The return of the UEFA Champions League this week sees Liverpool host Atletico Madrid at Anfield, with Liverpool looking to overturn a 1-0 loss from the first leg. Liverpool struggled to create chances in the game, but werent poor in terms of tactics and got into some good areas where their final pass or technical ability on the night let them down. However, one area I feel Liverpool will have been very disappointed with was their work from set-pieces, with them struggling to create a chance from these areas. With Atlético employing a strict man to man approach from corners, I feel as though Liverpool have the chance to exploit the Spaniards from set-piece situations, and within this tactical analysis, I have identified key areas of weakness in Atléticos set-pieces, which Liverpool could look to exploit. Therefore, you could treat this as an opposition analysis on Atléticos set-pieces, and it, therefore, should give you an insight into what clubs look for.
Use of blockers to disrupt man-marking
With man-marking relying on the defenders matching the movements of the attackers, using blockers to prevent the defenders from doing this is extremely effective. We can see a few examples here of Atléticos set up being exploited with some clever blocking routines, and later in the article, Ill add some of my own based on all of the trends in this article.
Here, we see the target player highlighted, with his marker straight in front of him looking to match his run. The player next to him (number 18), is unmarked and looks to act as a blocker to both disguise who the real target player is and to also then free this target player.
We can see the target player makes a quick movement to the left, while number 18 now moves into the path of the marker, giving this player a free run at goal. The player moves into this space highlighted which is left unoccupied and wins a free header which goes back towards the back post.
We saw Liverpool try and e
