Yup. That said, you don't see the kind of complex tactical systems and structures at international level that you see regularly with clubs. As for Italy, Mancini asked for and managed to obtain special "stages", outside the normal international calendar, to work with the players, meaning compared to other managers he actually had more time to work with his players and create a tactical framework. He also had a fairly settled squad from the beginning and stuck with that throughout. Italy improved under him with every IT break, leading up to the Euros
Argentina on the other hand relied on the same framework that had worked best during the Messi era: compact, solid defence, slow paced possession, midfielders that could reliably get the ball to Messi, an high level playmaker to offer a secondary threat and prevent opponents to focus entirely on stopping Messi, and Messi. Make no mistake: for all of Scaloni's brilliance in creating and leading this group, for all that this younger generation didn't suffer from the weight of expectations like the older ones and didn't wilt under the WC/Copa lights, the true difference between Argentina losing 3 finals in a row and winning 2 in row is Di Maria played in the last 2.
Yup, and they don't really have players good at this either. The best at it, outside the complex structure of City, are Graelish and, well. Jordan Henderson.
Well, if you have a bunch of players who are fantastic in fast paced, transition heavy football, and lack high level ball retaining/ball moving midfielders/defenders, it makes sense you would rather focus on your strenghts...
Yeah, because he's been using 2 "pure" CMs instead. Guardiola has also largely stopped using inverted FBs. They both still rely on a midfield double pivot as their standard tactical framework
If you ask them to play the same role as at club level, and if you aren't carrying players who don't have that understanding or experience, or if you're not carrying players who are simply not capable of playing the role you need from them...
I would argue that he's not anymore. Doesn't matter though. Bellingham can play in midfield. You just lose most of the things that make him so special. Might as well, play somebody else with a skillset better suited to the rest of the team
Please play that against Spain. There 2 ways it could go: Your front 5 manages to press them into submission, and your physical superiority in individual duels gets you the goals you need. It's ugly, it's a choatic mess, but you are perfectly suited to win those contests.
Or B) Spain presses you into submission and it's the Croatia/Italy game all over again.
That team does not have the ability to move the ball from defence to attack consistently against any good team that can press. Unless you plan on asking your front 5 to drop deep in your half for the buildup, and and then try to hit teams in behind quickly. Which still means there's little point to Foden
Your lineup still doesn't make sense then. If that's the way you want to go, there's better options than Bellingham for it. Rice-Phillips-Foden/Bellingham would still be better, on paper, than Rice-Foden-Bellingham. More balanced. Of course, need Phillips to get fit and find some form. If he does, pretty sure that's gonna be England's midfield
Bellingham doesn't touch the ball a lot outside the final third for Real Madrid though. He's barely involved in the first phase of build up, and most of his touches in the defensive third come when the team is defending deep, as quick transition outlet. You want him to revert to Dortmund's version. That's a great player. It's also not the one that wins you games
They are: in both cases you are reducing a terrifying attacking player's role by saddling him with defensive work. Or you sacrifice 2 of them for it. Either way, suboptimal
They played together for 1 tournament, and England lost to Portugal on penalties with a goal ruled out for -reasons- after losing Rooney to injury afaik? Either way, England's struggles in that game were essentially the same the midfield you propose would face in the same scenario: how the feck do they move the ball out of their half consistently?
Not really, @AfonsoAlves did a good job explaining Spain's setup. It came down to "they didn't have Messi" and later on became "they don't have strikers". Less about collective solidity or coherence, more about lacking firepower
Comes down to what you think England should focus on. Either approach would be imperfect, as is often the case with national teams. Personally I think Southgate's approach at the last WC - alternating high press and deep block and generally try to play fast, hyper vertical football, is what works best for this England team. That said, the last WC was an outlier tactically because it was played in the middle of the season - with much much fitter players. Things were possible that might not be in Germany next June
How's that back 6 getting the ball to the front 5?
