one blue defender for short and rebound areas, so he can be easily dragged to the short area to target the rebound zone directly. Here, we should mention that the opponents starting with many players a little in far positions between the penalty spot and the edge of the box is a trigger for them to dispense with the rebound defender to increase the blockers.
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