Igualada’s minimalism
How to make something complex into something not complicated.
Sometimes less is more and an easy understanding of what happened does not make it less valuable.
As a reminder, Follow this steps:
- Take a look at the video:
- Read and think about the analysis.
- Match the analysis and the video. Min 2:25
This play is super simple and effective at the same time. We are going to focus on Igualada today. We need to say something before. Shum defense is really high. It is a 20 mts defence. Considering that Shum promoted this season, hence the team on paper is weaker than Igualada. They are brave to play their game and do this defence. Some kudos for them.
Igualada starts the game from a fault. Look at their positioning:
- 2 on the fault,around the area’s top corner
- 1 on the same side but on their own half
- 1 inside the area. Heads up on this player. Look at his position, he is not in 9, he is closer to the goalie. He is there because eventually he will move to 9 (in between the penalty mark and the direct free hit shot mark). This move allows the player to have a chance when he actually wants the ball in that dangerous position.
Saying this, the play starts now. Again remember this positioning. Igualada restarts the game and quickly moves the ball to the last player, to decompress the defense and find some spaces. This player gets the ball and skates through the wall, looking for a block.One of the players that restarted the game is doing some balance. After this “block”, the blocker is doing a balance as well. The first player doing balance is skating towards the weak side. When the player with the ball gets to 3, there are not many options left. So he passes back to the player doing balance. Again compression and decompression. Using as much space as possible for this task.
When the ball gets to the halfway line, the two players are in a more advanced position. Start skating even deeper. Forcing the defence to split. Creating a lot of space in between the lines. The two players, doing the balance, start playing there as well. They moved the ball to the weak side. They do an interesting movement, when they pass the ball, the player that passes the ball, opens the space but also skates towards the ball. Always keeping 5 mts distance from the ball.
