The 10 best corner routines from last season

Set piece expert Stuart Reid has a guest post on how to design great corners.

Author

Kim McCauley
January 28, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Today’s newsletter is a guest piece by Stuart Reid. Stuart is a freelance remote set-piece analyst, working with clubs around the world to improve their set-pieces.

As one of the earliest set-piece specialists in the game, he has a wealth of experience in many different markets including England, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and more. He’s currently working with Serie A side Como 1907 and Spanish club CD Castellón. If you’d like to hire Stuart to improve your club’s set pieces, you can find him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

For most people working in football, the summer brings a (tiny) bit of rest before the preparations for the season ahead begin. For me, that’s not the case — I update my corner goal database. In 2020, during the lockdowns, I built a research project that gives insights into how to approach attacking the different defensive corner setups we see in football.

This gives me the building blocks into how to consider approaching each opponent along with helping to identify the different set-piece aspects in different leagues + countries. Scoring a corner goal in League One is generally quite different to scoring a corner goal in Serie A, and as a freelancer working in multiple countries, being able to quickly identify and adapt to these quirks is crucial. There are now over 12,000 corner goals in my database that link to video and help provide these insights that I now use day to day in my work to great effect.

My summer was spent watching all the corner goals from 23/24 season (or 2024 season in some cases) from the following leagues: American MLS, Austrian Bundesliga, Belgian Pro League, Danish Superliga, Dutch Eredivisie, English Premier League + Championship, French Ligue 1 + 2, German Bundesliga + 2. Bundesliga, Italian Serie A + B, Portuguese Primeira, Spanish La Liga + La Liga 2, UEFA Champions League + Europa League + Conference League + Euro Championship.

In total I watched 2095 corner goals. From those, I’ve narrowed these down to my favourite 10 (that didn’t involve goals I was responsible for — otherwise this list would look quite different!) that I'll break down for you. The goals are in no particular order, so here are my favourites!

City were unlucky not to score this from the first phase — although it deserved a goal, which is why it’s included. Coming up with offensive corner routines doesn’t need to be complicated, and this routine is the definition of that.

Kobenhavn defend the 6-yard area in a 3-man zonal setup with 2 players defending the front post + 1 central which leaves the back of the 6-yard area open. City open up this area further by blocking the central zonal marker from being able to adjust his position and blocking the GK from being able to reach this zone. A further block is deployed on the man-marker to allow the target-man a free run to the target zone. Great stuff.

Sudtirol defend this in a full zonal marking set-up, which always leaves you at the mercy of the opposition’s positioning.

There’s a few things I love about this routine. Firstly, the chipped delivery. It’s common when teams defend in a full zonal setup like this that’ll they adjust their initial positioning to the delivery, pushing out to defend in a diagonal line when facing outswingers and dropping slightly deeper when facing inswingers. However, a chipped delivery basically deceives the defence and makes easier to exploit that space behind the back zonal marker. The blockers open up the space for the target-man to attack that spot, and the guy on the back corner of the penalty area being positioned to pick up the cross if it’s overhit is a lovely touch as well.

Another heavy zonal set-up on display here. You’ll typically find that the back zonal marker in defensive set-ups such as these isn’t as good in the air as the central zonal markers. For that reason, Boavista simply overload him with 3 players to try and win that first contact.

A weakness of zonal marking systems is once that ball goes behind the main zonal line into the space between the zonal markers and the goalkeeper, it makes it very dangerous and hard to defend against. The delivery is good and naturally the front + central zonal markers are drawn to watch the ball and begin to push out, leaving space to attack inside the 6-yard area. The first contact sends the ball towards the front post where there’s an attacker there to prod home from close range.

Another weakness of zonal marking systems is trouble defending against short corners. The main strength of a zonal marking system is that you have players positioned in all they key areas across the 6-yard area to challenge for a cross. But what happens when a short corner is taken? Those zonal markers will naturally push out to try and create the offside trap, which then leaves space for attackers to try and exploit. Porto exploit that perfectly in this example, with a tiny flick taking it past the goalkeeper.

This routine shares a few principles with the routines Arsenal have dominated the Premier League with this season. The long run from the far side of the penalty area is a nightmare to try and defend against — you have to either track where the man is (meaning you can’t see the ball), or track the ball (meaning you can’t see the player you’re supposed to be marking). The defender can try to do both with quick glances either way but you’re still at a disadvantage over the attacker, who can focus on the ball and his run at the same time.

The blockers open up the target area meaning the central zonal marker + GK can’t get out to the defend the space whilst the run from the edge of the penalty area allows a bit of leeway if the delivery isn’t great. Top routine.

Honorary shout-outs to Man City and Norwich, who also scored goals last season from this routine. It’s a risky routine with a low chance of success — the aggressive, physical blocks on the first zonal markers open up the front post area for a tap-in from close range. The full zonal setup means nobody is able to track the run of Player B, or to add more bodies into that front post area, so this probably wouldn’t work against more man-marking or hybrid systems.

A lovely bait by Stoke. They don’t position a player immediately on the edge of the penalty area, and send 7 players into the box, forcing Boro to pick them all up (leaving one player free due to having 4 zonal markers). The immediate run by Player A surprises his marker and he further gets delayed by having to navigate around the zonal marker. The 2 blockers stop the zonal markers being able to push out to try and close down the shot. Meanwhile, a spare Stoke player comes from deep to receive the lay-off and to take a first time shot, which ends up beating the keeper. It’s from a tight angle and is a tough one to score from, but a lovely routine nonetheless.

I love routines like this — a quick passing combination from a short corner to get to the golden zone of shot creation. I’m surprised more teams don’t use this style of short corner considering how many teams are built for possession in their game models these days. It ticks all sorts of boxes.

A run from the edge of the penalty area can be so dangerous if done right. Lyon defend the edge with one player, and his danger awareness is not good — he’s oblivious to the run until it’s too late.

The ball is crossed into space with the attacking runs all aimed to the near corner, creating more space for the attacking run. That being said, I’m not entirely convinced this was the plan. Between the blocker on the central zonal marker being positioned in front of him and the attempted block by the penalty spot also trying to free up a player at the near corner of the 6-yard area, I think that player was actually the intended target. But still, it worked out nicely.

With Sheffield United only defending with 2 zonal markers, it means the positioning of their man-markers can be manipulated. Chelsea do that to good effect, putting 4 players towards the back of the 6-yard area. One is just a decoy (and ready to follow the ball in), one is the target-man who attacks the central zone, and 2 block the target-man’s marker. This allows a free run to the target area whilst 2 blockers on the zonal markers ensure they can’t push out to that target area. I’m pretty sure the finish was supposed to be a header, but was still a sweet finish from a well worked routine.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! If you work in football and want to see my database in action and what I provide to clubs, please reach out and I'll be happy to demonstrate it. Likewise, if you’re looking to improve your club’s set-pieces in the second half of the season (or to ensure a full season of solid set-pieces if your season is starting soon), please get in touch via Twitter or LinkedIn.

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