It’s a missed opportunity on a sequence and pattern that, up to a point, worked exactly as the U.S. Still, the ball eventually ends up on Pulisic’s foot and he narrowly misses a left-footed shot that curls just outside the post. Pulisic arrives to a crowd at the top of the box. Ferreira holds his run to stay onside, and that takes away the space Musah thought he could cut back into. Instead, Musah ends up carrying the ball too long and cutting into his right foot. Both are also in good spots to receive service. Behind Ferreira are both Brenden Aaronson and Pulisic, making those late-arriving runs. star in position to utilize one of his strengths: late-arriving runs into the box.Īdams sees Musah’s run and the acres of space and plays him through.Īll Musah has to do is play an early ball to Ferreira, who has slipped in between the two remaining center backs, for the U.S. In one way, Pulisic checking back is about creating space for his teammate. That opened space for Musah, who had flared out to the left, to run into behind the backline. Here, Pulisic checks back to the ball, pulling the Moroccan right center back - just off screen but circled in red - out of position and into midfield. The movements started paying off almost straight from kickoff. It was also aided by a tweak that saw Yunus Musah dropping deeper to get on the ball, which allowed the other central midfielder, Brenden Aaronson in this case, to stay a bit higher and a shade toward the right side, which gave Pulisic more space to operate centrally. Much of it was centered around Christian Pulisic’s movement. repeatedly used the same kinds of patterns to consistently disorganize the Moroccans’ center backs and create space for U.S. In a 3-0 win over Morocco this June, the U.S. One of the U.S.’s better performances of the past year provides a bit of a blueprint for how the Americans likely want to attack Wales. And so we want them to kind of be overly aggressive in a sense where there’s going to be space in behind.” So usually with five in the back, there are going to be three center backs and they’ll be more aggressive. “We have a numerical advantage in the midfield and obviously are going to exploit that. “With five in the back, they have an extra defender, so it’s one of those things where we’re going to have to draw them out,” Acosta said. midfielder Kellyn Acosta noted to reporters on Tuesday in Qatar. to find ways to pull Wales’ three center backs out of position to open up space behind their line, as U.S. On Monday, it will be especially important for the U.S. The tactics could be particularly tricky to solve for the U.S., which often struggles to break teams down via sustained possession play. And we know (Wales) is good at that (transition game), so we have to counteract that for sure.” “I think they’re already very focused on that, Gregg has already spoken about it, that you know, ‘rest attack,’ as we call it, when we have the ball, already thinking about which attackers are a threat and what poses the biggest threat to spaces that we need to defend in behind. You have to be comfortable in those situations. So for our defenders, sometimes they’re gonna have to be put in situations where they’re going to have to defend one against one. “But for me, especially the way that we play in Leeds and here, we’re very aggressive when we’re attacking with the ball. “A lot of times when you play against teams that can counter people, you think that you need to give yourself more space and drop off a little bit deeper to different spaces in behind,” Adams said. Holding midfielder Tyler Adams, who plays in a high-pressing system at Leeds United in which defenders for the club are often asked to deal with dangerous transition moments, spoke about the importance of that in a news conference on Thursday. Defending in transition is an area in which the U.S. Wales will be disciplined, difficult to break down and in Bale it has one of the best big-game players anywhere in the world over the last couple of decades. It’s not the most stylish approach, but it’s one that’s well-suited to tournament play. Wales can also do damage on set pieces, either on direct free kicks taken by Bale or through towering striker Kieffer Moore, who stands 6-foot-5 and had three goals in his final three appearances heading into the World Cup for English Premier League club Bournemouth.
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