wintertime, thanks for your posts in the various football/soccer threads. I’ve been a big fan of United and the game in general for 8 years now, but never played as a kid or teenager, so it’s still a neat thing to read about. I play indoor soccer here, but admit that I’m almost always just trying to use physical advantages and the tendencies I pick up from an opponent rather than a crystal clear understanding of the game to succeed. I wish I weren’t at work right now so that zonalmarking wouldn’t be blocked from viewing. I’ll just have to wait…
There was an ESPN or similar article about how Howard’s throw to Donovan to set up that goal last week was helped significantly by the altitude. Lower down he’d have to kick for that distance, with less accuracy.
Or Notts County, who started the whole “barcode” look back in the 1890s (though it wasn’t called that back then) 
Good choice! Jas09 is right, however, about those positions (especially goalkeeper–we haven’t had a decent keeper since “Mad” Jens Lehmann, and even he had some dodgy moments, as his nickname might suggest). And we’ve yet to find a decent replacement for Patrick Vieira in midfield, even though he left us five years ago. Arsenal have been in a transitional stage for the last few seasons, but hopefully they’ll get through it in the near future. And even during these recent difficult times, they’ve still managed to finish in the top four of the Premier League and secure qualification for the Champions League.
I will echo this. I find his analysis usually pretty insightful.
I didn’t know that! Thanks.
Yeah, Arsenal has stayed surprisingly strong. When they played Barcelona in the Champions League, they looked pretty good; their main disadvantage was, imo, their poor ability to regain the ball once it was lost. And, of course, they didn’t have this little guy, … now what was his name?
mkecane and Yookeroo, thank you. [blush]
If you caught the second half of the Denmark-Japan game, you’d notice that the Danes completely ran out of ideas, and their attacking philosophy became “hoof it into the penalty area from behind the halfway line and hope something good happens”.
Needless to say, it was ineffective.
Very true, but that’s not what I had in mind: Denmark was already desperate to score, while Japan had switched to a defensive shape with at least two players in advanced counterattack positions at the halfway line whenever Denmark had the ball.
When the opponent doesn’t need to score and deploys his defence deep and numerous enough to shadow the forwards 2 v 1, wide passes are indeed wasted ball possession because even if one heads directly towards its mark, the ball is rarely controlled well enough to stay with the attack against one close defender (either stationed in front to intercept the ball or behind the target to win the tackle against the forward who is focused on ball control in the first second or two) and one waiting a bit deeper.
The best time for this approach is a high defence line with the centre-backs in a man-to-man situation. We have seen a couple of goals scored with long passes against such a high line (Sneijder to Robben, for example) but usually this happens when the transition from defence to attack happens lightning-fast and the team that was attacking has yet to regain its defence positions. But a keeper who reacts quickly can do the same to surprise the opponent. Or the other team is simply too confident, too slow or too tired to gain deeper positions with a numerical advantage.
They weren’t wide passes, though; they were almost invariably to the front of the box, within the area defined by the goalposts. Japan also wasn’t in all-out-defending mode, either, so there was space for the Danish forwards.
In answer to the OP…
Despite the best efforts of FIFA, football is not about scoring more goals than your opponents; it’s about conceding less goals than your opponents.
Hungary and Real Madrid in the fifties and Brazil in’70 were notable exceptions.
You know, I think you are right and I misremembered. But (there is always a “but”, isn’t there?) the tactical situation I described to show an advantageous moment for a long goal kick is valid: the key is the high defence line with no numerical prevalence in favour of the defending team.
Another question: What is the purpose of the six-yard box markings?
A free kick cannot be taken from closer than six yards to the goal. If an offence that would result in an indirect free kick to the attacking team (rather than a penalty) occurs inside the six-yard box, the free kick is taken from the edge of the box, level with where the incident occurred.
ETA: Also, goal kicks have to be taken from within this box.
So far as I know the only two purposes are that (a) goal kicks must be taken from inside the box and (b) indirect free kicks must be taken from outside the area (nearest point outside, I think).
an example of an indirect free kick being given to an attacking team would be if the defense passed the ball back to the keeper, who then picked it up with his hands. The keeper is only allowed to use his hands if the ball comes off an attacker, or indirectly (e.g. deflected) off a defender.
Headed or chested balls to the keeper are allowed as well.
Back in the old days when obstruction was given, an indirect free kick was awarded. It was a reasonably common occurence to see all eleven of the defending team lined up on the goal line ready to sprint at the attacking team as soon as the six inch pass was passed to the player with the hardest shot. I can’t recall any goals being scored but it was great fun to watch.
yea sorry, when I said “passed” I meant “passed off the foot.” And I do remember seeing a few of those. When I was a kid I used to go to the old soccer league games (looking it up now I guess it wasn’t NASL, it was just after they finished) and watch the San Jose Blackhawks (Dominic Kinnear ftw) and you’d see that. Great times