Holding Midfield: Case Study: Fiorentina 0-0 Juventus 25/9/2012

[Holding Midfield]

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Serie A reverted back to the nineties last night, with champions Juventus and Vincenzo Montella’s Fiorentina lining up in 3-5-2s to play out a pretty dull game despite the quality of some of the players on show. That the game was fairly uneventful wasn’t much of a surprise: the 3-5-2 doesn’t really lend itself to open football when both teams use it. The defence has an extra man’s cover against the two strikers and the midfield matches each other on top of being crowded – the only place where there is any space is out wide and none of the wing-backs really have much advantage over each other. What was a surprise however is that it was Fiorentina that dominated rather than Juve. Playing broadly the same systems, you would expect Antonio Conte’s men to be better at it given they are the better side, yet some key features of their play allowed La Viola to gain the upper hand. The most obvious difference was in how they defended. While Juve sat back and let Fiorentina play in front of them, the Florentine side pressed their opponents, making it difficult for them to get it out of defence, but fell [...]

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[insanity]

Interesting claim "That the game was fairly uneventful wasn’t much of a surprise: the 3-5-2 doesn’t really lend itself to open football when both teams use it. The defence has an extra man’s cover against the two strikers and the midfield matches each other on top of being crowded – the only place where there is any space is out wide and none of the wing-backs really have much advantage over each other"

I wonder how would the teams in UCL react to Juventus's 3-5-2. It seems that Juve will overcrowd the mid and outrun it and have a very good cover at the back. The logical responce is get the ball wide, but we saw how Prandelli's Italy countered that with the 2 forwards taking wide positions and forcing the full/wing backs stay back and cover their zone. Having Marchisio making forward central runs instead of Giaccerini, who is more of wide player, will surelly confuse one's defense. You could surely see how Giaccerini swapped positions with Asamoah and making wide runs, while the forwards were sticking in the center of the pitch. With Marchisio and Vucinic Juve's attack seems very different.

For me Juventus are the main contender for the title, because no one else plays the 3-5-2 and seems not many teams outside of Italy know how to deal with it. I am really interested on looking forward to see Juventus vs Bayern, Juventus vs Barca and Juventus vs Real Madrid. For me it will be a battle of tactics.

While this case study shows that tracking Pirlo is a good responce, Juve's defenders has shown that they can cover the regista role quete well and play long balls forward almost as good as Pirlo himself. And in this situation we had a 3-5-2 vs 3-5-2 which neutralized each other rather than tracking Pirlo, neutralized Pirlo. One note to add. Juve, although having a very deep bench, were looking very tired and Conte was resting main players. They literally destroyed my favourite team, Roma, in their next game, when they were fresh.