Tactical Theory: Influencing Space in possession — The three ways space is manipulated
Modern football is played with an extremely heavy focus on space. Who controls what space? How can a new space be created? Which spaces are most important to your team? How should the space be attacked? Who should occupy the various spaces?
A majority of the time when I am watching a match and analyzing the performances in a tactical sense, a lot of my focus is aimed towards the idea of space — and trying to answer the questions posed above. This is to attempt to go a step beyond individual performances, and analyze another layer of the game and how teams are working as a unit. What is interesting about the above questions is that the opposite answers will hold true for each team — in and out of possession. In addition, each club or manager will most likely offer a different answer to each of these questions, and the prioritization of space on the pitch is what makes each team´s tactical approach unique. Taking a step back and looking at why there has been an increased importance on the concept of space, one of the answers would be the increase in team´s defensive organization. Whether a club decides to defend in a 4–4–2 low block or press high up the pitch with a high backline, the structure and organization of these systems can be extremely hard to progress the ball against. A low block team will prioritize defending the immediate space in front of and around their own goal, while a team pressing high may be thinking that they don´t even want to give the opposition a chance to get within range of their own goal, and prioritize defending the spaces further up the pitch. Each of these teams offer a different problem of space for the in-possession team to solve by taking away a certain space but allowing for more space in other areas of the pitch, perhaps taking us back to the questions being asked in the opening paragraph.
The purpose of this article will be to offer an understanding of the importance of space in modern football and various ways it has been interpreted. I have also developed a “model” showing how space is influenced, which is presented after my explanation of the importance of space and how space is becoming one way to approach the game.
It should perhaps be emphasised that this model is under no circumstance mathematical, nor is it, at this stage data driven analytics at all. It is based purely around subjective and theoretical analysis of the space and the way it is influenced.
Modern Managers
In this day and age of social media, with the increased interest in tactics, and with interviews and discussions with managers being made so accessible to the general public, we are able to get a greater sense of understanding behind a manager´s thought process. Through these channels we are able to see the impact that space, and the idea of space on the pitch has on a team’s setup. In a recent article from The Athletic, Ole Gunnar Solskjær was quoted as saying:
“Teams give you spaces, that’s just a natural thing because the pitch is as big as it is and there are 11 players on each team. Some teams give you space behind, some teams give you in between.
“Sometimes teams press high, press low and we have to learn to adapt to every single game. It’s about learning, from every game.”
This quote really paints a picture of a team´s thought process. Again, we come back to the prioritization of space and how each team will interpret the space differently. Not only do the teams need to decide what space is most important for their success, but also take into account what spaces the opposition may try to target. Some teams will perhaps be a bit more stubborn in their approach and focus on their own space prioritizations, while other sides may be a bit more flexible and through scouting and pre-match analysis have a fairly decent sense of the oppositions setup, and attempt to alter their own tactics in a way which allows them to get the most out of the space which they expect to be available.
RB Leipzig manager Julian Nagelsmann also has given us a small window into his tactical approach and idea of space in an interview published on Bundesliga.com. When questioned about his system and his sides ability to create central overloads, as opposed to focusing more on stretching the pitch, he replied:
“I’m not a big fan of that because I demand an active style of play and if you want to do that you have to maintain a certain closeness to the football. That is just part of it. On the other hand, there are sometimes phases in a match when I instruct my wide players to play even wider. Fundamentally it’s about taking up a position in attack so that you can be passed to if the ball is moved around, but also such that you’re close enough to the opponent to initiate the Gegenpress if we lose the ball. If you follow the extreme Dutch school of thought, with very wide attackers you often face the problem of not being open for a pass or the ball taking an age to reach you and giving the opposition a chance to reorganize. You also risk being a long way from the ball if you lose possession and then you can’t initiate the press. As a result, I like to see us shrink the pitch and create overloads near the goals. The rules of football dictate that that’s in the centre of the pitch, so I like to see us have a strong presence in those areas.”
Without directly mentioning the word space, he shares some pretty interesting insight which relates to space and how he prioritizes occupation of certain areas. The thought process behind this is perhaps different than Solskjær´s as they may deem different spaces more vital to the success of their system.
Pitch zones have also become quite popular. There are various ways to split the pitch into different zones, and each of them tend to highlight which spaces can be considered important to success. Pep Guardiola is known for his pitch markings which divides the pitch into 5 separate vertical channels; two wide channels, the central channel and the two channels which are known as the half-spaces. In this setup, perhaps the key zones are the half-spaces, the areas on the pitch where the attack can create scoring chances and disrupt the opposition shape in different ways.
In the images below, the highlighted red areas are what is referred to as the half-spaces. Occupying these zones can be beneficial for a variety of reasons. When a player has the ball and is facing goal in the half-space, they are still able to pass in all directions, as opposed to if the player was in the wing zone where they could only pass in the opposite direction. While a player can conceivably pass in all directions from the central zone, this area of the pitch is more often crowded, and passing angles to other central players are not optimal. When a team is in possession, if their players continuously occupy the half-spaces, it will also tend to make the out of possession team lose their defensive structure if they choose to mark the players in these zones. If these players are not marked, they will be in an area of the pitch where they can pose an immediate threat if they receive the ball.
While not directly relating to space, Andrea Pirlo has also given some interesting insight into the way he sees football and the progression of modern football. In his Pro License Thesis, he discusses how players roles are changing. Below are a few quotes translated to English from his paper:
«In modern football the game module is now changing its function. From a static disposition of the players we are arriving at a dynamic occupation of the positions functional to the principles of the game model «
«As we will see below, the meaning of role is changing in modern football. It is no longer a fixed position that identifies the characteristics of a player, but more and more the different functions and therefore the tasks that a player performs in the match identify him. Therefore, the characteristics of the players are enhanced through the tasks he is called upon to perform.
However, we quickly see the main qualities of high-level players in modern football through classic roles. «
These quotes can probably be interpreted differently depending on who is reading them, but the reason I have chosen to highlight them here is due to my interpretation and how it relates to the theory of influencing space. Pirlo appears to be very interested in the way that the players perform their roles as a part of a fluid system, and not only functionally occupying a relatively predetermined space. Through positional rotations, creation of overloads, occupying space between the lines and creating depth, Pirlo is clear that his players must be able to perform their roles through interpreting space within their system and to adjust their positioning accordingly.
Measuring and describing space
As far as I am aware, and it is completely in the realm of possibility that I have missed something, there is really not a great method publicly available to categorize or quantify spaces in football — a way in which coaches could conceivably use to impact the positioning and movement of their team in any given phase of the game. There are a few methods that can be used to help describe the use of space, which are actually quite useful, but these are perhaps either not suited for coaching purposes (more analytical), or only effect the movement and space interpretation of a few players at a time.
Voronoi diagrams are one of these tools which are currently being used to measure space in football. The best definition of a Voronoi diagram I could find was this one from Wikipedia:
In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a partitioning of a plane into regions based on distance to points in a specific subset of the plane. That set of points (called seeds, sites, or generators) is specified beforehand, and for each seed there is a corresponding region consisting of all points closer to that seed than to any other.
These types of diagrams are useful for analyzing football because they help us to determine pitch control, in other words — who “owns” what space on the pitch. Below are a few examples of what a Voronoi diagram in a football context may look like, both examples were taken from the brilliant twitter account known as Last Row (@lastrowview).
While these can be extremely useful to analyze how or why a goal was conceded after the fact, it could be difficult to translate this directly to the players in a coaching sense. Still, I believe it is a great tool for analytical purposes and a lot of information can be taken from this method if it is being applied properly.
Another interesting method for analyzing the influence of space is that of the Quadrant Tool, which as far as my understanding goes has been presented and developed by Paul McGuinness (@Paulmcg8). While to Voronoi method is perhaps more useful to have a look at the pitch and the players in their entirety, the quadrant tool is more useful for individual player actions or space in a smaller context, as opposed to the shape and space of all 22 players. A quick overview of the Quadrant Tool is below, which has been borrowed from the twitter account of Paul McGuinness.
More context and information on the Quadrant tool can be found here:
The use of the Quadrant tool is fantastic method used to contextualize and visualize immediate spaces on the pitch, and when implemented appropriately can be used as a coaching tool to shape and influence individual player movements and actions. What is perhaps lacking in terms of completeness is the actions and movements involving players further away from the immediate situation — ball far players.
Expected Space: Identify- Create, Occupy and Attack
After making it this far, hopefully you now have a different appreciation of space, and how it is becoming more and more a focus point in the way teams develop their attacks, how players are coached to interpret their roles and what types of positioning players should be taking up in relation to the ball, their teammates and the goal.
Finally, I will now introduce the model, which has been created as a way to categorize and label the variations in which space can be influenced in football. The model — for lack of creativity on my part is called Expected Space, is a way to categorize the ways in which all 11 players are able to influence space in possession, at any given time of the match, in any given phase of the match.
Why expected? Space is very interpretive and can also be quite subjective. In addition to this, we can never be sure how the opposition will react to the in-possession teams’ movements and positioning. If the team in possession tries to stretch the backline and create space by holding width with each winger, we would “expect” this to influence the positioning of the opposition fullbacks. The three categories described below, are all ways in which I, and the model, expect the space to be influenced in football match. As with any model in its first phase of development, there will surely be various ways to improve it, but here is the basic concept of Expected Space:
As stated, Expected Space categorizes the ways space can be influenced. It starts by implementing one main principle which the three categories all fall under; Identify. In order to know which of the three categories a player will fall under, we first need to identify the space, and all labels can be assigned from there. The theory behind this model is that all 11 players in possession could, and should, be influencing space at all times. At any given moment, a player should conceivably have the ability to influence space by first identifying, followed by either: Creating Space, Occupying Space or Attacking Space. Each of these three principle categories can be broken down further into subcategories for a more implicit understanding of the principle.
CREATE
Creating space for your team is a huge part of modern football and most likely a part of any game model you will come across. How the space is created is the question I will try and answer, as there is a variety of ways space can be influenced through “creation”. For the sake of this model, movements off the ball in relation to the positioning of the ball can create space for the team in possession. There are multiple examples of a movement used to create space, a simple, and often used concept to create space would be an overlap. In theory, when a player comes on an overlap, they will often give the nearest defender a new space to think about defending, which should momentarily create a larger space for the ball carrier to attack. Another easy to understand concept would be a run in behind the backline. These movements are often used as a way to force backlines to readjust their positioning by perhaps dropping off and creating more space in front of the ball. Positional rotations, third-man movements, underlaps, double movements, runs across the front and pinning are also all different methods to create space for your side in possession. Pinning is perhaps a more interpretive method of creating space, as the though the player is probably not moving, by occupying a defender and preventing them from defending a different area, space will theoretically be opened in a different area of the pitch.
Pinning is a tactical concept which is utilized by the team in-possession. When an in-possession player pins the opposition, it means that in theory the opposition player is stuck in a certain area of the pitch, or risks that the player pinning them can receive the ball in a dangerous space. When a player is pinned, it will mean that other space on the pitch should now remain available for the in-possession team to attack, because the pinned player will most likely not vacate their area and apply pressure further up the pitch. By pinning the opposition, the in-possession team will be able to stretch the opposition, or they will risk being exposed. Since teams out of possession often attempt to have a numerical superiority in their backline, it is also possible for one player in possession to pin two opposition players, or the backline risks being isolated in 1v1 situations. Below, if the out of possession fullbacks left the highlighted area to press up the pitch, the wingers would have lots of space to attack behind. This opens up more room for the midfielders in buildup.
One caveat regarding the creation of space, is that not all space being created is necessarily useful to the team in possession. An example of this is when a player meets the ball carrier who is not under pressure, to receive the ball. In this scenario, new spaces will theoretically open up as the defensive structure shifts, however these spaces may be harder to reach as well as the fact the ball carrier will now have less time and space to make their next decision. Below I have highlighted what this may look like broken down into two simple actions. In the first image, the central defender has the ball at their feet with the highlighted space to attack in front of them via a carry. Driving into this space with the ball with not only help in progression but should also provoke the opposition block and open a new space for others to occupy.
However, we often see players who when wanting to receive the ball at their feet, will meet the ball carrier, whether they are being pressured or not. A simple yet very effective principle in possession, is to maintain distance from an unpressured ball carrier, and meet as a passing option when the ball carrier is pressured. This will help to prevent the problem presented in the image below.
Here we see the defensive midfielder dropping down to receive. As mentioned above, there is now a new space created (highlighted area) which was previously not open, however the problem now is that the central defender will have less time and space on the ball, and the newly created space is more difficult for them to attack.
Another thing to consider about players who are creating space, is that often they will not be the first or even second option for the ball carrier to pass to. Players creating space will typically be marked by the opposition when making their movement, or, they will be stretching the opposition by holding width or depth and will most likely be too difficult to reach with the proceeding pass. Below is a screenshot, where in this model, all the highlighted players are considered to be in the creating space category.
All of the highlighted players are creating space for their team. The wide players are pinning the opposition fullbacks, making it difficult for them if they wished to press higher. The center forward, making a run in behind is stretching the backline vertically, as they must be aware of his movement and not let him get in behind.
OCCUPY
Occupying space and creating space can sometimes overlap, and there is not a perfect science to separating the two categories. As stated above, players who are holding width are technically occupying space at certain times, as the opposition block will not always shift far enough to mark them, however they still must be aware of these players which will make their shape stretch a bit more than if the player was not there. For this model, separating these categories is easier if we imagine that players who are occupying space are more likely to receive the next pass, as opposed to waiting for a sequence of passes to before they are reached. A player who is occupying space should be unmarked in addition to being an option for the ball carrier to pass to. These players will often be taking up positions between the lines, or offering simple support passes laterally and behind. Simply put, players who are in this category are unmarked passing options. For the sake of simplicity, I have used the same moment of the match above, this time to highlight the players considered to be occupying space.
In this image, the highlighted players are potentially options to receive the ball, and receive it in a relative amount of space.
With the overlap between Create and Occupy being difficult to differentiate at times, a player can shift from one category to the next at any given moment, or a split second. A good example of this, is a player who is dropping off to receive. In one moment, they are pinning the opposition line (creating),
while in the next moment they are repositioning themselves into space to receive (occupying).
An interesting note on this particular pattern of play, is that this player who is dropping off to receive may potentially be placed under all three categories in the model within the space of two to three seconds. Which we will get into now with the explanation of the Attack category.
ATTACK
The Attack category is by far the simplest one to label, and to describe. For the purpose of this model, there will typically be just one player who is considered to be attacking space at any given moment, and that is the player in possession of the ball. Actions which are considered attacking space, are carries, passes and receiving a pass. In the instances where the ball is passed, there is an overlapping moment where two players are simultaneously labeled as Attack, the passer and the receiver. Any time a player in possession has the ball, they are attacking space. A player who dribbles towards an empty space to provoke the opposition shape and attempt to create an imbalance in the opposition is attacking space, while a player who attempts to dribble past a defender in a 1v1 situation is also attacking space, though it is the immediate space in which the defender is occupying and the attacker is trying to overtake.
Receiving a pass is also considered as Attacking space in this model, and it is in those split seconds when the pass is played that two players are both considered to be attacking space.
EXPECTED SPACE
Here I will attempt wrap up the model and try to highlight some key points for easier understanding.
- Expected Space is a model created to interpret how and why space is influenced during a football match by the side in possession.
- The model is theoretical only, with no quantitative data available. Though I do believe this could be built upon in the future.
- Identifying the space is the main collective principle, which all three sub-principles fall under: Create, Occupy and Attack.
- Create: All player movements off the ball which are made to create space for the ball carrier, whether with purpose or inadvertently. These players are often marked and difficult to reach with a pass.
- Occupy: All players who are unmarked and theoretically “simple” options for the ball carrier to reach with a pass.
- Attack: The ball carrier and the pass receiver. The two players who are attacking the space with the ball.
Below is an image where every player in possession labelled under one of the above three categories to show what this may look like in a live match situation.
Yellow — Create
Red — Occupy
Grey — Attack
Final Thoughts
If you have made it this far, thanks for reading. As I am not a writer by any means, abstract thoughts and ideas like this are not particularly easy to explain in a simple way, or the way in the same way I may think of them in my own thoughts. This model is by no means perfect, nor revolutionary, however I do feel it can still be a useful tool for coaches, players or analysts to use as a way to think a bit deeper about each players role when in possession, at any given moment. Often it can be easy for the players furthest away from the ball to not make movements with a real purpose, or for players to not make the necessary subtle adjustments to their positioning to ensure they have the most time and space when receiving a pass. Using this model however, each player should be able to comprehend their roles a bit better, knowing that they are responsible for influencing space at all times no matter their location on the pitch.
Expected Space is model which can be implemented into a coaching plan or game model in which coaches wish that their players possession are treated as more of a fluid role, as opposed to a functional position.
If you have any questions or comments regarding this article or model, feel free to reach out to me on twitter, @EricLaurie.
