What would come to your mind when we are speaking of Turkish football teams? Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, or Besiktas? In fact, apart from these famous teams who always participate in continental competitions, in this season’s Süper Lig, it has been the race between Istanbul Basaksehir and Trabzonspor.
Başakşehir recruited many famous players in recent years, including former Manchester City men, Gaël Clichy and Robinho; former Liverpool centre-back, Martin Škrtel and former Chelsea striker: Demba Ba. These players worked well under the young manager, Okan Buruk. In the Europa League, they qualified as the first of the group, over Roma and Borussia Mönchengladbach. So far, they were in the round of 16, looking to continue on this competition.
In this April, based on the performance of Başakşehir in the Europa League, we will bring you three tactical analysis and scout report. These are analyses that focus on different aspects of Buruk’s team. For the first analysis, we will introduce the tactics of their offensive transitions.
1 v 1 situations and space creation
The squad of Başakşehir did not have players with pure pace and physical strength such as Adama Traoré or Allan Saint-Maximin. It was not feasible to expect an individual to carry the ball forward with his progressive runs. Therefore, they had to develop offensive transitions strategically. The offensive transitions of Buruk’s team were mainly constituted by two elements: use of width and 1 v 1 situations.
For the use of width, it means that the players were running at the wide areas instead of centrally. So, instead of passing to the centre, it was more likely for Başakşehir to deliver the ball out wide. This drew the defenders out, increase their horizontal gap. As a result, they could create 1 v 1 situations with rooms, which the dribbles or offensive actions had a higher chance of success.
In the following image, you can see how Başakşehir started a counter-attack. Attacking the wide areas was also exploiting spaces behind the full-backs. This is useful when countering offensive full-backs such as Aleksandar Kolarov. Edin Višća started his run behind Kolarov early to set himself free as an option to pass.
On this occasion, İrfan Kahveci had three options to pass, two were shorter. Given the practices of Başakşehir’s counter-attacks, the priority was to look at the wide areas. Passing the ball to Višća was optimal, as Enzo Crivelli had his back to goal, passing to the Frenchman will slow down the attack. Also, the pass of Kahveci travelled to space in front of the Višća instead of his feet, this is important, as this allowed the Bosnian to sprint without stopping.
It was quite common to see Başakşehir having an offensive transition in 2 v 2 situations. However, Buruk did not want the opponents to defend collectively, so he tried to break this 2 v 2 into two 1 v 1 situations respectively. In the following image, we show you the movements of Başakşehir players in the offensive transitions.
At the frontline, two København players were defending Ba and Višća. In the hope of creating more spaces for each other, Ba and Višća made diagonal runs to separate the defenders. Again, it was Kahveci to trigger the counter-attack with his good pass, which the ball travelled to space instead of the teammate.
