Knock out game 2 - Germany v Austria

[lambers]

Agree with the commentators, that type of goal has been coming

[Logan Mountstuart]

How many goals have Germany scored through pressing in this tournament?

[Ray de Galles]

How many goals have Germany scored through pressing in this tournament?

It's not really because of the pressing, it's because of the awful kick from the opposing keeper - the same as the opening goal against Spain.

[Jobi1]

Oh lordy, I almost want to cry for her. As a keeping nerd, I absolutely hate errors that bad.

[lambers]

It's not really because of the pressing, it's because of the awful kick from the opposing keeper - the same as the opening goal against Spain.

Partially, but those mistakes are caused and punished because of the pressing.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah. This is kind of the thing I was talking about on another thread, about how people don't actually respect or give any credit to modern defending. I.e. defenders get no credit whatsoever for interceptions or blocking off passing angles, the blame is put on the player who messed up the pass. But it's the same for pressing. People like to see pressing, because it's a player getting stuck in, but this is taken as the bare minimum for a player to be doing (It really really isn't. It's quite complicated and requires planning if you're not going to be the piggy in the middle) and if it works the player who gets pressed is treated as some sort of cuckold for not being able to deal with a bit of pressure.

(a good example is paul pogba getting a hospital pass against switzerland, and as he's trying to deal with the two players pressing him from the front, he doesn't see the third player coming from the side and behind, switzerland run down the pitch towards the six french players behind him, and score an equalizer. People weren't talking about switzerland's heroic efforts to win the ball back, or the way they cut apart the entire french defence. it was all about how pogba's mistake cost france)

[Janik]

To add to Berba's point above - look at the angle Popp approaches Zinsberger from. She isn't coming straight on from the halfway line, she is coming diagonally from the side. Zinsberger could have kicked the ball directly upfield and would have got it clear easily. But lumping the ball upfield wasn't what she was trying to do that, she was trying to spread the play to the other full-back from the goal-kick. It was meant to be the start of Austria building from the back.
Yes, in part Popp approaches from that angle because she was split out on Germany's right as her starting position... but that itself is part of the organisation of the press. She is positioned to be in/shut off the passing lane that Zinsberger was generally look to go through.

[Janik]

I'll give you an insightful comment that comes originally from Tennis, but is generally applicable. It was talking about the difference between Roger Federer and Bernard Tomic after Federer had comfortably beat Tomic (then regarded as a prodigiously talented and precocious youngster who might go on to big things, rather than the wastrel he has subsequently become) in an highly anticipated Aussie Open clash. The comment was "Tomic can hit the ball where he wants; Federer hits the ball where his opponent doesn't want him to". That, in a nutshell, is pressing done well, as Germany did successfully. It isn't simply about closing players down, it is about exerting discomfort on the opposition by being positioned and then exerting pressure in structured way that stops them playing the patterns they want (not playing as you want but playing in a way that hinders them doing what they want), and when they try to do it anyway (the Tomic error) benefitting from that lack of flexibility.

When it works the and pressing side benefits it looks accidental, like they are gaining from unforced errors, but they are actually carefully forced mistakes. To whit, Zinsberger had plenty of apparent options other than kicking it diagonally towards her left-back (and given how it turned out would have been well advised to have tried something else...) but doing otherwise would have meant departing from how her side had practiced playing and wanted to play, and so would have reduced the effectiveness of the Austria play by a notch - a minor win in itself for the pressing side. So she tried to "beat the press"... and gave the pressing team a major win instead.

[Ray de Galles]

You've got to the nub of the issue though.

Of course Germany press immensely effectively and goals such as their first against Denmark is a great example of that quality being the single biggest factor in scoring.

In goals like the second last night and the opener against Spain the press was in play but the single biggest factor in the goals was poor decision making & execution from the keepers. Specifically, where the keepers chose to try and play the ball and their attempts to do so. The pressing certainly forced the errors but they were still avoidable errors.

It's part of the wider issue (which you touch upon) of a rigid orthodoxy and received wisdom of *always* trying to pass the ball out from the keeper when occasionally you have to alter the pattern of play.

[Duncan Gardner]

Do either of you want Kenny Shiels' phone number?

[Patrick Thistle]

It's part of the wider issue (which you touch upon) of a rigid orthodoxy and received wisdom of *always* trying to pass the ball out from the keeper when occasionally you have to alter the pattern of play.

I've found saying this in real life conversations gets me derided as a dinosaur who hates high quality football. And, while both of those might be true, it's also true that sometimes a goalie or a defender would do better by just lumping the ball forward. The obsession with passing out from the back prevents players from reading the game and doing something different.

[Nesta]

I suppose it must have been moneyballed quite intensely, with the data showing that over thousands of studied games, teams that keep possession from the back are actually less likely to concede/more likely to create an attack than a more random punt up the field.

But it does seem massively counter intuitive when teams that are under pressure already do it against technically superior opponents who press aggressively, like Austria did on thursday, or Kenny Shiels' northern ireland.