Liga MX 2023/24: Elucidating Club León’s attacking corner excellence – set-piece analysis

Club León occupied eighth place in the Mexican league, Apertura of Liga MX, qualifying for the final series play-offs and then exiting from the Apertura Quarter Finals against Club América. Still, they have shown excellence in set pieces, especially corner kicks. They have scored the second-most set-piece goals in Liga MX with six, joined level alongside Atlético de San Luis and behind Club América with seven goals.

We also observed an important factor, which is the considerable disparity between León and Club América in the standings and the goals scored overall, where Club América is in the top position with 46 goals as the most powerful attack line in the league, while León is in the eighth position with 30 goals, ranking it sixth in the order of the most potent attack line.

In other words, Club América scored seven goals from corner kicks out of a total of 46 with a percentage of 15%, while León scored six goals from corner kicks, but out of a total of 30 goals scored with a percentage of 20%, which reflects the greater impact of corner kicks on León.

What attracted our attention more and more is the use of simple principles that any team can implement, but they yield very effective results, especially when they become repeated and continuous, as they always look in one way or another to increase their chances of winning every duel, whether the first or the second touch or even when the ball rebounds from the defence.

In this tactical analysis, we will discuss their simple, diverse and tricky tactics to know how they design effective corner routines with some straightforward principles.

Using packs

By employing packs, they demonstrated remarkable proficiency, which conferred numerous and diverse benefits on them. Overall, it can be said that packs simply augment their probability of getting the ball and prevailing in the aerial contest in various manners. They might use them to overload the designated area, thereby enhancing their likelihood of winning the contest by having a greater number than their adversary in the designated area. Alternatively, they might divert the defenders attention, leaving behind a player who will seize the ball from an unmonitored free movement position. Or they might exploit them in a reverse way, standing in a place that is not targeted to vacate the targeted place where this player standing behind them moves. All of this will be explained in detail.

In the first photo below, the opponent defends with four players in the first zonal line: a player in front of them to defend flicks, three man-markers, a short-option defender and a player for the rebound. So it is clear that man markers are in a 5-v-3 situation against Leóns pack with two free attackers, as in the second photo.

All of this pack goes to the targeted area, so they get the first touch, mainly because of the two free attackers who jump high, as in the third photo, but the ball goes beside the ball, as in the fourth photo.

In the case below, they use the same idea but with a different role for the free player. They make him start at the back, far away from the defenders attention, and then, he moves to the targeted area with his momentum, achieving a dynamic mismatch. Lets know how!

In the first photo, the same 5-v-3 situation is also evident. However, here, the last attacker waits behind and then rushes to the targeted area, taking advantage of the observers focus with the attackers in the front, coming from a movement position and thus surpassing the zonal defenders who jump from a stable position, which is called a dynamic mismatch, as shown in the second and third photos.

But the ball goes above th