Barcelona pull 12th lever, find €62m

I was asked to do some analysis of set pieces on Twitter for the newsletter, but declined because it’s not really a topic that works well without video. However, it’s probably a good excuse to discuss the state of set piece coaching and analysis across football as a whole. (Those of you whose brains just switched off can obviously skip to the fun stuff at the bottom. For the rest of you…)

It’s probably useful to map the path of how we got here. In 2014, my first project at Brentford was developing a program/process to improve set pieces at Brentford and Midtjylland.

The coaches at Brentford (under Mark Warburton) ignored what I developed. The coaches at Midtjylland did not. Midtjylland won the league that season scoring .75 goals a game from set pieces. Brentford… did not.

This is where I get to be honest — I knew fucking nothing about set pieces when I started. Set piece genius? Set piece ignoramus. My work was built off the back of studying Gianni Vio’s stuff and breaking down what the best scoring set piece teams seemed to do over and over again around the world.

This incredibly valuable football information was developed through a hunch from Matthew Benham, hard work from me, and some very good coaching + feedback from Brian Priske to get this stuff on the pitch in the hands of the players.

When I came out of the clubs and started discussing this, I was told regularly from smart people — especially data analysts — why we clearly must have gotten lucky.

“Denmark must not know how to defend set pieces.”
“That wouldn’t work in other leagues.”
“That type of performance won’t be repeatable.”

But FCM DID repeat the performance, for many years before they lost coaches with the knowledge. And it worked in Spain, and Italy, and even the Premier League. It wasn’t a fluke, it was an underinvested area of coaching with a bad reputation for being a focus of relegation strugglers and not elite teams.

Fast forward a decade later and set pieces are still an underinvested area of football. Yes, more teams are adding coaches to oversee set pieces/restarts but progress is slow, partly because there aren’t many qualified coaches to begin with and education remains spotty.

Back in 2019, I produced a course at StatsBomb to help educate people and the feedback was spectacular even if the results weren’t always the same. Over the life of the course, we taught 200+ people not only what worked at Midtjylland, but updated ways to analyse opponents with data, and regularly updated routines/playbooks from scouring the world for cool ideas.

Some of the students succeeded spectacularly. And some did not. Getting training time to be able to do this stuff is tricky, and when not enforced by ownership it can run afoul of sensitive head/assistant coach egos. I know this because even after we had succeeded and could point directly to a trail of wins, and even when the coaches we encountered admitted they didn’t really know how to coach set pieces, they still turned up their noses.

And were often subsequently fired for not scoring enough goals, when set pieces was the most direct goal-scoring upgrade they had direct control over. Unlike say… the transfer budget.

Anyway, the set pieces course is gone now. I took the IP with me when I left StatsBomb and have no intention to put it back online. I may teach it again in the future, I may use it to consult with clubs for large paychecks, or I may just do nothing and see what happens.

I also turned down a few job offers this summer to be a set piece coach because that’s not the lifestyle I want to live. My kids are in Bath, I want to see them as much as I can before they go off to college, and living with a football team runs counter to that. It’s time as a parent I will never get back if I sacrifice it, and I think StatsBomb and gambling took enough.

Monetarily, the numbers can be eye-watering. The best set piece coaches earn £250K-2.5M depending where in the league ladder they end up landing. (The Championship is at the bottom end of that scale while top assistants in the PL level are at the top.) Given they indirectly contribute 5-15 additional goals a season, the best coaches still might be underpaid.

So what happens now? No one really knows. Maybe education catches up, but I doubt it. The coaches that have jobs enjoy scarcity, and they like the fact that there are a lot of bad coaches floating around out there trying to catch up. No one has a good coach ed program that I can tell. And no one anywhere is implementing throw-ins in the ways we discovered that break the game. That includes Thomas Gronnemark, who I think is good at technique, but has shown limited success with his ideas beyond that.

Anyway, all of this is to say it’s been a weird decade. Football first rejected what we found and created excuses why it wasn’t repeatable. Then coaches really struggled with bringing in outsiders to improve their weaknesses, even though they do that at the player level every single day. Now the world knows about the edge, but once again struggles to find qualified people with education and experience to fill the roles.

And no one, across the entire world, has really cracked coach education at scale for almost any aspect of football. Maybe they never will.

—TK

News and rumours

• Arsenal have stepped up their pursuit of midfielder Mikel Merino from Real Sociedad. We previously mentioned in the newsletter that €30m seems like quite a lot for a 28-year-old with average passing stats, and that’s still true. But Merino is also reliable with his defensive output and ball retention, and sometimes you need a guy that you just know isn’t going to screw up.

• With Nico Williams seemingly staying at Athletic Bilbao, Barcelona have refocused their financial resources towards Dani Olmo. Fabrizio Romano reports a €55m + €7m incentives bid. That should at least get Leipzig to the negotiating table, though considering this is Barcelona, who knows how that guaranteed €55m part is structured. The amount Leipzig is getting up front may or may not be enough to purchase a case of energy drinks.
  
  Olmo is another player we’ve talked about here before. We’re equal parts excited by the possibilities due to how good his best performances are, and skeptical that he’s worth it for Barca given his inconsistency and injuries.

• Crysencio Summerville is heading to West Ham for £25m, which seems like a reasonable price for a 22-year-old who lit up the Championship last season. He struggled a bit in his first Premier League season, but a switch to playing primarily on the left was a big positive for him last year, and he should shine opposite Jarrod Bowen.

• Manchester United have already lost Leny Yoro for 3 months due to a foot injury, and Rasmus Højlund for 6 weeks due to a hamstring injury. Marcus Rashford and Antony also left their most recent friendly after picking up injuries, with the extent yet to be reported. Good start to preseason lads. Maybe Jadon Sancho won’t go anywhere after all?

• At one point Atlético Madrid were reported to be close to signing Artem Dovbyk from Girona, but he’s headed to AS Roma instead. I’m not sure how I feel about signing several dudes who don’t do much outside of shooting, but maybe signing a tap-in merchant to put in the rebounds from Matias Soule’s 35-yard rips is galaxy brain.

• With Dovbyk arriving, expect Tammy Abraham rumours to heat up. We mentioned his link to Everton yesterday, and Nicolò Schira reports that AC Milan have offered to take him on loan with an option to buy.

• Joao Neves to PSG for €60m + €10m incentives is happening, and we’re big fans. People who are fans of their team signing Manuel Ugarte can probably start to get excited about that possibility too.

• Speaking of: Fulham have bid £20m for Scott McTominay. Man United say they won’t take a penny less than £30m, but if they land one of their midfield targets, I assume they’ll let Scotty Mac move on.

• Fulham are also close to signing left-footed center back Jorge Cuenca from Villarreal. Looks to be a lovely value pickup at a reported €8m fee.

• Everton and Nottingham Forest are battling over the signature of Paraguay international Ramon Sosa, who plays for Talleres in Argentina. I don’t know how his game will translate to the Prem, but I do want someone to sign him because I have been singing the Chief Keef song in my head since reading this rumour.

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