In Atletico Ottawa’s latest encounter with Edmonton, on August 7th, 2022, Ballou Tabla earned his team the 3 points with 2 beautiful goals. Individual brilliance is usually not a good indicator of long term success, so what can we tell about these teams based on their playing styles in this game?
Atletico Ottawa’s Formation
In this game Atletico Ottawa lined up in a 5–3–2 formation that can have two different approaches in a defensive tactic.
The first one is a high intensity pressure in the middle of the field that can really suffocate teams. I have seen Sheffield United give Chelsea a difficult time with this defensive strategy.
In this setup:
- The front 5 players narrow down the space to create a 5v2 overload on the midfield,
- The narrow shape forces opposition players to pass the ball wide,
- The outside midfielder in the front 5 pressures the wide player (next image)
- The final passing option is the winger who is marked tightly by a defender.
The setup requires high coordination and man marking skills.
In the first couple minutes of the game, you could see Atletico using this same approach as they were pressing with more intensity.
Once again, this method works very well if the defenders can maintain a tight man marking system. However, in the moment above, the Edmonton right winger received the ball without any pressure from Atletico Ottawa defenders.
What we see more from Atletico Ottawa throughout the game is a settled defence and midfield while the front two players chase the ball when Edmonton defenders have possession. Ballou Tabla on top of his 2 goals was involved in 14 ground duels and completed 2 tackles.
FC Edmonton’s Defensive Tactics
Atletico Ottawa’s decision to not instruct man marking may have been key, as Edmonton’s man marking system was a complete disaster for their defence.
Edmonton players were defending very close to the Atletico Ottawa players. At first sight, this seemed like a good decision. Atletico Ottawa possess players with great passing skills. Most notably the two Mezzalas (midfield 8s), Zakaria Bahous and Ollie Bassett. Preventing the ball from reaching these players would prevent the ball from progressing into dangerous areas.
FC Edmonton’s players could not carry out this man marking system well but Atletico players also manipulated the opposition with their movement patterns.
Before we getting into why the man marking system failed, I would like to address one thing. You might look at the picture above and think, “what about the white rectangle? Edmonton are outnumbered there.” Actually, due to excellent positioning from the striker, Camara, Atletico’s defensive midfielder was never a passing option for his teammates.
Even when pressuring the defender Camara blocks the passing lane to Sissoko to give his team an advantage of numbers.
Back to Edmonton’s man marking catastrophe. Man marking is like dominoes. If one defender is late to tracking his man, another covers for him, then another covers for that one, and so on.
From just one frame in this entire sequence Edmonton are broken down through the domino effect.
As the defender in the yellow highlighted pair is late to track Brian Wright, he leaves his teammates in an awkward situation. A second later his teammates leave their mark to cover the space behind him. This leaves Ollie Bassett free to deliver a beautiful pass.
Atletico Ottawa’s Offensive Tactics
Atletico Ottawa were able to intentionally break down Edmonton’s man marking as well. The moment I just analysed is a good example for this too, but you will understand it better after this new example.
In this situation Atletico Ottawa use the most basic, but efficient rotation. This rotation is used countless times in a game amongst world class teams. As expected, the central defender followed the striker into the middle of the pitch while the FC Edmonton midfielder followed Ollie Bassett deep into defence. This was a great positional disadvantage for the team as alternatively the midfielder could pressure the Atletico striker while the defender tracked back.
Everything went badly for Edmonton when it came to man marking. Atletico had plans to beat the system, the players were too poor to carry out the plan, and the players were too poorly positioned for a zonal marking system.
Abdoul Sissoko
Atletico Ottawa’s zonal marking in defence worked excellently thanks to defensive positioning from their defensive midfielder Abdoul Sissoko. Rather than attacking the ball Atletico focus on maintaining a solid defensive shape, blocking passing lanes, and tracking runners in behind.
This sequence of play seems very basic but Sissoko is doing three things at once: maintaining short distance between himself and the ball, blocking a passing lane to the runner, preparing to block the ball carrier from dribbling to Sissoko’s right.
Conclusion
Atletico Ottawa have a group of quality players. These are not just quality players that win the game through individual brilliance, but players who can play in a coordinated fashion in order to maintain a solid defensive shape and carry out efficient offensive rotations.
