The decline of the back three
REMARKABLY, 15 OF the 24 teams at Euro 2020 used a back three system at some point during the competition, while full-backs and wing-backs scored 16 goals across the tournament. At the previous Euros, by contrast, that position collectively delivered a single goal.
We have subsequently seen Xabi Alonso build his brilliant Bayer Leverkusen side on a back three, but as the system blooms at club level, it will recede in importance at these Euros.
There will still be plenty of sides playing a back three, of course, and we will see Hungary, Georgia, Scotland, Serbia and Italy play that system, while the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, and Denmark will swap between it and a back four.
But many of the top teams who used a back three at the last Euros have now junked it.
Germany and Belgium have done so under new management; Didier Deschamps used it unsuccessfully to try and integrate Karim Benzema but found it more profitable to get rid of Benzema instead; England and Switzerland look to have committed to a back four having flipped between both in recent years.
Many of the minnows will play a back four too, including Albania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Romania. It is a trend worth paying attention to from an Irish point of view.
Full-back – where the top sides are weakest
It is a quirk of the tournament that the main contenders are probably most susceptible in the full-back positions. If France are at all vulnerable, it’s at right-back, where Jules Kounde is likely to continue as a deracinated centre-back having been shredded by Angel Di Maria in the World Cup final.
England have a chronic issue at left-back, where the options are Luke Shaw or Nobody, while Germany are likely to rely on the unproven Maximilian Mittelstädt of Stuttgart.
Portugal, meanwhile, can call on the relatively solid duo of Diogo Dalot and Nuno Mendes, but Joao Cancelo may be included for an attacking prowess that has profound defensive weakness as its trade-off.
Simplicity is the name of the game
Julian Nagelsmann once said managers should be mic’d up during matches to be able to communicate on the pitch with players, NFL-style, so as to be able to transmit his extremely detailed instructions.
That was when he was Bayern Munich manager but now he’s in charge of Germany, he has had to learn the virtues of simplicity.
An early experiment with Kai Havertz at left wing-back showed this was something Nagelsmann has learned on the job. But now, given international football’s paltry preparation time, he has admitted “simplicity” is the operative word for how Germany will approach the tournament.
This is why he has brought back Toni Kroos – why spend hours drilling his players on specific plays and scenarios when they can simply give the ball to Kroos to address all of their problems?
(This is also why Croatia have been so good for so long: in Modric, Kovacic and Brozovic they have had a midfield trio good enough to plot their way through most challenges put in front of them.)
Italy have a relatively weak squad but, in Luciano Spalletti, one of the tournament’s best coaches. Having tried to play the back four system with which he was so successful at Napoli, he has since migrated to a back three, saying it better suits the bulk of his players.
That’s the reality of international football: there is less time for coaches to make their influence felt, which means the upside of having a great manager – as Italy do – is much less keenly felt.
Jamie Carragher summed it up really well in his pre-tournament column for the Telegraph: if club football has become about coaches, the players remain the stars of international football.
The Red Bull influence
Might this be the first tournament fuelled by Red Bull?
The stadium in Leipzig was built for the 2006 World Cup, but without a side good enough to fill it, Red Bull saw their opportunity to move in. They bought the licence of a third-tier club, rebranded it, and pumped in enough cash to rise to the Champions League and trample over the spirit of Germany’s anti-corporate fan culture in the process.
While the stadium can’t be referred to as the Red Bull Arena for the tournament – owing to Uefa’s strict brand policing – the influence of Red Bull’s multi-club network will be apparent across the tournament, beyond the fact they run the only stadium in the old GDR big enough to host Euro 2024 matches.
Their influence is evident most obviously in Austria, where Ralf Rangnick – the former director of football overseeing Red Bull’s clubs in Salzburg and Leipzig - is playing their patented pressing style with a group of players familiar with it, having played for at least one of the clubs.
Austria can therefore buck the aforementioned trend of simplicity and can press in the coherent style of a club team and upset a few teams along the way.
The Red Bull influence will be seen elsewhere, too, as Nagelsmann and Belgium boss Domenico Tedesco are both former Leipzig managers, while Slovenia might have the tournament’s breakout star in striker Benjamin Sesko, a physical, pacy centre forward who began his career at Salzburg before moving to Leipzig.
