Tillykke med ansættelsen af MP. Jeg skal ikke spå om, hvordan han kommer til at klare sig hos Spurs, men jeg er ikke i tvivl om, at det bliver Spurs, der kommer til at tilpasse sig hans koncept og ikke omvendt. 4-2-3-1 med høj forsvarslinie, eventuelt 3 meget centrale (frie) spillere bag angriberen og så to backer, der skal give tyngde i angrebet og udnytte pladsen på kanterne. Saints spillede helt uden fløje denne sæson, hvilket også forklarer hvorfor en spiller som Puncheon blev sendt til Palace.
I bunden af dette franske interview med Schneiderlin findes en (semi-acceptabel) engelsk oversættelse, der giver et overraskende detaljeret indblik i, hvordan Pochettino organiserer sit hold:
http://kickoff.blogs.leq…-du-detail/Her et uddrag:
First of all, we have to close the central zones. He keeps saying it’s the heart of play and there’s always more options from the central zones: switches of play etc… He emphasises on blocking passing lanes. Anyway when I do press, I try to leave the worst passing option possible to the opponent. Pochettino asks us not to give the opponent the choice. But it requires a massive amount of work from a collective point of view. It’s not surprising after six or seven months working on it that we’re now able to harass and fully inbalance some of the teams we face. We couldn’t do that from the start as it’s a massive work put in at training.
He wants us to recover the ball as high as possible, so for that it’s usually up to a forward to trigger the pressing ; so then we’ve to follow. Personnally, I sometimes have to leave my zone to help on one side if a winger who was out of position because he was in a forward zone and couldn’t fall back in time. I’m the closest to the ball to intervene so then even if I’m tired, I’m kicking my ass. So then, the winger has to fill my zone and then we switch positions. This is the basic philosophy.
We have precise drills and patterns depending of the situation. On goalkicks, if they attack from the right side etc. Pochettino is all about detail, really. I recall that he showed us from the start that a meter or half a meter could block two passing lanes in midfield. We just had to move a step ahead or orientating our body a given way to face the opponent in order to put him into trouble.
[...]
It’s often him [Lambert] or Osvaldo who triggers the first wave of pressure. If one of the two starts, it triggers the whole process. Pressing is first and foremost a collective thing. If I’m coming out, the winger will react that way, so will my team mate in midfield and so on.Hos Saints var der nogle spillere, der blomstrede op under dette system (Rodriguez, Davis etc.) og andre, der ikke rigtigt kunne finde deres plads (Ramirez, Osvaldo etc.). Så om han kan få gang i Lamela afhænger helt af, hvor villig Lamela er til at "overgive" sig til konceptet og presse sammen med holdet. Der er lige præcis plads til 0 luksusspillere, der kører deres eget løb, under Pochettino. Det stærke kollektiv hos Saints gav ham den perfekte platform til at eksekvere sin fodboldfilosofi, når det hele ellers klikkede for holdet...
Held og lykke! :-)