You can often see attractive videos about set-pieces on social media with some annotations, projecting the idea that this is the whole story.
You may miss some context, such as why they implement this specific routine against this specific team and whether they can exploit the same idea against other opponents.
As a coach or analyst, you may admire this routine and try to copy and paste it with your team, thinking that the process looks like a playbook, but it suddenly doesnt work!
You can design your plan inspired by some ideas and principles, but every opponent is a single case because every team has a unique scheme with different dynamic reactions against different attacking movements, and it also depends on individuals.
Therefore, you should consider opponents and then design a routine that includes the 10 players movements and explains why, when, and how to move against each opponent.
Elite teams, like Arsenal, do that smoothly, and all their routines are inspired by similar principles and ideas.
However, if you focus more and more, you will find a small variation depending on the opponent.
Empoli implemented great tactics and ideas revealed on social media as a case study, but they are the only team to have scored zero from corners and set-pieces in general in Serie A.
They also have the lowest xG from set-pieces in Serie A, with 1.37, despite being in the middle of the table, in 10th position.
In this tactical analysis, we will show that despite being unlucky, they can become increasingly effective in corners with small adjustments, and we expect they will.
Repeated Ideas Regardless Of Opponent
We will start with their amazing ideas in short corners like this one against AS Roma who spread a lot among the football community.
In the photo below, Roma defend with a man-marking defending system with only two zonal players (green).
Empoli FC attacked the box with eight players, meaning there is only one player left in the back (yellow) who will be the targeted player, but why did they do that, and where are the rebound defenders?
They want to ensure that no one will defend in the short or rebound areas.
To this end, they ask the blue player to suddenly move from the first zonal defenders blind side to do a wall pass to the taker near the vertical edge of the box.
Eight man markers mean that no defenders are left to stand on the rebound area, too, so the yellow defender will run into the whole groups blind side.
Regarding the possible rebound, they ask two players (pink) to run back to the edge of the box once the routine begins.
The other runners run towards the near post (decoy runs) behind the only zonal player left because the first one goes to defend the two-versus-two possible situation, but the taker crosses the ball directly.
