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  • Kensei400B
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    1 year ago

    There were many objections to the moving Odegaard left article which were already addressed in the article tbh, including the idea that Odegaard could be just as productive on the left, if not even more. Moreover, the article also makes this point which perhaps explains why Odegaard himself has been less productive this season:

    Where Martin Ødegaard comes in (or more aptly doesn’t come in) is exploiting that increased pitch via finding those “remote spaces”. Martin Ødegaard largely attempts to find solution within the right hand side, he takes a lot of touches (which is a large reason why he retains the ball so well) and due to the open angles he operates in he’s rarely forced into playing outside of his comfort zone (which I’ll touch on later). This tends to reduce the isolations that occur on the left hand side due to him not directly accessing whoever is holding width, as well as leading to teams being able to more confidently tilt their block towards the right (as seen often with how many players always seem to be surrounding Bukayo Saka when he receives the ball)- if he doesn’t consistently attempt to access the left then the right can be clogged up more as immediate danger isn’t neccessarily present. As Pep Guardiola put it “In all team sports, the secret is to overload one side of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope.” The issue with Ødegaard is that he’s really good at making the defence tilt towards the right but he’s not so good at punishing the defence for their tilting and therefore he is no longer forcing the defence to tilt- it’s entirely deliberate on their part. That’s the main problem with how the right half space is used, here (in my opinion) are the solutions.