00:00Right, hello there everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel and a quick message for anyone who doesn't think
00:06that the gap between men's and women's football, both in terms of quality and entertainment, is getting smaller by the
00:13air, right?
00:14Let me tell you that as a professional analyst and an alleged expert, that that was every bit as excruciating
00:24to watch as the blokes' Euros was last summer.
00:27And if you cannot judge the standard of football by whether or not going into the 90th minute you feel
00:32physically sick, then what can you judge it on?
00:36Anyway though, England, both in the semi-final and across the tournament as a whole, have been tactically very interesting
00:42to me, so let's have a little look at how they keep getting away with it.
00:50Right then, so if you, like me, are joining the women's Euros late because of contractual obligations to the Club
00:56World Cup, let me fill you in.
00:59England were miles better than both Wales and the Netherlands, but against Sweden and France and Italy, they looked like
01:06they could get absolutely nothing going for large parts of the match.
01:10Now we're going to get to what Italy's plan was for this team in a little bit, but in the
01:14other sub-part performances against Sweden and France, England were getting physically bullied off the ball in the final third
01:20and then caught in possession in their own.
01:23And that is simply not what you would expect from a team that has got some of the very best
01:28players in the tournament sprinkled throughout its entire XI from front to back, but the reasons for it are fairly
01:34straightforward.
01:34The problem you see, my friends, is Kira Walsh. Just not like that. I am a card-carrying member of
01:42the Kira Walsh is England's best player club, but as their best passer, best tempo setter, just best technician on
01:49the ball, she becomes a bit of a double-edged sword.
01:52And just to grossly oversimplify this and fly through it in a couple of seconds, right, England play a 4
01:57-2-3-1, but they like to push the two wide players up as aggressively as they can to try
02:02and stretch the opposition back line.
02:04Now that's fine, but if you do that, you need support from the full-backs, and while Lucy Bronze has
02:09go-faster stripes tattooed down her spine, the left-back tends to be either Alex Greenwood or Jess Carter, who
02:16were they to sing you the true songs of their heart, would sing the song of the centre-back.
02:21They don't really like getting up that far.
02:24So as a compromise, what Serena Viegman is very happy to do is to allow Georgia Stanway to drift into
02:29this area here to sort of make up those distances and provide that support.
02:33And as a consequence, you can then have the number 10, who tends to be Lauren James, who hasn't been
02:38in every game in this tournament, to drift slightly wider and get into their preferred sort of half space here.
02:43And thus, because Walsh is so good in these deeper areas getting on the ball, she tends to have to
02:48play this entire area of the pitch between the attack and the defence all on her own.
02:54And in this tournament especially, teams have really been targeting that.
02:58And what that means in practice is that even though it's a 4-2-3-1, it actually operates more
03:03like a 4-3-3, with Kira Walsh up on her own in the middle there.
03:08And the reason you see Premier League teams, for example, who play this shape, invert a defender into that area
03:13or push a centre-back on and have everyone shuffle across,
03:16is because you really do need two bodies in that part of the pitch.
03:20It opens up so many more passing angles and ways out of tight spots, but more importantly, because if you
03:26do lose it, it's an extra body in that area to try and win it back.
03:30Like, take the goal against Sweden, for example.
03:32Their entire idea here is to leave her open enough so they bait her into receiving the ball, but then
03:38spring the trap on her when it comes, because she's all on her own.
03:41Now, Jess Carter takes the bait here, and that's an entire other issue itself, because Jess Carter is a right
03:47-footed defender playing as the left-sided centre-back.
03:51So it's very difficult for her to pass the ball effectively in those areas, and it gets close down, it
03:56takes a little knock, it does not run through.
03:58And if you stop it there, Sweden don't just have five players about to jump on Walsh, but every single
04:03option out of this rapidly shrinking net is cut off.
04:08But just draw the lines on here to every other English player, there is a Swedish body, more or less,
04:14on that line that the ball would have to travel through.
04:16That's an excellent pressing trap.
04:18Like, Kira Walsh is a player who recorded a 94% short and medium passing accuracy across all of last
04:26season, which is insane.
04:28And in the Sweden game, so pressured and harried and short of time was she, they got that down to,
04:34like, 70%.
04:35So, yeah, one of England's problems in the tournament so far has been that you can apply pressure to them
04:41in this area, and the whole thing tends to break down.
04:45Sweden did it very well, France did it very well, Netherlands and Wales tried to do it, but weren't aggressive
04:49or effective enough with it.
04:51But Italy, Italy did not do this.
04:55They created a whole other problem.
04:57For 95 minutes of this game, Italy did a really professional job on England by sacking off the idea of
05:04pressurising them in this part of the pitch,
05:06and instead sitting off with five at the back and closing down all the space in the central areas.
05:12And just to show you the difference, right, this is Kira Walsh's heat map against Sweden,
05:16where she was getting pressured, where she wasn't getting time on the ball, she's able to pick it up now
05:21and then in these deeper areas,
05:22but virtually nothing is happening for her in the opposition half.
05:26She simply didn't have a chance to get anywhere near there.
05:29But then you look at what that looks like against Italy, who were very happy to leave her to it
05:33in that part of the pitch
05:34and even retreated so far that she could get into the final third, and she is just absolutely everywhere.
05:40She was orchestrating things from outside the box as they defended right the way into it.
05:46Now, that might sound really good.
05:47You're seeing loads of the ball.
05:49You've got much better territory than the opposition.
05:51But the problem was that Italy were quite happy to make these concessions
05:55in exchange for never allowing a single decent pass to go through this area.
06:01And so, again, for 95 minutes, England were constantly forced to move the ball out into these wide areas
06:07to then put crosses into the box that, up against a back five, they were never, ever going to win.
06:13Like, if we look at this zones of attack graph, I'm not even sure what something like this is called.
06:18Basically, the lighter the colour, the more time England spent on the ball in that area.
06:22And it's just nothing, nothing in the middle, but they were so free to move it out wide if they
06:27wanted to
06:28because Italy backed themselves all day to deal with the crosses.
06:32England had 51 crosses in this match, which is the most of any team in this tournament in a single
06:39game by a mile.
06:41And if you include corners as well, that is 61 times they put the ball into the proverbial mixer.
06:47And for 95 minutes, up until the goal, they tested the keeper with precisely zero of them.
06:55Like, legitimately, Lauren Hemp getting this at the back post and putting it across and it going absolutely nowhere.
07:00That is as close as they got from a cross in this game before the goal.
07:05So, as I said at the start of the video, the question remains, how do they keep getting away with
07:10this?
07:10This was not working for 95 minutes.
07:12And then, as I'm sure you recall, it then just suddenly did work.
07:16So, why?
07:18Well, not to be incredibly unscientific about this, but England have such a talented squad
07:23and such variety of talent within it that whatever the game state is,
07:28whatever the opposition are forcing them to do,
07:30they tend to have a player available to them who can do something with that.
07:35And this time, again, that player was Michel Aguiman.
07:40There are seconds left and Italy have dropped into a back six now,
07:43with these four in front still stopping any passes through the centre.
07:46The ball goes out wide and finally, literally for the first time in this game,
07:51they make a mistake at the back.
07:53Carrusco here, who in her defence had spent the entire game on the right side of midfield,
07:59so understandably probably looked a little bit lost on the left side of defence,
08:02comes out of the back line along with the left back as the ball goes out to Lucy Bronze.
08:07And you would imagine she's doing that to try and stop Bronze slipping anybody in into this channel here.
08:14So technically, she does the right thing, she just doesn't assess the situation correctly first.
08:19Because if she had, and she'd done a quick head count,
08:21she would have realised that England now have five in the box,
08:24and none of them are looking to get into that area.
08:27So what she's done is she's left the other four defenders at a disadvantage.
08:32And the thing is, if she takes the correct position in this moment, right,
08:36she would be stood here.
08:38And I want you to remember that.
08:40The ball comes in, Beth Mead gets across the goalkeeper's line right as the ball gets to her,
08:45which forces her into the mistake.
08:47And it runs out very kindly for Aguiman, who gets turned, and where in the box is she?
08:54She is exactly where the fifth defender, Carrusco, should have been standing.
09:00And if you're Italian, that is a heartbreaking lapse in concentration after 95 minutes.
09:06But if you're Aguiman, that is literally all you need to get a goal.
09:12She hammers it through the defender and the goalkeeper.
09:15And from there, it was just a question of whether or not England would keep that momentum going
09:20into extra time, or whether it was going to go to penalties.
09:24Which, and I will hold my hands up here for any Italians watching this,
09:27thanks to an extremely generous penalty.
09:31I still don't think that is enough to give a foul in that situation.
09:36They did, and even though they missed it, they rebounded it.
09:40And that's it, in the final, again.
09:42And even though both goals do come from substitutes,
09:44I am still hesitant, personally, to label this as, like, inspired changes on the part of Edmund.
09:51And I think it's more just the case that she has so many different difference-makers,
09:56which took me three takes to say, by the way, that there's virtually no game state they can't do something
10:02with.
10:02Like, in a game with 61 crosses, their options off the bench were,
10:07A, their best crosser of a ball in Chloe Kelly,
10:10and B, their most physically robust in the air,
10:13and also, slash, best poacher of a goal in Michelle Aguiman.
10:18Like, that situation is tailor-made for the pair of them.
10:22So, I would argue, should have appeared well before the 77th minute.
10:28Now, the big question, does this mean they're going to go all the way and win the bloody thing?
10:32Well, there are still some issues here.
10:34I don't know how you resolve the situation at left-centre-back.
10:37I think Lauren James is having a bit of a Phil Foden tournament,
10:41and that she's getting picked on what she can do,
10:43as opposed to what she literally is doing.
10:46And if you get Spain in the final, that issue with Walsh being isolated against a high-pressing side
10:52could be catastrophic.
10:53But, very important to say, this is tournament football.
10:58You are always, always better being lucky than you are being good.
11:02So, yes, there you go.
11:03That's what's happening with the England women's team at the European Championships.
11:07Better late than never, eh?
11:08Haha, sorry about that.
11:10But we will be covering the final on Monday.
11:12So, please do subscribe to us here at ACFC if you would like to give that a little bit of
11:17a watch.
11:17And you get me across all the social medias, at Alan Cleary.
11:20C-L-E-R-Y.
11:21It's coming home, is it?
11:23Well, maybe.
11:25But I certainly am.
11:27It's the end of the day.
11:28So, see you later.
11:29See you later.
11:31See you later.
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