Why Girona are the most surprising team in world football

[Music] at the start of every season there's some teams who come out and surprise us for example I'm not sure many of us thought that David moyes's West Ham would be challenging for European places nor yet that Eric ten Hog's Manchester United would be doing quite so bad as they are but in this video what I'm going to suggest is that the most surprising team of all the surprising teams in the world right now are Jona in Spain now Jona are currently sitting second in La Liga they're just behind Real Madrid they're just ahead of Barcelona which in itself is quite surprising but what is even more surprising is that jerona success has come after a summer where they lost a lot of players so on the board in front of me here what I've got is the starting 11 that Jona had against osasuna in the final game of last season now if we fast forward to the first game of this season there were a number of players who weren't in that starting 11 so I'll just highlight these plays here we can see five players that were starting at the end of last season weren't in the starting 11 now a couple of these players are still at the club so Bernardo and Martin were simply not starting but there are a number of players here who actually ended up leaving the club so we have tatti castanos and Rodrigo Rael they were both on loan they've headed off now castanos is now at Lazio Rael is back at Atletico Madrid Oriel Romeo as you may remember ended up at Barcelona and another player who didn't start in this game but who was a stor wart throughout the season in the center back line was Santi Bueno and he was sold off to wolves as well so we've got four players here who are fundamental to Girona success last season who simply aren't in this starting 11 and if we go back to that starting 11 from the end of last season Arno Martinez has spent most of this season on the bench and so what we're left with then is only five players who are regularly playing this season for jerona but it's not just that jerona have lost a lot of players it's that they've lost a lot of key players as well so on the board in front of me I've got a graphic which shows the top 11 players per minutes played from last season versus this season now the Players whose names are in yellow are the players who appear on both lists so if we look at the top of last season's list we can see that none of those top four players are in yellow that either means that they've gone or they're not playing as much as they were last season so Bueno Romeo casos they've all gone as is Rodrigo ralei so those are the four key players who left but we've also got Aro Martinez here who's not playing as much this time around which means that when we come to this season's list there's a whole bunch of players now who are having to take up the mantle of playing more minutes and to give you a sense of how important those key players were I've got a quote here from the Jona manager Michelle talking about how Oriel Romeo is a really important influencer on the pitch so Michelle is talking about how difficult it is to influence games as a manager on the sideline and he talks about how important it is then to take advantage of any breaks to gather four or five key players to convey messages to them and those are the players who are going to modify the behavior of the players on the team and he goes on to highlight Romeo in particular because he says with a gesture I can tell him that the rivals pressure has changed that is not what we expected so what he's doing is he's communicating with Romeo on the field he can let him know very quickly when things need to change and then Romeo can communicate that to the rest of the team but despite the fact that they've lost a lot of key players girona's performances this season have actually seen a bit of an optic compared to last season so we've got the basic underlying numbers here so expected goals slightly up expected goals against slightly down what you want but the important thing to notice here is that the expected goal difference has not only improved but it's gone from a minus figure to a positive figure and that is what good coaching does now it is worth having a caveat here which is that jerona have only played two of the teams who are challenging for Champions League spots this season that's Real Madrid and real sadad and they actually dropped points to both teams and also the only other team that they've played in the top half of the table is last Palmas which may mean that their underlying numbers are slightly inflated but there's still a big jump from this to that it's nearly half an expected goal difference all of which suggests that jerona are on the up but there's another surprising thing here and that is that jerona are relatively recently promoted side their manager Michelle brought them up in the 2122 season and it's surprising then that they are now challenging at the top of La Liga and that fact is even more surprising when we take a look at Michelle's CV so as you can see he's a professional footballer spends a lot of time at Ryo Viano over two stints picks up nearly 400 appearances for them and when he finishes his playing career he then moves nicely into the coaching career so he has a place at Ry Viano working in their youth system he then becomes the full head coach of the senior Squad in 2017 with Ry Viano still in the Segunda division but in that first season he takes them up into La Liga and The Following Season he actually gets sacked Midway through the season and R end up getting relegated from R Viano he goes to hesa who are also in the aunda division and guess what exactly the same thing happens he gets them up into La Liga he sack midseason and Wesker get relegated so when he arrives ajona the next season in the Segunda division there's a lot of people expecting him to get them promoted there's maybe not so many people expecting him to keep them up so the big question is why was Michelle struggling to get his promoted sides to stay in the top division well I've got a quote from the man himself that offers some kind of solution to why this might be the case he says my idea as a coach has always been the same which is to be a protagonist and what he means by that is he wants to impact games by having possession of the ball but as he goes on to say this doesn't always work because sometimes in the top tier this costs you more so in the saunda division he can be a protagonist but as soon as his teams are getting promoted to the next level it becomes a little bit more difficult now this is a quote from last season when jerona are actually mid-table in La Liga so clearly something has changed there and Michelle goes on to explain what that change might be he says what I've been doing is adapting situations so our players don't find themselves in difficult situations and that's the important word there adapting so what's happening with Michelle at Jona this time around is that he's finding those adaptations to help his team stay in the league so to achieve their surprising success this season Jona have had to overcome two aspects the first one is that loss of a lot of key players and the second one is doing that tactical adaptation that allows them to challenge at the top of La Liga so let's look at both of those in turn so how do you overcome the problem of losing a lot of key players well obviously you go and buy more so what I've got here is a list of jira's most notable signings in this window and the first thing to notice is just how little money they've spent this is around 22 million EUR of expenditure for a bunch of players who as we'll go on to see have been really important for them now top of this list is artam dock who was one of the top scorers in the Premier Lia in Ukraine last season he got 24 goals in 30 games which is obviously an incredible rate of return for a number nine he still only cost around 8 million EUR now that low Fe is in part because he had moved to midgeland in Denmark and not really had a successful time there but he's actually arrived at Jon and he's just become an incredible number nine for them now there are a number of players here who were loone signings last season who they then converted to full contracts so we got yangel Herrera brought in from Manchester City Ian Martin from viale and Pao ganiga from Fulham and these have all become very fundamental players for them as well so again you can see nice solid signings that they know are going to translate this season for not a huge amount of money we also got Daley blind here brought in from Bayern Munich on a free trans firm we all know Dy blind he's played at the highest level of the game and he has that flexibility to play either as a center back or as a fullback he's got really good passing range as well and he's become absolutely fundamental to everything Jona do this season and then a couple of lonies coming in as well Eric Garcia from Barcelona is basically daily blend light he can do that on the other side he can play as an outside Center back or as a fullback depending on what you need and then the most exciting name on this list in Savio has been brought in from Tua on loan and has become one of the most electric players in La Liga this season why is Savio so exciting well because he is an exceptional two-way dribbler who can cause problems to team at any level of the game this season he's put up 4.1 take on per 90 minutes which puts him third in La Liga for that metric now I've called him a two-way dribbler what do I mean by that well if we look at this plot which shows his Progressive carries this season we can see it's very clear that he has the ability to go down the line hit the by line cross the ball back with his strong left foot but he also likes to come inside as well and he's actually proven to be a really dangerous player in front of goal as well and when you have a player like Savio it's really important to set up your team to get the most out of him how do you get the the most out of a really good dribbler well you get him isolated 1 V one against his fullback if he's a two-way dribbler you'll be able to go round them either way and the important thing then is to give him space so that he can either get down the line or as we said come inside as well and this is what a lot of Jonas in possession play is based around now one of the ways that jira like to do this is by overloading on the opposite side because that is obviously going to drag the opposition towards you and create space around your Winger so against the back forward Jona like to use their Center forwards to occupy the two opposition center backs and then what they end up doing is just dragging everyone to this side sanov is playing nominally as a wide player but he loves to come in between the line of the fullback and the center back here and that opens up space then for Yano to get forward as well now the rest of the Midfield are going to push forward but actually surprisingly Ivan Martin is going to push across into this kind of area which is opposite to the side that you might see him in a defensive transition now this has created a lot of space around Savio but there's still things that his teammates can do in order to help him exploit that space and this is where the role of daily blind for example comes to the four because what you can do with daily blind is actually open up channels for Savio to move in because there's likely to be a center midfielder in this sort of area stopping Savio from coming inside and so daily Bloon can do various things in order to try and help him out one of those things is to push into this Lane here pull the center midfielder with him that's going to open out space in the inside area so Savio does have the ball he can dribble into this sort of area now with the center midfielder moved out the way and with Savio coming inside often what you'll see then is daily blint move out to adopt that wide area that Savio was previously in that means you can still have the same sort of structure with the option of playing the ball out wide as well to blint you can then play the ball back across into the middle and now we have Savio almost playing as a second Striker I've got a really nice example of this happening in the game against meker so Jona attacking this goal here here's daily blint and as you can see he's right up against that Central midfielder pulling him a little bit deeper that opens access out to Savio who's somewhere over here so you can already see how they're using the structure to generate huge amount of space around Savio here's the fullback and then all of this space to play with here's Savio with the ball now he's fronted up against his full back but what we can see here is that Central midfielder is going to come across and try and double up on him so in order to pull him away what we've got now is daily BL he's going to run across into this scene between the fullback and the center back in order to try and destabilize this player here now this has actually opened up quite a lot of space in the opposition's defensive structure the first one to notice is just the gap between the two center backs if you're a center forward you look at that Gap and you think yes this is going to cause problems but the other space that has opened out is this space here on the edge of the penalty area and Savio is going to see that space and aim for it not least because as you you can see the direction of the defending players is actually pulling them this way so he can come back inside and actually become much more dangerous around this spot here you can see Savio in that space that was opened out and you can see he's pulled a lot of the Defenders around him and actually what's happened is that we now have daily blind isolated against the fullback over here now what is going to happen is that Savio is going to play the ball to sankov he's going to play the ball back across to daily blind and they're going to be in this nice situation again so once again they've managed to get a wide player isolated up against the fullback daily blend is going to play the ball into the box the keeper is going to try try and palm it away and the ball is going to fall in this space here and lo and behold we've got Savio here who's moved inside who can now play as a dangerous attacking player in front of goal and actually this doesn't end up in a goal but it's a really good example of how Jona are using Savio to really great attacking effect but if we go back and replicate that situation on the tactics board we can see this is actually a really aggressive way of playing and daily blint is nominally an outside Center back in a back three but he's actually playing as a functional fullback here trying to get the ball in and everyone is overloaded on this side what that does is it opens out a huge amount of space that oppositions can attack and that brings us to that second obstacle that Jona have had to overcome this season in order to be able to challenge at the top of La Liga and that is tactical adaptability because it's all well and good playing this way against muor a team that jerona would expect to beat because it's generating huge amounts of attacking upside for Jona but if you play like this against better teams then very quickly you're going to find your defensive structure compromised and I have another quote from Michelle again this time talking about that adaptability again this is from last season and he says we changed small details last season in order to stay in La Liga he talks about how he started playing with a back three and started to try and dominate The Penalty Box more so being a little bit more defensive around the goal itself now the result of that is that you're going to make certain trade-offs so he says we were less strong in the defensive transition because we're missing a player inside now obviously when you start playing with a back three you have to get that extra player from somewhere else so you take them from further up the field what that means is that you're slightly more open particularly in defensive transition but Michelle said that doesn't matter because the upside was that we became stronger defending the penalty spot and here's the key phrase without losing offensive power and that is the key to be able to compete at the highest level in the modern game because the most elite coaches are those coaches who make it feel as though they're attacking with the most players but also defending with the most players as well now obviously Michelle was thinking about those ideas last season but this season he's taken Jona to a whole new level and this shows up really nicely if we return to that interplay between daily blint and Savio that we saw against meor because against Yorker you can afford to push one of your defensive players into this sort of support role to cause these problems to give space to Savio but against better teams you might not want to do that and that is exactly what we saw when Jona played against Real Madrid so the question is how do you have a support player around Savio but also not compromis that defensive solidity by pushing Dy blint up and the solution that Michelle found for that against Real Madrid was to bring a different player onto the pitch so we don't have Ivan Martin on we actually have Miguel Gutierrez now Gutierrez is Nally a left back he spent a lot of last season playing as a left back and coming inside and that's exactly what he does in this game so he starts out in defensive moments as the left back here but he can come inside help out in the Midfield but also he can do that support play that we saw daily blind doing with savosa pushing up right up against the opposition back line if they have a back four what this does is this causes problems between the fullback and the center back does the center back step up does the fullback move off does the center midfielder come across to help out it creates those issues that result in space that Savio can attack but it also allows daily blend to play this more defens defensive conservative role as well and this shows up really nicely in the data so here we've got a pass map from that newor game where you can see the interplay between Savio and daily blint you can see everyone else is overloaded on the other side creating a huge amount of space behind them but when we jump forward to look at the Real Madrid game we now have Miguel Gutierrez over here just offering a little bit more support there's much less overloading on that side obviously jiron a little bit more defensively minded here as well but it just gives you a lot more of a solid base to defend those moments as well and so what this achieves is precisely what we would talking about before the ability to feel as though you still got your attacking upside you're still creating the same sorts of problems for the opposition in an attacking sense but you're also able to fall back into those defensive moments as well without being compromised because what's going to happen is if the ball is won back by Real Madrid then this line can drop in Gutierrez can fall back into his left back slot Yan cuto can fall back into the right back slot here and so what Jona end up with here is almost a de facto back five but actually there is flexibility to do other things as well because one of the things we saw from the Real Madrid game is that these two midfielders can drop but also David Lopez can step forward to offer a little bit more solidity in the middle and the rest of the players can squeeze in you've got your back four here you have a really solid Midfield three in the center area and then you have your three players forward as well and that's where we see an overlap between the two obstacles that Jona have had to overcome for their success this season because some of the players that they brought in in the transfer window have actually allowed them to be more tactically flexible this season most importantly by adding D blend and Eric Garcia to their squad Jon Now have a couple of players who can either play as center backs or fullbacks on either side and that just gives them a huge amount of tactical flexibility so we've already seen the system where gueras can drop in as a left back in those defensive moments once you own to have the ball their buildup can be quite flexible now so gueras can come inside we can move daily blind across and Lopez across and have ganiga moving into that first line as well but then once Jona have settled possession what can happen is that gazena will drop back into goal this becomes a back three we now got blind playing as an outside Center back and Gutierrez can do the support play that we saw him do with Savio as well and we also see that other system where Gutierrez isn't on the field daily bit is now effectively playing as a fullback once again in those early phases of buildup we can have the goalkeeper coming out making a back four but in defensive transitions what will now happen is that Garcia will drop inside as the center back we'll either see Yan cuto dropping in here or you could even play Aro Martinez as well now Martinez has been playing as one of those inverting fullbacks as well so you could have a situation now where you're inverting from the other side and you end up with the same sort of situation in those deep buildup phases and this tactical flexibility has the impact that Jona can feel as though they've got an extra player in the Deep phases when they're building up but also an extra player when they're attacking because they have the ability to move these players into more advanced positions when the ball is moving down the field so for me jerona are the most surprising team in the world right now given their only in their second season in La Liga this time around obviously there's still a long way to go and their schedule is going to get more difficult but I wouldn't be surprised if they're still challenging for European Spaces by the time the end of the season comes around if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists including journalists dedicated to each Premier League team so every fan gets the coverage they deserve not just the big clubs and you can try it for free now for 30 days see the link in the description

Channel: The Athletic FC

Views: 196,380

Keywords: Tifo, tifo football, tifo irl, tifo in real life, football, soccer, football tactics, premier league, Girona, girona fc, michel, daley blind, oriol romeu, la liga, santander, spanish football, city football group, guardiola

Id: NZ-tMAmFwq4

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2023