“How we solve problems depends on if we play against a man-marking team or a complete zonal team,” said Matos.<\/p>\n
“When you play against a complete zonal team, the most important thing is that you understand that you need to move them. By moving the opposition, you create spaces, you create a free player.”<\/p>\n
Much of the historic success of positional play has been underpinned by that same idea \u2013 finding the free player.<\/p>\n
Against zonal defences, an attacker can occupy a gap between opponents and become a free, unmarked player. If a defender comes across to mark him, they risk leaving another attacker unmarked elsewhere.<\/p>\n
But the rise in man-to-man pressure in recent years presents a different challenge. With defenders following individual opponents, the free player can cease to exist altogether.<\/p>\n
To solve this problem, Matos has drawn on his time in China for answers.<\/p>\n
“In China, I understood that to arrive at a more positional game, you could have different steps beforehand,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There is a benefit to having more players close to each other, rather than spreading them over space.<\/p>\n
“If you spread them over space, you are demanding that, technically, they can solve many situations one-v-one. If they come closer to the ball, you can generate more possibilities. You can create a tempo that allows other players to be better in the big spaces.”<\/p>\n
It is unique style of play but these overloads have given Swansea extra solutions around the ball, helping disorganise both zonal and man-marking systems.<\/p>\n
Matos added: “Especially if you play with a midfielder outside, you can overload one side a little bit more. Let’s exchange the ball here five times, eight times and then when we go, we really go.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“How we solve problems depends on if we play against a man-marking team or a complete zonal team,”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-805396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}