WSG Tirol 2019/20: Their improvement after the winter break – scout report

From July to December the first season of WSG Tirol in the Austrian Bundesliga wasn’t really enjoyable for them. They collected just 12 points in the opening 18 games of the season and lost six games in a row before the winter break arrived. When they finally got their break at the end of December, their last win was on 26 December against Austria Vienna.

Then, they brought four new players in during the January transfer window and switched to a new system and new tactics. In this tactical analysis in the form of a scout report, we’ll take a closer look at their style of play after the winter break and I’ll try to explain why they are so successful since the league kicked off again.

New system and adjusted tactics

During the first part of the season, the team of head coach Thomas Silbersberger (whos been the coach since 2013 when they played in the third Austrian division) used different systems. In some games, they played with a back four and in other ones they had three defenders in the back. Sometimes Silbersberger lined his team up in a 4-2-3-1 and in the next game in a 3-4-3. In light of this, you could definitely say that the squad never got used to one particular system.

That is what changed massively in the winter break as they brought in four new players who are all now part of the regular starting eleven and they always used the same system and tactics in the first four games after the winter break. We’ll analyse that in the remaining parts of this analysis, but before we do so, we’ll take a short look at the numbers to see what changed after the winter break.

As already mentioned in this scout report, during the first part of the season, they had 12 points after the first 19 games what means that they got 0.63 points per game. In the four games after the winter break, they won two times, drew once and lost against Rapid Vienna which is no shame as they are currently in an incredible form. Therefore they made 1.75 points per game which is really impressive. Considering this, the big question now is how their system and tactics look like after the break in December and January.

First of all, they now played with a 4-4-2 formation in every single game with almost the same players. There were some adjustments from game to game but overall, the squad stayed almost the same. Also, all four players which they added to the team, are an important part of the squad. Their new right-back Koch joined them from Sturm Graz, the centre-back Bruno Soares got bought from the Malaysian club JDT, the central midfielder Thanos Petsos was out of contract since the start of the season, and Stefan Maierhofer joined them from Aarau. The last two are especially well-known in Austria as both had already great times at Rapid Vienna.

So, in the graphic below we can see their usual starting 11 of the last four games before the Austrian Bundesliga had to pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For the remaining sections of this tactical analysis, well look at the tactics WSG Tirol used during the last four matches. Basically, when they were out of possession, they rarely used a high and aggressive pressing which is logical as neither Maierhofer nor Zlatko Dedič is made for that kind of defensive style of play. Maierhofer is 37 years old while his partner Dedič is just two years younger.

Due to that, WSG Tirol mostly sat back deeper with their two banks of four and the two strikers put pressure on the opposition at about the halfway line or sometimes even deeper. Whenever you use this kind of defensive tactics, which for example helped Atletico Madrid to beat Liverpool in the UEFA Champions League, you need to minimise the distance between the players and the space between the lines too.

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