and welcome to the Double Piff, the world's most agreeable soccer analytics podcast. I am Michael Kalie, it's International Break, and we're going to do an international podcast. I know, I know, international football. We were just discussing this before the podcast, and nobody's going to claim that these games were interesting.
England won both of its qualifying matches, as they always do, but they were kind of tactically interesting. There is actual, like, meat of football stuff to get into. I am joined by Mike Goodman, and we have a guest to talk about the games with as well. We sure do.
And of course, if we are talking about the English national team, Grace Robertson is here to join us. She would also be here to join us if we were talking about the Scottish national team, but I don't think we're ever going to do that. So it's not been going well, so let's pretend it doesn't exist. There we go.
So, Tommy Tactics, Thomas, what are we going with here? I'm quite proud of the fact that I was the first person to say tactics, like, years ago, and I made a joke that some of his PSG lineups were like, things Tim Show would do, and from tactics Tim, I called him tactics Tom. And that caught on. So, I'm quite proud of thinking of it, so I'm going with tactics Tom.
All right. Tactics Tom, it is. What do we think of tactics Tom's tactics? It's kind of exactly what you'd expect.
It's like, he was talking before the games that he was trying to play a more English way, and people were like, oh, it's going to be more direct, so it's going to be more physical. And it's just like, it's what the big criminally clubs broadly would do when they have all the ball against low blocks. It's like, if you've watched Manchester City against any of these relegation-threatening teams over the last seven years, this is kind of broadly what we're saying. Yeah, so they had all of the ball, and you mentioned that in his post-game press conference, one thing that tactical Thomas mentioned very early on was that he was really happy with their defensive structure in possession.
Like, especially against in the second game against Latvia, it was the shape we've seen lots of times in the final week where, you know, like the right back kind of becomes an extra centipack sometimes, though. They had so much of the ball that everyone just kind of pushed forward at times anyway. And then, like, then in the second game, low-scally was coming into midfield, and like, it was like that, like, three, two structure, and then, like, and the white players were staying white. It was like, it was the structure you've seen lots of times where a possession dominant team is panningly opponent in, and it becomes very difficult for them to launch fast counterattacks.
That's like, he wants the structure in possession both to manipulate space and to stop them being able to launch counterattacks. Like, pretty much all the big clubs do know. I do think it is worth pointing out that this is a different, this is basically just a different path to the same result that Gareth South gave against you, right? Gareth South gave, though, wasn't really, like, using possession to pin opposition in.
It was much more like, well, we've got some good attackers on the eventually score, so we don't have to use possession to get that many people forward. We can just be very difficult to counterattack because we will be, like, waiting for you, with a few guys getting forward to score, and Harry King getting on the end of stuff, and that's more than enough. Yeah, like, it was, Gareth South had spent much of the qualifying campaigns trying to find the defensive structure for the tournament itself, and, like, and he, he, his instincts were clearly to play more of a low block without the ball, and then, so against these teams, it kind of, like, when they had possession, which was nearly all the time, it kind of just became, we're just gonna let Harry Kane and everyone else do some cool stuff on the ball, and working on some of the balls, and it worked, like, yeah, England are gonna be these teams, whatever they do, they just, they have much better players than most of these teams, and it's gonna be fine. Like, there's, there's no, like, if you are modelling the chances of being on the qualifying for the walk-up, the difference between hiring two-shot losses is that it would be, it would be pretty hard to increase England's likelihood of ball-fighting, they're gonna win these games regardless.
He's clearly just trying to find a possession structure and put it in place for what he assumes will be in the play in the walk-up. Most of this is, as you would expect, you've got heavily possession-focused fullbacks between James and Lewis Kelly, and Walker, all of these guys can pass the ball. I assume that Lewis Hall will be getting into this in some way. Tension said that Lewis Kelly only got in because Lewis all was injured, so, I assume Lewis all was back in his walk until he got injured.
Yeah, and so they've just got the right players for that, and then, then the two guys who were nailed out in midfield, which isn't surprising, obviously, were Rice and Bellingham. Bellingham has had a somewhat more on-the-ball rule for Real Madrid, but not so much, and here, I feel like it's not since Bortman that he's been a guy who's supposed to be on the ball a bunch in midfield. Well, this was something that England have, I think, mainly done with Bellingham, just because they haven't had an excellent ball-progressing with the other, and the things that Bellingham has a pretty wide-scale set, and the things that England wanted to have generally been, I would say, more ball-progression stuff, like his idea was it was going to be, like, Bellingham would be more of, like, a pet while he was style 3-8, like, being able to get for, like, he got a lot of shots in the box, especially against Lapid, but he's certainly someone who's expected to progress the ball a lot. That's clearly part of what England tried to do.
I will say that England before Tickle had this real problem of who were we going to play next to Declan Rice at the base of midfield, in a double pivot, and setting up the sort of very classic now from nearly three-two structure, the five-guess structure at the back, lets you play Bellingham in that role, in a way that he really couldn't occupy first after it, and it is obviously yet to be seen how this will, you know, events itself against good teams, whether this makes a big difference, but it does open up a number of different personnel collections that Southgate just didn't have available to it because of how he plays. Yeah, this is, like, this was something I wanted to see for quite a long time. That has not been a particularly gifted passing with the other England have produced for a while. I mean, you could even catch his Jones, who I kind of wanted to see, and I don't know for a while, has become a more forward-thinking player under Slop than he was in the clock.
So I think this is like, I could go all the way down to academy levels, I think the England have a problem with the technically gifted players get pushed further forward, but so, like, if you can find a way to, yes, pull one of the fullbacks into midfield, like, we didn't say it in first game, we saw against Latvia, Lewis Kelly coming into midfield, that gives you a way of passing the ball and maintaining a double pivot kind of structure without needing a specialist, like, passing such on the field. Yeah, and then the other thing that was particularly notable in the Albania match, I watched the Albania match, I didn't watch the Latvia match, we'll get the numbers from the Latvia match, was how much this attacking system is based on getting chances in the penalty area. This has always been one of the markers of Thomas Tukel teams as different from other managers who do similar things with possession, which has been just an absolute focus on XG per shot, shots from the middle of the penalty area, shots from 18 yards out, like, his teams always put together the kind of shot profiles that look like what people on statsbomb.com or statsbomb.co.uk in 2014, we're talking about like that. Wait, that's us.
The people of statsbomb.co.uk in 2014 is me and Grace. That's us. Me, me, me, the light for me, but, you know, to go near our stats bomb was really, really when I came from one of the things about him is that he's clearly on whether that he comes at that through data or through whatever, he ends up at a place, and I think the reporting suggests through data and through whatever. He ends up at a place where the things that he wants look a lot like sort of statistically ideal teams.
Yeah, I mean, that was a clearly, like, this was a very, the most noticeable shift from stuff that I would say. Like, you can imagine, in, like, in the first, how long before? The first 20 minutes against Alpenia, like, England were kind of struggling to break them down. And, like, I've seen it so many times where England are playing hurricane things, well, I'm hurricane, I can score from anywhere.
I'm just going to shoot from 30 yards. And, like, that clearly didn't happen. Like, no one did that. I've seen games where, like, everyone's having a go, and they were clearly told, do not do this.
There's a limit to how much tactical instruction you can do in, like, like, three, two, three-day training. But that was clearly something that they had been very specifically taught to do. And no one did it except because it's Jones, who then comes up to you and follows later and drops from the next game. No, it is true.
And I guess, like, we should just probably go down and do some, like, personnel, and picking at this point. One thing that pops to mind for me is, cool, Palmer is going to be the odd guy up here, right? Like, this setup doesn't have a spot for them. Actually, kind of seeing it against, in the second game, like, I kind of imagine a world where, like, they had both Bellingham and Morgan Rogers pushing forward.
Like, it would be a stretch. I could kind of imagine against, in the qualifying games, playing Cole Palmer and Bellingham both pushing forward. But by the time against the worker, I just can't say it happened. He's going to want more control of that.
It seems like a very easy, like, lever, right, up to pull one or the other is, is Jude Bellingham playing at 10 with two guys behind him? Or is Jude Bellingham one of the two guys behind with Palmer with, I don't know, maybe it's kind of a more secondary guy with whoever, whoever in front, in this case, Rogers. I don't know that will often be that. But I also, like, long-term, Sock is the guy in the way.
Who's the guy on the left? Ratchford was like, dusted off for these. I can't imagine Ratchford is the long-term solution there. Yeah, I mean, it was, apparently, like, Gordon was about to start the second game, then he got injured.
So, like, we were going, we were going to see, I was, the thing that surprised me is that against, against Latvia, like, Ratchford was really playing, like, like, the Man City style left winger, who was like, and I was like, touching, like, like, touching the ball, really, really white. He wasn't being asked to dribble into the ball too much. I was kind of thinking, like, why didn't you call it Jack Relish for that? Like, I know he hasn't been very recently, but that's, like, that's, that's Jack Relish, and that's, he must have been starting from watching this thinking, that's the thing I do for Matt City.
And, like, Ratchford was playing there instead. I, I don't know. I think if he were to act on a social privately, he would say that's probably the position he is least certain of. Like, I, I don't, I don't, I kind of, I thought we might see phone on the left at some point, we didn't, it, I, I don't, he's kind of, like, he can't, again, after the first game, he like, specifically cited that he was frustrated with the white players passing the ball too much and not taking people on making runs in behind.
And it's like, I'm kind of confused if that's an important part of the system because that's not up profiling and have a great deal of. Yeah, and it's very notable if you look at the, the touch maps for Bowen and Ratchford against Latvia versus Foden and Ratchford against Albania, that they are getting into the penalty area much, much more. Ratchford was, I thought, like, ridiculously reserved against Albania. He's receiving the ball just constantly 45 yards from goal by the, by the wing.
And they were getting forward more it appears in the other game, but like, part of that, I mean, part of that is also like, Latvia, much more than Albania did the compact defense thing where you let the, where you basically are like, okay, fine, like, use the winners and outlets and let them run at us. Like, as opposed to even from a lower mid block, you can play a defensive structure where you're like trying to trap the ball against the wing when the ball is wide, and Albania did more of that. And I feel like, nope, we're going the full pulse. Yeah, like, yeah, like, the question I had was like, my England's got the first goal, they tend to change the approach at all.
And the answer was, no, I'm just going to have the best and keep doing this. This is what you see in the modern five guys system all the time, that it has incredibly high demands on the wide forwards because they have this incredibly important role in the possession structure. They have to hold with, because the full backs are not going to be providing with out there. So they have to hold with in the build up.
And then on top of that, because the full backs are not going to be overlapping as much either, they are going to match up one on two and expected to make something happen. If they can get into a one on one situation that you move the ball around, then they absolutely have to win that one on one. And that is, those are the players who then break down the opposition defensive structure. And that's how you get something.
And this is why players like Doku and Savio have been, and this is why all of these players are so valuable, everyone's trying to get these players because they play such an role in this specific tactical meta. And Saka is mostly that kind of player. Saka so much of his value comes from stuff he does in the penalty area rather than stuff he does outside the penalty area. But he's good enough outside the penalty area that it can work as a primary player like that.
It's not clear who else on England exactly is great to say. Jack really does this. Not clear how many other guys fit that profile exactly. I would also say that against Albania, they didn't exactly do that.
There was also a lot of just hit the ball to Bellingham in the middle of the pitch and let him cook. Like you can just do whatever to pry apart six guys. And there was a little bit less of that against Latvia. And I'm not sure whether that was by design or sort of by reaction to how Latvia was playing.
But I do think that there is this interesting counterbalance that Bellingham gives you where you can just be like, go cook. I'm not sure that's what Tana Chishol was asking for. He didn't seem like a guy who would just say go cook. I think in his ideal form of this theme, is the wing of staying wide and staying in a stretched roll and then creating space with Bellingham to make runs forward.
I think he would like Kane to be the focal point of the attack. The wide place to be holding to be stretching by holding with and then Bellingham arriving in the box, I think. Yeah. And the other thing that two cool teams tend to do is he likes in the same style as Uli and Noglesman to have these sort of weird Goldberg machines that lead to unusual players getting forward while being defensively covered.
And you know, that's the first goal against Albania is, you know, Rashford moves out of the way for Lewis Skelly to get forward while other players are covering behind him and Bellingham finds that pass. Like that's the other piece of this, I think. He said after the game that that was the thing he liked most was that that was the first time someone made a run from wide and got in space and created that. But there was no other option to do that particularly.
I think he was pretty, I don't know that he actually wants his fallbacks to be doing that. We did not see Low Skelly do that at all in the second game. He's clearly instructed to go into a field. He wants the outlets under wide areas to be the wingers and not the fallbacks.
So, but yeah, he's certainly trying to have to create space for guys to make late runs into areas and not like through like sometimes will be positionally structured and then other guys will be making us like pretty much all the possession dominant teams you see among top teams right now. I guess the question is, does this really work in the international game? Can you make it work? Like there are not very many teams, even the most sort of possession-oriented teams that do this arguably Germany and Germany has only really in the last 18 months under Nagel's been able to do this.
But even other good possession oriented teams that they can primarily of Spain here, but not only Spain, France would be another one. They do some definition of possession struggle ball, not this sort of highly structured possession, you know, like aggressive possession looking to create opportunities for yourself on cutbacks. So, I know that most of England's players are going to have experience playing this structure more or less because they're all very good players who play a high level teams and to some extent or another have implemented these kinds of systems. But I do think it's interesting that I have never really seen what I would consider to be a full example of this on the international stage.
Yeah, I mean, like, it wouldn't surprise me that if when in a high six tournament game against like Spain, for example, if they slowly down quite a lot, like, like, like, they're like, like, they're like, like, he can move the sliders around this, I think quite a lot. We saw them trying to force the issue pretty much the entire time in these two games. I would imagine there will eventually be a version of this that is more cautious, more reserved, more about passing in center. It's like, I, he might need to find another central midfield that's playing it, so they can rise to do that.
But that's the problem for another day. Yeah, I do think that there is an interesting question of whether this is not just an England story. As Mike is saying, Yulia Nagelsmann is trying to implement something like this at in Germany. And I kind of wonder if we're seeing a number of managers come into the international game, get these contracts where they get a full cycle to put their stuff together and are trying to take at minimum the experiment is, can you just run fully club-style tactical systems at the international level when you have the best players?
And it might work? It'd be interesting. I think the issue is how much I can impress without the ball. It's going to be, after the end of the long season, it's going to be, I know, every time I bring this up, people come telling me, oh, all the stadium's are recognitions, like, I know, but there's still going to be training and, like, very hard work.
It's, like, he is going to be a factor, coming after the end of the long season is going to be a factor. I don't know what kind of physical conditions these players will be. I feel like the ultimate in case we're too short is that he's not going to ask these players to press a lot, but I wouldn't describe the kind of second half of too short career as being a pressing guy. I think it can, I think it's going to be quite reserved, quite low tempo, a lot of the time, even as they're trying to force the issue in possession.
So I think you can probably work? Who are these people who say it's not going to be hot in the stadiums in the US? And I just mentioned it a couple of times, and then had people say telling me that stadiums are recognitions. I do not know anything about American stadiums.
I'm just going off what people tell me. Like, stadiums are air conditioned in the sense that it gets to be like 100 degrees in Kansas City in the summer, and it won't be 100 degrees on the pitch in Kansas City, but it'd be hot. Like, well, now the other team, let's just tell them that. And then all the things that are in the United States won't know what 100 degrees say.
I was wondering if you were going to let the Fahrenheit usage pass. I guess I was so clearly, I think it was like the 87 World Series. Is that right for St. Louis?
We're like, they have the artificial turf stadium. And they fried an egg on the on the city. Yeah, not only was it like hot in St. Louis, it's going to be the World Series, but then games in summer, whatever.
It was like 10 or 20 degrees hotter. So what, like eight degrees hotter, whatever. And that's no longer a problem. That's no longer the case.
And like, we're going to get lots of games across the like southeast of the United. Yeah, I guess the kickoff times must have been agreed. But like, there's going to be like financial pressure to make it suitable times for watching Europe and Asia. Like, that's like, if you were doing like the TV right broadcasting numbers, if you're like the people who have the rights in Britain and Germany, you want it United States data.
Like, you want to, well, it's office. Oh, yeah. To return to the tactics for one second. Much as I like talking about whether events are fragging an egg on the field and the flip side, which is the NFL playoffs where they like delight in it being so cold that you're going to like pour a bottle of water and like watch it freeze before it gets into the glass.
Nothing says that we're the end of a tactical cycle and that we're ready for whatever the next thing is. Then the fact that five guys and possession structure is finally, finally, finally flowing its way to the international game. They're like, you know, you know that whatever the last thing is, it's kind of dead when the international teams, even the good international teams, well, that's the thing that they're doing. No, that's like doing it because it's like, that's the thing all these guys know how to do because they play every week.
That's like, like, a competition walking in thinking, I've only got a few days to figure out to teach these guys the ideas and what it needs to be something they understand. And it's like, what five years ago was space age bubble. And it is, as things go, like, there's a reason, as we're sort of getting at before, that when the big hot thing was heavy metal pressing, there wasn't a lot of that in the international game because the timeline of the international tournaments is so rough on athletic recovery. I mean, some teams tried.
Some teams really did try by the end of it to implement that. And you're, I mean, it just didn't work. But at least we saw some one ball. We saw some one ball.
But ultimately, this is just a lower tempo style and a type of style that is meant to protect people from having to work too hard. It's a little bit better. It's a little bit better of a fit. Yeah.
I remember in rough how much I spoke about Jimmy winning the World Cup, like he specifically said that they ditched their possession dominance down for a counter-attacking one because they concluded that the Heat in Brazil was going to make it difficult. Like, I assume Thomas Tushal has read about the time when the World Cup is putting this into his plans. So like, yes, I, if I were to pick a big name coach who would not make huge physical demands on his clients in these situations, it's probably going to meet someone like Tushal. Yeah.
Somebody who is like very plugged into the sport science data side of things. And you know, it's kind of a dick about wanting his players to always make the correct decision and always be 100% through the top level that he demands. But is in fact quite careful about what he demands. He says he's gone down.
He says he's right. He said I'm almost as counter-attacking now. He says that he says that his life is over and he's going to be chill about it. Well, we'll see how that plays out.
But he says he's changed. I love that he's such a football sicko that he's making the kinds of comparisons of himself to other managers. Like, if Thomas Tugel weren't a top manager, he would have such a good podcast. I'm sorry, but Joe's wearing a Tommy Thomas Tugel should do a soccer podcast.
It would just be a soccer podcast. Like, it would be like too famous for you. It would just be a soccer podcast. Like, we have a soccer podcast.
It would be great. He's trying to put more competition in the market, because he's your business incentive thing. You should want all these people to go out of business. You know, maybe we could have it at CDS though, that might be heavy.
It would probably end up our president. I think it's worth saying that like, if England are going to do weird things with the full facts and having someone in fact like this, kind of seems like Trent could play a much bigger role in this team. Trent, who's in the news a lot right now, he's not going to be leaving England. So like, I could imagine Thomas Tugel just deciding that he hates Trent because he didn't do exactly what he told him to do.
But like, it feels like you can instead of Louis Kelly doing it from that back, you can imagine Trent doing it from right back. And like, that could be a pretty important way in on trying first of all. I can see it in my head. Yeah, absolutely.
We're going to turn this into a trip podcast for the last five minutes here, I guess. But Trent has a this year to some degree done that with Liverpool as he's been somewhat more reserved. But it is interesting that even in the era of five guys, because he was fighting for a club, he did not do a lot of just like controlling games from the base of midfield, although his skills that certainly suggest he should be able to do that. Yeah, I think I think like the risk reward part of his brain is like so skewed towards high risk, high reward stuff.
You need to reprogram him to change the way he thinks about passing the ball to get him to control games, I think. Right, like the way that he has worked, especially in this Liverpool system, is that it's not just Grofenbears holding back, it's also often the callister. And thus, he can push, he can push a little bit further forward. And that role isn't quite there, even if you have a hall or somebody on the left who's very reserved, like that would need to be a further tactical tweak to the midfield to give Trent the space that he's supposed to have, or as you're saying, asking Trent to play a more reserved and conservative passing role.
Yeah, I feel like I guess I could put Trent in a field and then like, had no tactical structure for getting him into those deeper positions where he could pick people out. So we ended up pushing for the world. I feel like Tushal would be capable of playing a possession structure where Trent would actually count on the ball the way you want him to be on the ball. That seems like a reasonable substitute today.
Yeah, it is interesting that England now have a whole bunch of players where you're like, well, if you can figure out and get them on the ball, you're in good shape. That's obviously bailing on, that'll be Saka. And it's also Trent. And then it's also called Palmer, who is like the perfect player to come off the bench in international football.
It's like a 70th minute, you need to go like, just go do something and you're the designated structure breaker. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's the plan. It's like, okay, we've passed the ball around, does not work.
Just go and do something cool. Yeah. And he goes into 10 and Bellingham drops to the eight. Like it just, that's easy.
Alrighty. And on that note, we'll go back with more podcasts. We have some more guests incoming as we continue in the guest part of the yearly soccer schedule. And also like, we're a couple weeks up from check into quarterfinals.
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