Breaking Down Four Defending Strategies At Indirect Free-Kicks – Set-Piece Analysis

Set-pieces are an integral part of the higher levels of football, as distinguished teams continually look for any potential way to gain an advantage and excel.

Over time, set-piece analysis has become an important topic and an essential matter for all teams, so set-pieces are no longer as random as they were in the past.

With the tremendous development in set pieces, and after they became the decisive factor in matches and even championships, fans became more interested in understanding the tactics of set pieces and their basic principles.

In this article, we will write about one of the essential principles of set pieces, which is the defending strategies against free kicks conceded, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each of them.

In this tactical analysis, we will explain the different strategies for defending free kicks conceded: zonal marking in a high line with a late drop, zonal marking in a high line with an early drop, zonal marking in a deep line and a man-marking system.

Zonal marking in a high line with a late drop

In this strategy, teams try to push opponents high to keep the attackers away from the goal using the offside trap, as shown below.

Many elite teams, like Arsenal, in this case, prefer to use this strategy by starting to drop late as the taker touches the ball, which is risky, according to some peoples point of view.

It forces the attackers to start to move late, making their headed shots come from a long distance away from the goal, reducing the possibility of converting headed shots into goals, or starting to move early, falling into the offside trap.

The opponents have many ideas to overcome this strategy by many ideas which aim to break the offside trap.

Two takers manipulation, using offside attackers to block or to be onside later and using the far post attacker as a trap are the most common ideas to overcome this strategy.

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