How the sole of the foot sparked a tactical revolution in football

Antonio Vacca can keep in mind the second effectively.

In reality, the Italian is unlikely to overlook it anytime quickly, given he not solely will get to see his “little theory put into practice” each time he watches Brighton & Hove Albion play on tv, however he additionally has Roberto De Zerbi’s initials tattooed on him.

The story Vacca remembers goes again to De Zerbi’s time in cost of the Serie C membership Foggia, between 2014 and 2016, and an incident in a coaching match that essentially modified how the Brighton supervisor considered build-up play, and, in the end, contributed to 1 of football’s fashionable tactical traits.

As a eager futsal and five-a-side participant in his residence metropolis of Naples, Vacca developed an intuition to make use of the sole of his foot as a technique of receiving possession. “I found it easier to stop and control the ball that way,” he tells The Athletic.

De Zerbi noticed expertise and intelligence in Vacca and believed he may play at a larger stage, however there have been additionally moments when he discovered the midfielder’s use of the sole of his foot irritating. Sometimes De Zerbi would cease coaching and say to Vacca: “Sorry, if you need the sole, you have to use it. But if you don’t need it, you don’t.”

The observe match in query threatened to be one other of these events as De Zerbi urged Vacca to shift the ball extra shortly, solely this time the coach obtained a response that stopped him in his tracks.

“My team-mates on the opposing side weren’t stepping out to press me, so the Mister (coach) kept telling me: ‘Pass it, move it’,” Vacca explains. “So I replied: ‘Mister, if our opponents on Sunday come here and play for a point and I move it without getting one of them to jump and press the ball, it’s no use’.

“I argued that if I put the sole of my foot on the ball and lured my opponent out, I’ve invited him to press me. As he does that, we can break the line with a pass.”

Some coaches may react negatively to a participant disagreeing with them on the coaching pitch and making a tactical suggestion, however that was by no means De Zerbi’s approach. Vacca and others would spend hours in the coach’s workplace speaking techniques.

“People who don’t know him might have another idea, but he’s really humble and a footballer can tell him anything,” Vacca says. “He’s the one who has the final say, but when you say something to him, he’ll go away and think about it.

“I remember the following day he said, ‘Vacca’s right. When our opponents sit back, we need to put the sole of the foot on the ball and get them to come out, provoke them, because when a player sees you standing on the ball like that, it sparks something inside them’.”

Many years later, throughout a two-hour webinar, De Zerbi credited Vacca with opening his eyes to the tactical worth of utilizing the sole of the foot as a means of inviting stress and giving him one of his core build-up ideas as a coach.

The pictures beneath, that are taken from Brighton’s FA Cup tie towards Liverpool final season, illustrate what that appears like.

Adam Webster has his studs on high of the ball, attractive Cody Gakpo (circled) to press. Alexis Mac Allister comes quick to supply an possibility…

… Webster feeds the ball into the midfielder and Pascal Gross (circled) is the free man.

Mac Allister passes inside to Gross and Brighton have labored the triangle completely.

Vacca’s affect on De Zerbi feeds into a wider dialog round the rising use of the sole of the foot in build-up play at different golf equipment, in addition to the tactical recreation of cat and mouse that always sits alongside it.

Sunday’s Premier League match between Arsenal and Manchester City was a basic instance.

When Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya put his studs on high of the ball in the picture beneath, it was the set off for the City midfielder Rico Lewis (circled) to steer the press. For context, Raya had already obtained the ball twice from Arsenal defenders in this passage of play (City didn’t all the time select to press Raya when he used his sole).

The second of these Arsenal passes again to Raya was made by William Saliba, proven beneath. You may also see how City’s six-man press is slim to cease Arsenal from enjoying by way of them.

Raya finally ends up enjoying a ‘bounce’ move to Jorginho, with the intention of dragging City’s press additional ahead and liberating house up elsewhere.

But what’s fascinating right here is the residence supporters’ rising anxiousness, which might be heard loud and clear (and it was not fuelled by the second when Julian Alvarez almost scored after urgent Raya — that hadn’t occurred at this level).

A hurried clearance upfield from Gabriel follows — all that persistence turns to panic — with Martin Odegaard (circled beneath together with his arms outstretched) annoyed that the centre-back didn’t slide the ball into his ft.

We noticed Raya together with his foot on high of the ball a lot on Sunday and taking time together with his move choice, in the hope that a City participant would press him and depart an Arsenal participant free.

That was the plan nevertheless it troubled some supporters.

“It’s all my fault,” the Arsenal supervisor stated, referring to the crowd response. “They can boo me. He (Raya) was excellent. He’s got ‘big ones’ because with the crowd going like this, other players — I’ve seen it — they start to kick balls everywhere. I said to him, ‘You don’t do that’.”

In this ultimate instance from Sunday, Raya had the ball at his ft for 23 seconds, which should really feel like an absolute age when 60,000 eyes are on you in the stadium and City may leap and press at any given second. As Arteta alluded to together with his “big ones” remark, it requires a lot of braveness to remain calm, ignore the background noise, and look ahead to the motion patterns to unfold, which is what occurred right here.

Eventually, Declan Rice, circled beneath, comes from left to proper to rotate with Jorginho and obtain possession. Mateo Kovacic is briefly caught between the two Arsenal gamers and, arriving late, commits the foul on Rice that ought to have led to a second yellow card.

The static aspect of the fashionable recreation is intriguing from a tactical level of view, even when it’s not everybody’s concept of enjoyable in the stadium or watching at residence on the couch.

“Playing with a pause is massive at the moment,” says a coach at a main Premier League membership, who was talking on situation of anonymity as he’s not authorised to provide an interview.

“As football has developed in the last 10 years, pressing and build-up has become the key feature. You watch a top-level game and a lot of it is about, ‘How well do you press the opponent’s build-up?’. So these more sophisticated ways of attracting pressure to take advantage… like Ederson, he’ll put the sole of his foot on the ball.

“It’s basically bait… who is prepared to let a ball be completely static? That’s why it’s quite interesting now when you watch games against Manchester City — and it will happen against Brighton — when the ball will just be completely still and nobody will press anyone. That’s also the next evolution: if we know they’re trying to do this to us, what do we do to counteract it?”

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There is a technical aspect in addition to a tactical profit to receiving the ball with the sole throughout build-up.

“If you receive the ball leaning to one side, you exclude yourself from a play,” De Zerbi defined in his webinar. “If you have it to the left, you could not play to the right. If you receive the ball with the sole and from the front, you can play to the side you want. There, you have total control of the ball.”

The pictures beneath, taken from Manchester City’s Premier League win over Arsenal in direction of the finish of final season, spotlight that time. In this occasion, Granit Xhaka chooses to press Ederson after Rodri passes the ball again to the City goalkeeper.

By receiving together with his sole slightly than taking the ball to the left or proper, Ederson offers no indication to Xhaka (circled) as to what he’s going to do subsequent.

Ederson can nonetheless go both approach proper as much as the final second.

He finally slides a move to Ilkay Gundogan, who lays the ball off to Rodri (unmarked as a result of of Xhaka’s choice to leap and press Ederson) and City are ‘out’.

As effectively as maintaining his passing choices open by controlling with the sole, Ederson by no means took his eyes off his team-mates or Xhaka.

“You don’t have to look down again for the ball,” says Paul McGuinness, who spent 25 years as a youth coach at Manchester United and is a massive advocate of utilizing the sole of the foot. “You have 360-degree control, you can look at your opponent and instantly play the ball. It’s the timing of it, it’s the milliseconds it gives you.”

It additionally implies that the opposition discover it arduous to co-ordinate their press.

“They’ve taken the clues away,” explains Ian Cathro, who labored alongside Nuno Espirito Santo at Valencia, Porto, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur. “Usually, when the ball is in movement, there’s an indication as to where it’s going next and that also triggers presses. So if a centre-back receives the ball and takes it across his body, that’s indicating where the pass is likely to go.

“If the ball goes still, you force the opponent to be the one who makes the decision. You then just need to be good enough to be able to act upon the decision (the opponent makes) and be willing to take that pressure.”

In Brighton’s case, appearing upon the choice will not be random or spontaneous. Their passing patterns are largely decided by how and the place opponents press and are rehearsed again and again on the coaching floor.

“The sole-of-the-foot stillness element is to force the opponent to jump. Based on that jump, De Zerbi and the players already know: ‘Here’s my one, two, three patterns to take the space that’s been left by this jump’,” Cathro explains. “In Spain, they refer to it as ‘automatismos’.”

Those strikes are effectively choreographed. Even earlier than Lewis Dunk put his foot on high of the ball in the nonetheless beneath, Billy Gilmour was signalling the place the subsequent move ought to be performed.

As quickly as Fred (circled) motions to step ahead, Julio Enciso comes quick and…

… Gilmour (circled) is now free on the different facet of Fred.

Of course, it nonetheless wants a excessive stage of technical means to execute the passes and, as we noticed in Brighton’s 2-2 draw towards Liverpool on Sunday, the penalties are extreme when a mistake is made deep in their very own half.

But there’s additionally one other query to ask right here: what occurs if the opponent doesn’t take the bait?

West Ham refused to press and adopted a low block in their 3-1 win over Brighton in August, resulting in De Zerbi’s group slowly probing, which isn’t fairly the similar as the “stillness element” that Cathro talked about. In the latter state of affairs, the group making an attempt to impress stands its floor when the bait isn’t taken.

If you might be questioning what that appears like, watch this second from England versus Israel at the Under-21 European Championship in July. Levi Colwill had the ball at his ft for 32 seconds, then 12 seconds, then 14 seconds, all in the house of lower than a minute and a half. It was a weird passage of play, genuinely uncomfortable to look at — there have been loud whistles in the stadium — and made you surprise if the TV had frozen.

Something related occurred when Burnley performed Manchester City on the opening day of the Premier League season and Vincent Kompany instructed his group to not press Ederson so they might maintain the ‘outfield’ recreation 10-versus-10. Burnley’s supporters bought an increasing number of aggravated as Ederson (pictured beneath) stood alone together with his foot on high of the ball.

There is a concept that some ‘lesser’ groups could discover it simpler than others to make use of the deep block that Burnley and Israel Under-21s used.

“One of Brighton’s real benefits is that they are a ‘smaller’ club — there are at least seven teams who go to the Amex feeling a responsibility to press and attack them,” says the Premier League coach who spoke earlier.

“If you are Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, you can’t go to Brighton and sit back — it wouldn’t be accepted.

“If you imagine that you’re a United striker and a Brighton player has actually stopped the ball dead on the pitch, your reaction would be: ‘I have to engage with the ball. We are Man United. We can’t have a Brighton player standing with his foot on the ball’.

“But that’s exactly what they want. They’re waiting for that moment and the minute you jump, someone is free and they play these really well-timed combinations in midfield and play around you.”

Cathro nods. “It’s difficult for the stadium to accept, that’s true,” he says. “It becomes a much bigger test for the strength of character of both coach and players — but probably more so the players because they’re the ones who are on the pitch and going to feel the heat.

“It always comes down to simple things, like the dynamic between players and fans, the score and then you’ve got the other bit — the things that are in your mind: ‘Have we lost in the last eight games? Have we won in the last eight games?’.”

Higher up the pitch, the use of the sole of the foot as a receiving technique divides opinion. One of the criticisms from some coaches is that controlling the ball with the sole can develop into a default setting for gamers irrespective of how every part of play seems and slows decision-making as a outcome.

It was recognized as a downside with Bruno Guimaraes earlier than his transfer to Newcastle from Lyon in January 2022. Performa Sports, a consultancy based mostly in Rio that gives bespoke efficiency evaluation, began working with Guimaraes in September 2021 and highlighted an space of the midfielder’s recreation that wanted to enhance.

“At the start, we had one strong perception with Bruno: that he had a lot of vices from futsal,” Eduardo Barthem, an analyst for Performa Sports and Guimaraes’ essential level of contact at the consultancy, advised The Athletic in August.

“He had played it (futsal) for a long time — longer than most kids in Brazil — and you could tell. The main one was his first touch: every time he received the ball, he’d put his foot on it like they do in futsal. Only then would he start to open up his body. It meant he wasted a lot of time.

“We showed him a few videos that demonstrated this really clearly. You have to control the ball in a way that gives you time and allows you to make the most of the space that is there. The way he did it, he missed out on a lot of passing opportunities.”

Barthem described the movies they confirmed Guimaraes as a “lightbulb” second for the participant, and the Brazilian tailored his recreation accordingly.

Equally, it appears like there’s a stability to be struck, bearing in thoughts there are clearly instances when receiving with the sole of the foot, even in superior areas, might be helpful, particularly as a kind of disguise.

The instance beneath reveals Philippe Coutinho, throughout his Bayern Munich days, threatening to shoot, controlling with the sole, then threading a intelligent ball down the facet for Ivan Perisic.

Coutinho’s use of the sole of the foot had a massive affect on Adam Lallana once they had been team-mates at Liverpool.

It says a lot about the approach gamers are — or had been — developed otherwise in different components of the world that Lallana stated the first time he ever got here throughout gamers recurrently utilizing the sole of the foot to manage the ball was when he watched Coutinho and Roberto Firmino at Liverpool. Both Brazilians performed futsal once they had been youthful.

“I wish I’d learnt it off them sooner,” Lallana advised The Athletic final 12 months.

Sold on the advantages of utilizing the sole of the foot, Lallana has introduced up his son, who’s with Southampton’s academy, to obtain the ball in a approach that he was by no means coached to do himself. “I’m saying to him: ‘Control it with the sole of your foot, it will buy you an extra second’. Not every time, but in moments. You need to keep doing it to know when you can do it and when you can’t.”

The extent to which that’s being coached extra extensively is troublesome to know, however some working in the recreation are sceptical.

“It’s good that people like De Zerbi are coming in — a bit more progressive. But there’s still a lot of people in English football who are very stuck in their ways,” says Saul Isaksson-Hurst, a one-to-one coach who works with elite footballers at senior and academy stage.

“The key thing is challenging players to stay on the ball. Normally it’s, ‘Get the ball, get rid of it, play forward quickly’. That’s always been how we play. So players tend to develop these skills autonomously. But the reality is that we should be challenging all of our players to have these assets, not just some of them.”

Interestingly, Brighton’s academy just lately added “provoke the press” to their core teaching ideas.

“Each year we do a review of our coaching and playing philosophy,” explains Dan Wright, Brighton’s academy teaching and pathway supervisor. “It’s a principle-based programme that we use — that’s important. So it’s not like, ‘(former manager) Graham Potter played like this, so we play like this. De Zerbi plays like this, so we play like this’.

“We have principles from pre-academy to under-nines and all the way through. ‘Provoke the press’ is now one of those principles. How you do that would involve the use of the goalkeeper and the sole of the foot.”

It takes braveness to play that approach and, invariably, errors shall be made at instances by academy gamers, particularly with regards to figuring out the proper time to launch the move. To make the idea simpler to grasp for kids, Wright says one of his employees makes a comparability with taking your bread out of the toaster earlier than it burns.

“Interestingly, this year, probably because of De Zerbi, teams are coming to our training ground and sitting in a block on the halfway line — that’s at under-11s and under-12s — and letting us have the ball,” Wright provides.

“So the whole idea of provoking a press is to get in behind. It’s like an artificial transition, creating a counter-attack even though you already have the ball and that works.

“But now some of the coaches just park and put a bank (of players in a low block), so the kids are really waiting, putting their foot on the ball and saying: ‘No one is coming!’. So that’s a new football problem for us: how do you play through a block?”

Maybe Vacca has a resolution up his sleeve for that, too. For now, although, the 33-year-old is having fun with seeing De Zerbi and Brighton profit from his second of knowledge on the coaching floor all these years in the past.

“It gives me great pleasure to see the Mister put my little theory into practice,” Vacca says. “I often watch Brighton — no, scratch that. I always watch them. When they lose, I feel like I lost, too. I really care.

“I’ve been over to Brighton to see the Mister. I was there with him for five days, dining at his house, in his office, at the training ground.

“I have a tattoo of his initials, RDZ. He left a mark on me, on my skin but in my head, too — because now I can’t watch football any other way than his football.”

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(Additional reporting: Jack Lang)

(Top photograph: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)