Latest news with #longthrows
The Sun
14-07-2025
- Sport
- The Sun
Destiny Udogie appears to accidentally leak new Tottenham tactic with Spurs stars ‘auditioning' in pre-season
THOMAS FRANK appears to want to add long throws to Tottenham's armoury this season. The Dane is a big believer in the benefits of set-piece specialisms having had great success in that area at previous club Brentford. 4 4 4 He has already hired a coach who will have a heavy focus in that area in former Arsenal and Manchester United staff-member Andreas Georgson. And now defender Destiny Udogie seems to have let slip a particular demand for long throw-ins thanks to some footage he has posted on social media. Eagle-eyed fans noticed a screen displaying the day's training schedule in the background of the Italian's Snapchat video. Under the training section, there are five bullet points - the last of which reads 'long throw audition'. Brentford scored 14 of their 66 Premier League goals last term from set-pieces. Their specialist coach in that department was Keith Andrews, who ended up succeeding Frank as head coach after the Dane left for Spurs. Only Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest (all 17), Aston Villa (16), Brighton and Everton (both 15) netted more. The Bees were also better than any other side at shipping goals from set-pieces. Brentford conceded just three - which was three better than the next-best Manchester City. Frank also had the West Londoners focused on making fast starts from kick-offs. As a result, Brentford remarkably netted goals inside the first minute in three successive games in September, against Man City, Tottenham and West Ham.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
The most aggressive set-piece team in the world plays in Minnesota
Not many soccer players are as passionate about dead balls as Anthony Markanich. Then again Minnesota United, under the 33-year-old first-time head coach Eric Ramsay, don't play soccer like most teams. 'All the guys get really excited about set pieces, especially myself,' Markanich gushed last Friday after scoring a goal off a long throw-in by the center back Michael Boxall for the second time in a week. 'I told Boxy I love when he has the ball for throw-ins and stuff – I get so excited about that.' The wingback's match-winner against FC Dallas marked the third straight game Minnesota have scored from a long throw into the penalty area. It was their sixth throw-in goal before the MLS All-Star break – which falls about two-thirds of the way through the season. That's as many as Brentford's famous long throws produced all last season in the Premier League. Even though they're chucking more balls into the box than any Major League Soccer side in at least a decade, long throws might not be the Loons' most distinctive set piece routine. They've also borrowed a page from Sean Dyche's playbook by bringing their goalkeeper up to wallop free kicks into the opposition's box from around the halfway line, where almost any other team would tap the ball sideways to resume ordinary midfield possession. Minnesota's oddball tactics aren't just outliers in MLS. According to an analysis by Soccerment, a soccer data company, they take more long throws and deep free kicks than any other club in 30 of the world's top leagues, from the Bundesliga to the Brasileirão. The low-budget overachievers sitting third in the MLS Western Conference just might be the most aggressive set piece team on the planet. Ramsay's commitment to putting any possible dead ball into the mixer may look strange, even old-fashioned, but there's evidence to support continuing to do it. Across leagues, seasons and playing styles, long throws into the box are twice as likely to lead to a goal in the next 30 seconds as other throw-ins in the final quarter of the pitch. The same goes for deep free kicks into the 'Dyche Zone' at the top of the opponent's box, which are twice as valuable as other free kicks taken between the edge of a team's defensive third and the halfway line. Like the Moneyball-era Oakland A's, Minnesota found an analytical edge out of financial necessity. Ramsay's squad ranks 26th out of 30 MLS teams for player compensation, which has put an expensive passing game all but out of reach. 'It's not that we're a club that is unwilling to spend, but since I've been here, there's been a real efficiency drive,' he said. 'Ultimately where we use set plays, it comes from wanting to squeeze every advantage that we possibly can from the group of players that we've got.' Ramsay joined the MLS side last year from an assistant role at Manchester United, where he studied how teams like Brentford, Newcastle and Dyche's Burnley used direct set pieces to punch above their weight in the Premier League. 'Obviously it's not escaped my attention that teams with smaller budgets can out-compete teams right at the top end through set plays,' he said. 'It was one of the things I looked at from afar and thought prior to coming in that we could find an advantage.' In the Twin Cities, he found a squad well suited for long set pieces. Their strengths are a sturdy defensive line and a pair of tall strikers who excel on fast breaks, so there hasn't been much downside to bypassing midfield possession for booming free kicks from the goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair or throw-ins from the New Zealand international Boxall, who can hurl the ball 30 yards from a near-standstill. 'I think particularly when it comes to how we use throw-ins and deep free kicks, we probably give away between five and 10% what would be very easy possession in order to be high value in those situations,' Ramsay explained. 'If we wanted to have 47% of the ball consistently, we could do it like that. We would just choose to use set plays in a different way.' Their unstoppable long throw-ins can look hilariously easy. Markanich's two goals last week came from near-mirror image throws to a trio of Minnesota players jostling for position at the near corner of the six-yard box while he waited behind them in the center of goal and the striker Kelvin Yeboah peeled off from the penalty spot to help hunt for a flick-on header. 'Everyone's just wanting to flick the ball on,' Markanich said. 'I think everyone knows their roles, especially on set pieces.' Deep free kicks have more tactical variety depending on where they're taken, but every set piece starts from principles that Ramsay rattles off like a pop quiz: 'Do you have the right number of players in the contact area? Is the thrower or the set piece taker able to, with a real degree of accuracy, put the ball into a certain spot? Are you really well set for the second contact, and are the players on the move for the second contact? 'How is it that when the ball breaks to the edge of the box for a second, third or fourth phase, you can recycle the ball in order to get a second or third chance and continually upgrade the quality of your opportunity as you go?' Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer after newsletter promotion This is the big idea behind Ramsay's set pieces: not that they'll score every time from a perfect routine, but that by using each stoppage to cram a bunch of bodies and the ball into a small area around the opponent's goal, his side can force errors, win second balls and string together chance after chance, set piece after set piece, always ratcheting up the pressure. New phase-of-play data from the livescore app Futi supports this line of thought. (I co-founded Futi with the data scientist Mike Imburgio, who consults on Minnesota's recruitment but isn't involved with set pieces.) Though only 14% of Minnesota's throw-ins into the box produce a shot, they lead to another set piece 20% of the time. Similarly, 45% of the team's deep free kicks reach a second phase where the ball bounces around the box while the defense is still disorganized. The Loons haven't managed a single shot in the first phase of a Dyche Zone free kick but they've scored three goals during those dangerous second phases, plus another from a subsequent corner kick. Add it all up and the value of Minnesota's aggressive set pieces is astonishing: their 10 goals within 45 seconds of a long throw or deep free kick represent nearly a third of the team's season total. Though their entire squad earns about half of Lionel Messi's salary at Inter Miami, Minnesota are perched above Miami in the Supporters Shield standings and doing a pretty good job of recreating Messi in the aggregate just by lobbing dead balls into the box. Fans have bought into a style that might have been a tough sell if it weren't so hard to argue with results. 'There's a bit of an aura around us in set plays, particularly at home,' Ramsay said. 'Our crowd are wild for set plays. At corners, every single member of the crowd is swinging the scarf around.' After years of decline, long throws into the box are on the upswing in MLS and the Premier League. A new generation of managers such as Eddie Howe and Graham Potter are reconsidering deep free kicks, which like Dyche himself had fallen out of fashion as too 'pragmatic.' What looks exotic now may one day be as normal as putting kickoffs out of bounds near the corner flag or building out of the back from a short goal kick. 'I don't think anything we do is rocket science. I don't think it will take the opposition long to work out what sits behind our success,' Ramsay said of his team's extraordinary set piece record after the win in Dallas. 'But stopping it is very different.'
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
The most aggressive set piece team in the world plays in Minnesota
Not many soccer players are as passionate about dead balls as Anthony Markanich. Then again Minnesota United, under the 33-year-old first-time head coach Eric Ramsay, don't play soccer like most teams. 'All the guys get really excited about set pieces, especially myself,' Markanich gushed last Friday after scoring a goal off a long throw-in by the center back Michael Boxall for the second time in a week. 'I told Boxy I love when he has the ball for throw-ins and stuff – I get so excited about that.' The wingback's match-winner against FC Dallas marked the third straight game Minnesota have scored from a long throw into the penalty area. It was their sixth throw-in goal before the MLS All-Star break – which falls about two-thirds of the way through the season. That's as many as Brentford's famous long throws produced all last season in the Premier League. Even though they're chucking more balls into the box than any Major League Soccer side in at least a decade, long throws might not be the Loons' most distinctive set piece routine. They've also borrowed a page from Sean Dyche's playbook by bringing their goalkeeper up to wallop free kicks into the opposition's box from around the halfway line, where almost any other team would tap the ball sideways to resume ordinary midfield possession. Minnesota's oddball tactics aren't just outliers in MLS. According to an analysis by Soccerment, a soccer data company, they take more long throws and deep free kicks than any other club in 30 of the world's top leagues, from the Bundesliga to the Brasileirão. The low-budget overachievers sitting third in the MLS Western Conference just might be the most aggressive set piece team on the planet. Ramsay's commitment to putting any possible dead ball into the mixer may look strange, even old-fashioned, but there's evidence to support continuing to do it. Across leagues, seasons and playing styles, long throws into the box are twice as likely to lead to a goal in the next 30 seconds as other throw-ins in the final quarter of the pitch. The same goes for deep free kicks into the 'Dyche Zone' at the top of the opponent's box, which are twice as valuable as other free kicks taken between the edge of a team's defensive third and the halfway line. Like the Moneyball-era Oakland A's, Minnesota found an analytical edge out of financial necessity. Ramsay's squad ranks 26th out of 30 MLS teams for player compensation, which has put an expensive passing game all but out of reach. 'It's not that we're a club that is unwilling to spend, but since I've been here, there's been a real efficiency drive,' he said. 'Ultimately where we use set plays, it comes from wanting to squeeze every advantage that we possibly can from the group of players that we've got.' Ramsay joined the MLS side last year from an assistant role at Manchester United, where he studied how teams like Brentford, Newcastle and Dyche's Burnley used direct set pieces to punch above their weight in the Premier League. 'Obviously it's not escaped my attention that teams with smaller budgets can out-compete teams right at the top end through set plays,' he said. 'It was one of the things I looked at from afar and thought prior to coming in that we could find an advantage.' In the Twin Cities, he found a squad well suited for long set pieces. Their strengths are a sturdy defensive line and a pair of tall strikers who excel on fast breaks, so there hasn't been much downside to bypassing midfield possession for booming free kicks from the goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair or throw-ins from the New Zealand international Boxall, who can hurl the ball 30 yards from a near-standstill. 'I think particularly when it comes to how we use throw-ins and deep free kicks, we probably give away between five and 10% what would be very easy possession in order to be high value in those situations,' Ramsay explained. 'If we wanted to have 47% of the ball consistently, we could do it like that. We would just choose to use set plays in a different way.' Their unstoppable long throw-ins can look hilariously easy. Markanich's two goals last week came from near-mirror image throws to a trio of Minnesota players jostling for position at the near corner of the six-yard box while he waited behind them in the center of goal and the striker Kelvin Yeboah peeled off from the penalty spot to help hunt for a flick-on header. 'Everyone's just wanting to flick the ball on,' Markanich said. 'I think everyone knows their roles, especially on set pieces.' Deep free kicks have more tactical variety depending on where they're taken, but every set piece starts from principles that Ramsay rattles off like a pop quiz: 'Do you have the right number of players in the contact area? Is the thrower or the set piece taker able to, with a real degree of accuracy, put the ball into a certain spot? Are you really well set for the second contact, and are the players on the move for the second contact? 'How is it that when the ball breaks to the edge of the box for a second, third or fourth phase, you can recycle the ball in order to get a second or third chance and continually upgrade the quality of your opportunity as you go?' Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer after newsletter promotion This is the big idea behind Ramsay's set pieces: not that they'll score every time from a perfect routine, but that by using each stoppage to cram a bunch of bodies and the ball into a small area around the opponent's goal, his side can force errors, win second balls and string together chance after chance, set piece after set piece, always ratcheting up the pressure. New phase-of-play data from the livescore app Futi supports this line of thought. (I co-founded Futi with the data scientist Mike Imburgio, who consults on Minnesota's recruitment but isn't involved with set pieces.) Though only 14% of Minnesota's throw-ins into the box produce a shot, they lead to another set piece 20% of the time. Similarly, 45% of the team's deep free kicks reach a second phase where the ball bounces around the box while the defense is still disorganized. The Loons haven't managed a single shot in the first phase of a Dyche Zone free kick but they've scored three goals during those dangerous second phases, plus another from a subsequent corner kick. Add it all up and the value of Minnesota's aggressive set pieces is astonishing: their 10 goals within 45 seconds of a long throw or deep free kick represent nearly a third of the team's season total. Though their entire squad earns about half of Lionel Messi's salary at Inter Miami, Minnesota are perched above Miami in the Supporters Shield standings and doing a pretty good job of recreating Messi in the aggregate just by lobbing dead balls into the box. Fans have bought into a style that might have been a tough sell if it weren't so hard to argue with results. 'There's a bit of an aura around us in set plays, particularly at home,' Ramsay said. 'Our crowd are wild for set plays. At corners, every single member of the crowd is swinging the scarf around.' After years of decline, long throws into the box are on the upswing in MLS and the Premier League. A new generation of managers such as Eddie Howe and Graham Potter are reconsidering deep free kicks, which like Dyche himself had fallen out of fashion as too 'pragmatic.' What looks exotic now may one day be as normal as putting kickoffs out of bounds near the corner flag or building out of the back from a short goal kick. 'I don't think anything we do is rocket science. I don't think it will take the opposition long to work out what sits behind our success,' Ramsay said of his team's extraordinary set piece record after the win in Dallas. 'But stopping it is very different.'
New York Times
09-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Long throws are back! Plus: Man Utd and Spurs set up Europa League showdown
The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic's daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox. Hello! Bend It Like Beckham? These days it's Launch It Like Delap. On the way: Before we get to our usual Friday quiz, an early trivia question: which contender for this year's Ballon d'Or was once responsible for taking long throws at Leeds United? The answer, believe it or not, is Raphinha, back in 2022 when the threat of relegation was making Leeds itch. It felt counter-intuitive — the Brazilian is an open-play demon if ever there was one — but the club were under the cosh and no kidding, Raphinha could launch it. Advertisement Naturally, assigning him that task raised eyebrows. Attacking long throws have a stigma, in England especially. Historically, they were regarded as a means of attack for teams with no sense of style; cloggers, to use an Anglo-Saxon term. Teams aren't after Liam Delap because of the forward's throw-in ability but his father, Rory, above, was a leading exponent (and absurdly consistent) for Stoke City 20 years ago. Stoke, in that era, had a reputation for being agricultural. But guess what? Long throws are making a comeback in the Premier League. And not just there. Wednesday's Champions League semi-final between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal was notable for Arsenal's Thomas Partey launching no fewer than 11 into PSG's box. It's a record in any game since Mikel Arteta took over at the Emirates Stadium in 2019. Why is this happening? And why is the tactic finding favour again, when 'getting it into the mixer' ('aiming the ball into the 18-yard box', to use the King's English) was so maligned for so long? The reasons, as ever, involve marginal gains — and the fact that no fashion in football is permanently in or out. For the purposes of the data Ahmed Walid and Mark Carey dug up, a long throw is classed as one that travels at least 32 metres, or 35 yards. An attacking long throw is one that takes place in the final quarter of the pitch. In the 2019-20 season (when Pep Guardiola's ball-at-feet mantra was everybody's favourite model), attacking throws lobbed into the penalty area dropped to just eight per cent. This season, that figure stands at 17 per cent — and the graph, above, is clearly trending upwards. Brentford are mad for them, aiming 63 per cent directly towards the opposition's box. Ahmed and Mark's analysis shows they're effective, too. Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace are similarly partial, though certain clubs aren't joining the revolution. Newcastle United almost never go long. Nor do Liverpool or Chelsea. Aston Villa and Forest are the only Champions League-chasing sides regularly employing attacking long throw-ins as a strategy. Advertisement Maligned or not, it stands to reason that teams — not least Arsenal, Villa and others with specialist set-piece coaches on their payrolls — would try to make any scenario work to their advantage. If corners and free kicks are planned, why not long throws? Safe in retirement, Rory Delap can consider himself a trendsetter. It just took two decades for his party piece to catch on. No turn up for the books in the Europa League last night. Manchester United made mincemeat of Athletic Club, tickled pink by Mason Mount's maiden home goals. It's only taken him 22 months. His first was the spitting image of Federico Macheda's flick-turn-and-curl-it routine on his United debut in 2009. Up in the Arctic Circle, Tottenham Hotspur filleted Bodo/Glimt and Ange Postecoglou gave a softcore version of Russell Crowe's speech in Gladiator. Lo, we have our all-Premier League final. Who wins? You decide, based on the three previous meetings between United and Spurs this season. As TAFC wrote last week, the carrot is massive: a trophy, sure, but a Champions League place to the winners too, which could amount to a cash injection of £100million ($132.6m). The Conference League offers no such incentive, but Chelsea are into the final without breaking sweat, blooding a million youngsters in the process. The bigger story was Spain's Real Betis joining them after an extra-time win against Fiorentina. Antony stuck a beauty of a free kick past David de Gea (below) and then assisted the winner for Abde Ezzalzouli, generating more food for thought. It was a heck of a weekend for Bradford City, a club founded in 1903 in the heart of England's industrial north. A deflected goal in the 96th minute — basically the final kick of their entire season — took them into League One, their first promotion in over a decade. They haven't stopped dancing yet. Advertisement Football matters in Bradford but triumph and despair is relative there because in 1985, the city and its football team suffered an appalling stadium tragedy. Fifty-six supporters died when fire consumed the main stand at Bradford's Valley Parade ground — on the afternoon when the club were collecting what is now the League Two title. This Sunday marks 40 years since the disaster, and Richard Sutcliffe has written sensitively on it, speaking to several survivors and witnesses. The fire started when something ignited the litter piled up beneath the stand, most likely a discarded cigarette. The flames spread quickly and many fans had no chance to escape. One of the most harrowing details in Richard's feature is that the stand was due to be replaced after that match. The end of the season should have been the cue for major improvements to a 77-year-old structure. Those upgrades were critical — and they came too late. 📮 Love TAFC? Check out The Athletic's other newsletters, including Full-Time, for women's soccer. (Selected games, kick-offs ET/UK) Friday: Championship play-off semi-final first leg: Coventry City vs Sunderland, 3pm/8pm — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/Sky Sports. Saturday: Premier League: Bournemouth vs Aston Villa, 12.30pm/5.30pm — NBS, Peacock Premium, Fubo/Sky Sports; Bundesliga: Bayern Munich vs Borussia Monchengladbach, 12.30pm/5.30pm — ESPN+ (U.S. only); MLS: Minnesota United vs Inter Miami, 4.30pm/9.30pm — MLS Season Pass/Apple TV. Sunday: Premier League: Newcastle United vs Chelsea, 7am/12pm — USA Network, Fubo/TNT Sports; Liverpool vs Arsenal, 11.30am/4.30pm — NBC, Peacock Premium, Fubo/Sky Sports; La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid, 10.15am/3.15pm — ESPN, Fubo/Premier Sports; Serie A: Napoli vs Genoa, 2.45pm/7.45pm — CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime/TNT Sports, OneFootball. There's nothing like an issue that stirs up the hornet's nest. Tim Spiers' column on guards of honour did precisely that. At the last count, it had generated more than 500 comments. The debate he had with himself was: should teams, as Chelsea did last Sunday, applaud the title winners — Liverpool — onto the pitch before they play each other? And should Arsenal follow Chelsea's lead at Anfield this Sunday? Advertisement Tim calls it performative nonsense (as I knew he would). Me? I reckon football gives us enough to fight about already. I can't summon the energy for a brawl over this but, hell, hit us with your opinion at the email address below. And have a top weekend.
