FOR WANT OF A CARROLL OR CROUCH THE CUP WAS LOST:

No plan B sees brainless Barcelona go down to courageous Chelsea: Barça, for all their possession and control, could not find a way around a Chelsea side who deserved to reach the final (David Pleat, 4/24/12, The Guardian)

Chelsea were brave. Barcelona lacked brains. Sometimes you have to be blockers, hackers and whackers to achieve your goal and Chelsea chased and harried to prevent the waves of Barcelona attacks overwhelming them. The Barça performance gave ammunition to opponents of tiki-taka, as they played overly patient football against a lion-hearted Chelsea, who were left a man short after John Terry's red card.


Having the ball for 70% of the game is a futile statistic if you lose sight of your purpose in the last 40 yards. Incredibly, for all their instant control and movement, Barcelona could not penetrate Chelsea and drag defenders away from the centre. If ever they needed a different approach, it was here.


Unable to hit diagonal balls due to not having a big striker, they also did not shoot enough from distance and dismally failed to hurt Chelsea in wide positions. Chelsea refused to budge from the centre and Barcelona lacked the cunning to get round the back. With no space behind Chelsea's defence, Pep Guardiola's side made few chances, particularly after Lionel Messi missed a penalty early in the second half.

What's the point of playing 8 midfielders?

THE GREAT MYSTERY IS WHY ONLY STRIKERS AND CENTRAL DEFENDERS EVEN WORK ON HEADING THE BALL:

Moneyball works better at Stoke than Liverpool : The style of Stoke City, four points behind Liverpool in the league table, is a rudimentary example of soccernomics (The Secret Footballer, 4/13/12, guardian.co.uk)



Personally, I have always found it difficult to get past the basic assumption that if a team have the best players then they will invariably win more often than not. But the stampede of elephants in the room today is that of a dozen Premier League teams who are so evenly matched that many of their games are settled on set pieces or carefully choreographed training-ground routines in which meticulous preparation and statistical analysis can be the difference.


In open play, a huge amount of study, from my own experience at clubs, is devoted to the calculation of what are described as final third entries, penalty box entries and regains of the ball in the final third (see the pressing game of Barcelona and, to an extent, Manchester United).


Stoke City's style is the most rudimentary example of soccernomics on a football pitch. Each full-back generally looks for Peter Crouch on an angle (final third entry) and, in turn, the striker will attempt to cushion the ball down into the penalty area (penalty box entry) for his partner or a midfield runner. It goes almost without saying that the higher these two statistics are over a season, the more likely Stoke are to end up with a shot on goal.


Add to that Rory Delap's long throws and the team's height, which they seek to exploit on set plays, and it is no surprise that Stoke score many of their goals in and around the six-yard box, where they have a succession of players making individually tailored runs, as was the case at Villa Park on Monday night, when Robert Huth headed home Jermaine Pennant's free-kick.


Where the success of soccernomics is concerned, Stoke are a great example of the match-up that is required between a set of tactics and the players who have the attributes to execute them to the fullest.


The point of pairing Carroll with Suarez is that one can score with his feet, the other his head.  But the crosses have been woeful, especially Charlie Adam, who serves no other identifiable purpose.

YOU GIVE HIM SERVICE, HE GIVES YOU GOALS:

Andy Carroll scores as Liverpool edge Everton for place in FA Cup final (The National, Apr 14, 2012 )

Carroll – the club’s much-maligned £35 million record signing – glanced in a Craig Bellamy free-kick in the 87th minute to keep Liverpool on course for a domestic cup double.


It was the second time in five days that Carroll had come to Liverpool’s rescue after scoring an injury-time winner in the Premier League victory over Blackburn in midweek. [...]


“It’s the best feeling ever,” Carroll told ESPN. “I had a few chances earlier, but it was a great ball in from Craig [Bellamy] so I just had to score with that one.


“I’ve had some criticism but I’ve just kept on going. It’s a great feeling.”


Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool captain, added: “He [Carroll] doesn’t hide and he takes criticism on the chin. That’s what we bought him for, to score big goals, and he’s delivered today.”

WE WERE DISCUSSING HIM JUST THE OTHER DAY...:

NY, Lazio legend Chinaglia passes away (Fox, APR 1, 2012)

New York Cosmos legend Giorgio Chinaglia has passed away due to complications from a heart attack in Florida.


Chinaglia, the NASL’s all-time leading scorer with 243 goals, was 65.


Chinaglia was a star with Lazio in 1976 when he decamped for New York. Considered the greatest player in Lazio’s history, his move to the States was controversial and he was arguably the first player to join the NASL while still in the prime of his career.

...and how thirty years ago we used to complain that all he did was score, but if you watch guys play now you just wish any of them could put the ball in the back of the net.  The selfishness that made him a great striker ultimately destroyed the Cosmos, but in later life, as a radio talk show host, he was generous with and deferential to fans.

4 BACK IS 2 TOO MANY:

Roberto Martínez's faith in system hints at brighter future for Wigan (David Pleat, 3/11/12, guardian.co.uk)


Wigan's second-half response was excellent, however. Victor Moses continued to chase and skillfully help Hugo Rodallega, whose finishing luck has deserted him. But the spur came from the gamble by the manager, Roberto Martínez, to leave his three-man defence isolated while coping with the threat of Norwich's two-man attack.


With neither James McCarthy nor James McArthur designated to sit and protect Wigan's defence, the visitors dominated play and fashioned more efforts at goal than the home side. Moses, in particular, was lively.


A team with a "nothing to lose" attitude showed increasing spirit, with Shaun Maloney, on as a substitute, playing a big role in their recovery. They could even have won the game had Mohamed Diamé, who also came on in the second half, not missed two wonderful opportunities.


Wigan are the only Premier League side that play a 3-4-1-2 system. It gave Norwich major problems, especially as their midfield had been lined up by the manager, Paul Lambert, in a diamond. This was a game, then, with no wingers, but there were two adventurous full-backs whose performances suggested that if Wigan can begin to take their chances, they can escape relegation. Twelve goals away from home this season before this match tells its own story.

The central midfielders matter more to your defense than the wing backs do.

PRETTY DAMN GOOD?

Just how good is Clint Dempsey? (Simon Rice, 1 March 2012, Independent)

Yesterday the USA travelled to Genoa and beat Italy 1-0. It was the first time Team USA had beaten the four time World Cup winners – a winless streak covering 10 games and spanning 78 years. A remarkable result, albeit in a friendly, for Jurgen Klinsmann’s team.


The goal scorer was Clint Dempsey, receiving a perfectly weighted pass just inside the Azzuri box which he was able to strike first time with his right foot, directing the ball past Gianluigi Buffon and into the bottom corner of the net. It was a moment of well timed precision that should take the Fulham midfielder’s reputation higher than that of his compatriots, past and present, and could perhaps see him soar into the realms only known by America’s national bird.


Last night’s strike was Dempsey’s 25th in 83 international appearances. That’s quite a remarkable return for a player more often than not deployed in midfield. To put it into context, Steven Gerrard has scored 19 goals for England in 90 appearances. Cristiano Ronaldo has 32 goals in 88 appearances for Portugal. Xabi Alonso has 12 goals in 93 appearances for Spain. For the Dutch, Dirk Kuyt has 24 goals in 85 appearances. Dempsey’s international record holds up against, and in many cases betters, the leading names in world football, players who play a similar attacking midfield role. At the 2006 World Cup, Dempsey was the only American player to score at the tournament. At the 2009 Confederations Cup, the Texan was on target as USA beat Spain 2-0 in the semi-finals. He scored again in the final, against Brazil. England fans will of course remember his goal at the 2010 World Cup – although Rob Green must take some credit for that one.


At club level, Dempsey’s record continues to stand up. His goal in Fulham’s 1-0 victory over Liverpool earlier this season saw him overtake Brian McBride to become the most prolific American goalscorer in the history of the Premier League. He has reached double figures this season for the second season in succession – a feat not easily acheived in England’s top flight. 24 players scored over 10 goals last season. Of those 24, only four (Dempsey, Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Steven Fletcher) have reached double figures so far this term. His exquisite chip against Juventus in 2010 as Fulham came back to win 4-1 against the Italian titans in the Europa League will forever be among the greatest goals witnessed at Craven Cottage.

THE PRESS CAN'T HELP:

The tragedy of Fernando Torres: Chelsea’s £50m striker has fallen prey to the malaise that every sportsman dreads: a catastrophic and inexplicable loss of form. But why does this happen to top athletes and how can they recover? (John Carlin, 2/17/12, Financial Times)


The mysteries of form may reside in the subconscious but it also appears to be true that the problem is worsened by thinking too much and, as a likely consequence, trying too hard. On this point Stransky, the two American sports psychologists and also a couple of other people I spoke to, in the football and tennis worlds, were all in agreement.


Santiago Solari, a recently retired Argentine international footballer who played for Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid, said that all players went through a period when their form declined, though he was quick to point out that in his case it had never occurred on a scale comparable to Fernando Torres. “There are times,” Solari said, “when you feel as if you are an unstoppable phenomenon of nature. There’s a happy convergence of the mental and the physical in your game and your confidence just grows and grows. It all seems so natural. But then you have a bad game, and then another one and you start to get anxious, and you feel each time you go out and play as if you’re walking down a step, with one brick, and then another one, weighing you down. Before you know it you’ve walked down so many steps and the bricks have piled up to such a point that you feel as if you were lying buried under a big building.”


Francis Roig is a coach of Spain’s all-conquering Davis Cup team and also second coach to the no less triumphant Rafa Nadal. Loss of form is an affliction especially common in tennis, Roig said. “It’s tremendous the importance confidence has on your game. It’s tremendous also how a rival can smell that fear in you, how he loses the respect he might once have had for you, beating you when before nine times out of 10 you’d have beaten him. Look at Jim Courier, who was number one in the world for two years – “Big Jim”, they called him – and then one day it all went; he fell to number 60 and never got back. A sort of psychosis possessed him, a desperate need to return to being the player he had been, and he never overcame it.”
Jim Courier ranked number one in the world in 1992 and 1993 – 'and then one day it all went'


What should he have done? “One way to recover your form, though there is no magic cure I am aware of, is not to dwell on the negative aspects of your game, to forget that and focus on the things you’ve always done well in your career going back to childhood.” Roig, a keen football fan, sees Fernando Torres as an extreme case who has succumbed to “a dynamic in which everything you did before effortlessly becomes impossible, and then you try harder, working double as much, but things only get worse.”


“My guess,” said William Wiener of Torres, picking up on Solari’s and Roig’s points, “is that he is overthinking each move, that something in his mental processes is not as relaxed as it once was.” John Murray, who before becoming a sports psychologist was a professional tennis player, also attaches blame to “overthinking” and counsels that for Torres to overcome what he describes as “catastrophic performance anxiety” he must try to play as he did when he was a child, “happily, for fun”. “My hypothesis,” said Murray, who has addressed loss of form problems with leading American sporstmen, “is that his confidence is shattered, that his anxiety is such that the harder he tries, the worse it gets. And he may also be in denial, which is an especially horrible thing when the whole world knows what’s going on. He needs help.”

Related articles

• Fernando Torres Woes - Who's To Blame? (football-talk.co.uk)