Holding Midfield
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Having had to wait the longest to play at this year’s World Cup, you would have thought Russia and South Korea would have been chomping at the bit to get involved in all the footballing fun. Evidently not. Fabio Capello sent out his team in a 4-3-3 with Yury Zhirkov and Alexander Samedov wide of Aleksandr Kokorin, while South Korea were set up in a 4-4-2 for an embarrassing first half of football. Badly missing Roman Shirokov in midfield, Capello has called upon some thoroughly average players to make up his side and they spent the entire half hitting cross-field balls to Zhirkov, who impressed from full-back but is fairly run-of-the-mill on the wing, and Samedov, who simply is a run-of-the-mill winger. This is shown quite perfectly by this diagram of the average positions of Russian players’ touches taken roughly 30 minutes into the first half. South Korea were the better of the sides, but that wasn’t saying much. They kept the ball well, but did it through safe, square passing done as much out of cowardice as a desire to be a passing team. Son Heung-Min provided the brightest sparks – positioned higher on the left than his fellow […]
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