The art of short corners: Part one – attacking with superiorities, direct play to the rebound zone, mismatch and orientation – set-piece analysis

Many teams sometimes resort to the short corner once in a while, but it seems from the pre-season matches that it has become a very popular new trend in corners. As we saw in pre-season matches, Man City used it a lot and scored a goal from a short corner against Bayern Munich. West Ham United also scored a goal against Tottenham from a short corner, and many teams have become more reliant on the short corner than before.

After the tremendous development in defending against corners and the diversity of defensive systems between man-marking, zonal marking and the hybrid system to increase the security of dangerous areas inside the box, the short corner becomes a surprising and practical option that makes the matter look like a chess game because the defending team cannot afford to achieve a numerical advantage inside and outside the box at the same time.

Following the previous logic, when the attacking team increases the numerical advantage in the short corner area and the rebound zone, the defending team cant start the defence with the same density, leaving few defenders inside the box in the most dangerous areas.

Thus, most teams wait until the short corner has been played, and some players start to go to help in facing the numerical advantage of the attacking team in that area. From here, there are many questions, the most important of which are how many players will face the short corner, what are their initial positions, what distance they cover to go there, and when they will arrive to meet the short corner.

What preceded is the first stage of the short corner, and there is a second stage, which is after getting the ball in the short corner area, what will we do to face the defenders that leave their initial positions and advance forward, forming a line, or keeping the man-marking defending system.

In this tactical analysis, we will talk about the tactics of attacking short corners, and we will talk about the defensive tactics to face the short corner in the next article, part two, which will be a set-piece analysis of the short corner in the defensive phase.

Numerical superiority

In this idea, the attacking team tries to achieve numerical superiority around the short-option area. In the first photo, when the short pass is played, in green, the yellow player, a zonal defender against normal crosses, pushes up to help the short-option defender in red, preventing a 2v1 situation. He arrives in good time, as shown in the second photo, so the situation is an equivalent 2v2 situation.

In the third photo, the plan is clear by using the red player, who acts as he stays at the back for the counterattack at first, to achieve numerical superiority to make a 3v2 situation. As shown in the fourth photo, he gets the ball in an excellent area to play the cross.

In the case below, the third player, in green, is used to fix the opponents player who is responsible for supporting the short-option defender, in yellow, so he cant help him leaving him in a 2v1 situation.

Here, it is another example of a 3v2 situation, but with a different idea. When Arsenal visited Villa Park in February, Oleksandr Zinchenko scored a fantastic goal using this idea. In the first photo, Aston Villa defend with two zonal players in the six-yard box, one zonal player, in yellow, with duties to support Philippe Coutinho in a 1v2 situation against Bukayo Saka and Martin Ødegaard, and six man-markers.

In the second