Edouard Mendy is just the latest goalkeeper to be caught out by this trendy idea that you should always play a short pass…
If you want to play the most fashionable of tactics in 2022, splitting your centre-backs for a goal-kick is the one to adopt. So hip. So cool. So stupid, so often.
The idea is obviously to hold possession, suck in the high press and play the ball over the top or through the opposition. But crucially the players need to have great ball control and keep a calm head when under pressure and, put simply, too few have.
It results in a few different but familiar scenarios. Those who have a great ballplaying goalkeeper and similar centre-backs, pass it accurately, keep possession and begin a forward move. Great.
However, that rarely happens. More typically, the keeper knocks it a few yards to one of his defenders who then usually plays it wide. However, by this time, that wide man has been closed down, so loses possession and an attack bears down on goal or a free-kick is conceded.
Alternatively, as per David De Gea, the keeper plays a hospital pass to a defender who gets robbed and they concede a cheap goal.
Or the keeper attempts to give it to the centre-back who panics as he’s closed down and just boots it away and loses possession, something the keeper could have done in the first place only more safely. Or he just boots it into touch, something the goalie could also have done. Or he passes it back to the keeper who punts it upfield making the whole exercise pointless.
Another variant is where the defender doesn’t play it wide but dinks it forward to a centrally placed teammate who is immediately swarmed by opposition players who steal the ball on the half way line and break into the final third. In fact, there are numerous variations of how this tactic fails.
It’s one thing to lose the ball in the opposition half, another to do so in your final third by putting yourself under pressure. The rewards for splitting the centre-backs and trying to keep possession of the ball are not sufficient for the risks you incur by trying to do it with players who are not good enough. And at all times, if your keeper is either poor or inconsistent with his feet, as Edouard Mendy for example clearly is, then surely you don’t ask him to do anything fancy.
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When so many teams are good at high pressing, this tactical trend is simply a hostage to fortune. As Mendy…
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