On 10 November 1989, Hans-Uwe Pilz turned 31.

He had invited friends to celebrate his birthday in Dresden, where he played midfield for Dynamo, one of East Germany’s leading football clubs.

But the guests did not arrive.

As the German football magazine 11FREUNDE reconstructed the evening in 2012, they had other plans. The Berlin Wall had opened the previous night, and people were crossing into West Germany for the first time in decades.

Pilz celebrated with his family instead.

He opened a beer and considered a possibility he had hardly expected to have at this stage of his career.

„…vielleicht spiele ich nun doch noch einmal Bundesliga.“

“Perhaps I’ll get to play in the Bundesliga after all.”

Pilz was no youngster looking for his first break. He had represented East Germany, won trophies with Dynamo Dresden and played in European competition.

Until the previous evening, the Bundesliga had belonged to the other Germany.

It was the top division in West Germany, a country with its own national team, clubs and football association. Pilz played in East Germany’s separate top division, the DDR-Oberliga.

The opening of the border had not brought those two competitions together.

But for a 31-year-old midfielder in Dresden, it had made the possibility of playing in the Bundesliga worth thinking about.

He was not the only one.

Before the Wall Opened, Dresden Were Winning

Seven months earlier, Dynamo Dresden had come close to reaching a European final.

Their opponents in the 1988–89 UEFA Cup semi-finals were VfB Stuttgart, a West German club with Jürgen Klinsmann and Guido Buchwald in the team.

Stuttgart won the first leg 1–0.

The return match took place in Dresden on 19 April 1989, in front of 38,000 spectators.

Karl Allgöwer gave Stuttgart the lead after 64 minutes. Frank Lieberam equalised for Dynamo in the 83rd, but a 1–1 draw was not enough. Stuttgart went through 2–1 on aggregate.

Pilz played in midfield that evening. So did Matthias Sammer, a young Dynamo player who would later win the Ballon d’Or and the Champions League with Borussia Dortmund.

The result ended Dresden’s European campaign, but their domestic season was heading towards a different conclusion.

In 1988–89, Dynamo won the East German championship, ending BFC Dynamo’s run of ten consecutive titles.

BFC Dynamo was based in East Berlin. Despite the shared name, it was a separate club from Dynamo Dresden.

Dresden’s success had come under coach Eduard Geyer, with a squad that included Pilz, Sammer and Ulf Kirsten, an international striker who would later spend thirteen seasons at Bayer Leverkusen.

These players were already competing successfully at home and against clubs from elsewhere in Europe.

The following season, Dynamo would retain the East German title and win the domestic cup.

For the clubs watching from West Germany, their ability was no secret.

What had been difficult was signing them.

Two Leagues, One Open Border

Germany had been divided into two states since 1949.

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic or GDR, had its own football association, the DFV, and its own league system. West Germany had the German Football Association, the DFB, and the Bundesliga.

The Wall, built in 1961, was the most visible symbol of that division.

When the border opened on 9 November 1989, people could suddenly travel in ways that had previously been restricted. But East Germany did not cease to exist that night.

Neither did its football clubs, competitions or contracts.

Football officials had already been worrying about players leaving.

During 1989, several East German footballers had used trips abroad to escape to the West. According to 11FREUNDE’s later investigation, the DFV responded in late October by introducing new licensing agreements for players in the top two divisions.

The intention was to bring the contractual arrangements into line with FIFA rules and strengthen the authorities’ control over transfers abroad.

The original licensing documents have not been examined for this article. The chronology here follows 11FREUNDE’s reconstruction.

Only weeks later, the Wall opened.

For East German clubs, those agreements were now being tested in circumstances few had anticipated.

Players were receiving interest from the West. Their existing clubs still held their contracts. The East German association remained responsible for authorising transfers.

For East German clubs, those agreements were now being tested in circumstances few had anticipated.

Players were receiving interest from the West. Their existing clubs still held their contracts. The East German association remained responsible for authorising transfers.

By the end of November, one West German club was already pursuing three of East Germany’s best-known internationals.

Three Names in the Newspaper

On 30 November 1989, Neues Deutschland, an East German newspaper, carried a report based on information from the West German news agency dpa.

Bayer Leverkusen might become the first Bundesliga club to sign an East German international.

Three names appeared:

Ulf Kirsten, Matthias Sammer and Andreas Thom.

Kirsten and Sammer played for Dynamo Dresden. Thom was a forward at BFC Dynamo in East Berlin, the club Dresden had displaced as East German champions earlier that year.

Leverkusen had already held discussions, the newspaper reported. Further negotiations with the East German football association were expected.

Another item in the same issue concerned Thom.

He had been linked with Werder Bremen, but he denied knowing anything about an imminent agreement.

„Ich weiß von nichts.“

“I know nothing about it.”

Thom had made the remark to Junge Welt, another East German newspaper. He also pointed out that he was still under contract with BFC Dynamo until 1991.

Signing a conflicting agreement, he argued, would be a breach of that contract.

Thom would eventually move to Leverkusen. Sammer would go to Stuttgart, while Kirsten would also join Bayer after several more months of negotiations.

Those destinations were still unsettled at the end of November.

The players were attracting attention from Bundesliga clubs, but the terms of their departure had to be agreed.

At Dynamo Dresden, meanwhile, another established international was about to be told that his future lay elsewhere.

No Longer in Dynamo’s Plans

On 19 January 1990, Hans-Uwe Pilz attended a meeting with Dynamo Dresden chairman Alfons Saupe.

According to the account later published by 11FREUNDE, Saupe told the midfielder that he was no longer part of the club’s plans.

Pilz had spent eight years in Dresden and helped the club win league titles and domestic cups. He was 31 and had expected to finish his playing career there.

The meeting changed those expectations.

Through Ulf Kirsten, Pilz contacted Wolfgang Karnath, who worked in Bayer Leverkusen’s youth department and had been helping establish contact with East German internationals.

Karnath would later become an important figure in Leverkusen’s attempts to sign Kirsten, Sammer and Thom.

Pilz was looking for a club of his own.

One possibility was Fortuna Köln, a side playing in West Germany’s second division, the 2. Bundesliga.

Fortuna offered him a move west, although not quite to the top division he had imagined on his birthday.

He was not the only Dresden player heading there. Andreas Trautmann and Matthias Döschner also agreed to join.

While the three prepared to leave, Dynamo itself was changing.

A New Name, a New Shirt

On 28 May 1990, Dynamo Dresden was established as a registered association.

Wolf-Rüdiger Ziegenbalg became its first president.

From 1 June, the club was known as 1. FC Dynamo Dresden.

It was an administrative change with practical consequences. A club that had operated within East Germany’s sporting structures was beginning to adopt the organisational and commercial arrangements of professional football in the West.

New sources of money were appearing.

According to 11FREUNDE, Dynamo had begun receiving sponsorship income from West German companies. Players were also receiving additional payments in Deutsche Mark, the West German currency.

One of the new sponsors was Versandhaus Klingel, a West German mail-order business.

Its name would soon appear across Dynamo’s shirts.

The club’s own retrospective on its 1990–91 kit offers a particularly tangible record of the transition.

The shirt was made by Erima. It was predominantly yellow, with black stripes across the chest and shoulders. The Klingel sponsor logo appeared on the front, while the club’s recently adopted crest was green.

Dynamo had changed its legal status, name, sponsorship and shirt.

The players wearing it would soon be competing for a place in the unified Bundesliga.

In the meantime, their former teammates were discovering what football in the West could be like.

A Few Months in Cologne

Pilz began the 1990–91 season at Fortuna Köln.

Jean Löring, the club’s long-serving president and financial backer, was an imposing figure in Cologne football. He had invested heavily in Fortuna, hoping to take the club into the Bundesliga.

Pilz, Trautmann and Döschner were among his new signings.

But the move did not work out as Pilz had hoped.

Years later, speaking to 11FREUNDE, he described a dressing-room atmosphere in which comments made by players reached the president.

„Wenn ich in der Kabine den Mund aufriss, petzte es irgendeiner weiter und ich musste zum Rapport bei Löring antreten.“

“If I spoke up in the dressing room, someone would tell on me, and I’d be summoned to see Löring.”

It was Pilz’s retrospective description of his experience at Fortuna, not an independent account of the club’s internal relationships.

He had gone west seeking a different opportunity. He found himself unhappy with the way his new club operated.

The spell was brief.

According to the DFB’s competition records, Pilz appeared for Fortuna between July and October 1990, making thirteen league appearances in the second division.

Before Christmas, he had returned to Dynamo Dresden.

A player who had been told in January that he was no longer wanted was back at the club before the end of the year.

By then, Germany had formally reunified.

The football season, however, still had months to run.

The Last East German Season

Political reunification took place on 3 October 1990.

On 20 November, the East German football association was dissolved. Its regional successor, the Nordostdeutscher Fußballverband, or NOFV, joined the DFB shortly afterwards.

The former East German clubs still had a final top-flight league season to complete.

Their finishing positions would determine where they entered the unified German league structure for 1991–92.

For Dynamo Dresden, the prize was a place in the Bundesliga.

The club had won the last two East German championships, but the 1990–91 season was different.

Kirsten and Sammer had departed. Pilz had gone to Cologne and returned. Other members of the squad had also left.

Dynamo were now playing under a new name, with a new president and a new sponsor on their shirts.

On 17 May 1991, a 2–1 victory over Lokomotive Leipzig secured second place and qualification for the Bundesliga.

Dresden finished the season behind champions Hansa Rostock.

Both clubs would enter Germany’s top division.

For Dynamo, the Bundesliga place had been earned on the pitch. The sporting achievement came while the organisation behind the team was still adapting to reunification.

For Pilz, it offered something unexpected.

He no longer needed to leave Dresden to play in the Bundesliga.

3 August 1991

Dynamo Dresden’s first Bundesliga match took place at home against Kaiserslautern on 3 August 1991.

The visitors were the reigning German champions.

There were 23,000 spectators at the Rudolf-Harbig-Stadion.

Hans-Uwe Pilz started in midfield.

Kaiserslautern took the lead through Tom Dooley after 37 minutes and held on to win 1–0.

It was not the celebratory result Dynamo’s supporters would have wanted.

But for Pilz, it was his Bundesliga debut.

He was 32.

Twenty-one months earlier, he had celebrated his birthday on the day after the Berlin Wall opened.

His friends had gone west. He had stayed home with his family and wondered whether he might one day play Bundesliga football.

Since then, Dynamo had told him he was no longer part of its plans. He had joined Fortuna Köln, become unhappy there and returned to Dresden.

Now he was playing in the competition he had wondered about, still wearing Dynamo’s colours.

His path was different from those of the three East German internationals Bayer Leverkusen had pursued in November 1989.

Thom had gone to Leverkusen.

Sammer had joined Stuttgart.

Kirsten had followed Thom to Bayer.

Pilz had left and come back. His club had reached the Bundesliga without him needing to move away again.

The opening of the Wall had created opportunities, but nobody knew which ones would work out—or how the clubs they were leaving and returning to would change.

For Dynamo and its players, the decisions had already begun long before the two football systems became one.

Next: Three Players, Three Destinations

Bayer Leverkusen wanted Andreas Thom, Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten. Only two would eventually join the club.

Sources

Hans-Uwe Pilz

1. 11FREUNDE — “Die große Freiheit” (9 November 2012)
Historical investigation by Johannes Ehrmann, Tim Jürgens and Alex Raack, originally published in issue 96. Principal source for the reconstructed birthday scene and Pilz’s German-language remark about the Bundesliga, the DFV licensing initiative, Pilz’s January 1990 meeting with Alfons Saupe, his contact with Wolfgang Karnath, the move to Fortuna Köln and his recollections of working under Jean Löring. The scenes and interviews are retrospective reporting, not contemporary transcripts. The full original article was supplied for the series research; direct web retrieval was restricted during this revision.
https://www.11freunde.de/bundesliga/die-gro%C3%9Fe-freiheit-a-9fb2d5c7-0004-0001-0000-000000436231

2. ZDFheute — “Steinmann & Co.: Diese Oststars scheiterten im Westen” (20 September 2026)
Article by Ullrich Kroemer accompanying ZDF’s documentary series Go West! Die letzte 11 der DDR. Reproduces Pilz’s remarks to 11FREUNDE about the atmosphere at Fortuna Köln and his relationship with president Jean Löring. Used to corroborate the German wording of Pilz’s dressing-room recollection. This is a later reproduction of the earlier interview, not a separate contemporary account.
https://www.zdfheute.de/sport/fussball-ddr-wendezeit-gescheiterte-ost-stars-100.html

3. DFB Datencenter — “Hans-Uwe Pilz”
Official player record confirming Pilz’s date of birth, his Fortuna Köln appearances between July and October 1990, his return to Dynamo Dresden and his first Bundesliga appearance on 3 August 1991.
https://datencenter.dfb.de/en/data-center/people/hans-uwe-pilz/player

4. Dynamo Dresden — “Dynamo Dresden gratuliert Hans-Uwe Pilz” (10 November 2018)
Official club profile documenting Pilz’s background, his role in Dynamo’s midfield, his domestic titles, East German international appearances and later Bundesliga career. Confirms that Pilz made 107 Bundesliga appearances for Dynamo between 1991 and 1995.
https://www.dynamo-dresden.de/aktuelles/news/verein/dynamo-dresden-gratuliert-hans-uwe-pilz

5. DFB Datencenter — “Dynamo Dresden 0–1 1. FC Kaiserslautern” (3 August 1991)
Official match record for Dynamo Dresden’s opening fixture of the 1991–92 Bundesliga season. Confirms Pilz in the starting eleven, attendance of 23,000, Tom Dooley’s 37th-minute goal and Kaiserslautern’s 1–0 victory.
https://datencenter.dfb.de/en/data-center/bundesliga/1991-1992/1/dynamo-dresden-1-fc-kaiserslautern-179400

Dynamo Dresden and East German Football

6. Dynamo Dresden — “Chronik”
Official club history documenting Dynamo’s UEFA Cup semi-final in 1989, its East German championship that season, the 1989–90 domestic double, its establishment as a registered association on 28 May 1990, the appointment of Wolf-Rüdiger Ziegenbalg as president and qualification for the Bundesliga in 1991.
https://www.dynamo-dresden.de/verein/historie/chronik

7. DFB Datencenter — “Dynamo Dresden 1–1 VfB Stuttgart” (19 April 1989)
Official match record of the second leg of the 1988–89 UEFA Cup semi-final. Confirms the result, goals by Karl Allgöwer and Frank Lieberam, attendance of 38,000 and the participation of Pilz and Sammer.
https://datencenter.dfb.de/en/data-center/europa-league/1988-1989/2/dynamo-dresden-vfb-stuttgart-611228

8. Bundesliga — “Matthias Sammer: Borussia Dortmund’s legendary plucky and silky sweeper” (1 September 2023)
Official league retrospective establishing Sammer’s career after leaving Dynamo Dresden, including his time at VfB Stuttgart, his European Championship and Ballon d’Or achievements and his Champions League title at Borussia Dortmund. Used for brief biographical context, not to interpret his choices in 1989.
https://www.bundesliga.com/en/bundesliga/news/matthias-sammer-borussia-dortmund-bayern-munich-stuttgart-sweeper-legend-24662

Club Reorganisation and Reunification

9. Dynamo Dresden — “Der Stoff aus dem die Träume sind” (21 February 2021)
Official club kit-history feature documenting Dynamo’s 1990–91 Erima shirt, the new green crest introduced following the renaming to 1. FC Dynamo Dresden on 1 June 1990 and the black Versandhaus Klingel sponsor logo. Used as evidence of the club’s visible commercial and organisational changes.
https://www.dynamo-dresden.de/aktuelles/news/verein/der-stoff-aus-dem-die-traeume-sind-7

10. DFB — “Historie”
Official history of the German Football Association. Confirms the dissolution of East Germany’s DFV on 20 November 1990, the establishment of the Nordostdeutscher Fußballverband as its successor and the latter’s subsequent accession to the DFB.
https://www.dfb.de/historie

11. FUSSBALL-DDR.de — “DDR-Oberliga 1990/1991: Abschlusstabelle”
Historical competition table confirming Hansa Rostock as champions, Dynamo Dresden as runners-up and both teams’ qualification for the Bundesliga. Also records Dynamo’s change of name to 1. FC Dynamo Dresden on 1 June 1990.
https://www.fussball-ddr.de/oberliga/oberliga-1990-1991/

The First Transfer Reports

12. Neues Deutschland — Untitled dpa-based report (30 November 1989)
Contemporary report identifying Ulf Kirsten, Matthias Sammer and Andreas Thom as potential Bayer Leverkusen recruits. States that discussions had already taken place and further negotiations with the East German football association were expected. Only the publicly accessible archive excerpt was available; the complete article requires a subscription.
https://www.nd-archiv.de/artikel/1951281.1.html

13. Neues Deutschland — “Thom: Vertrag mit Bremen wäre Rechtsbruch” (30 November 1989)
Contemporary report reproducing Andreas Thom’s comments to Junge Welt. Used for his denial of knowledge of a proposed Werder Bremen agreement, including „Ich weiß von nichts“, and his reference to the existing BFC Dynamo contract through 1991. The publicly accessible excerpt was examined; the complete article is subscription-restricted.
https://www.nd-archiv.de/artikel/1951324.thom-vertrag-mit-bremen-waere-rechtsbruch.html

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, scouts, coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they did, what they said about their work, and what the surviving evidence allows us to understand.

The Night in Lusail

On 2 December 2022, Cameroon faced Brazil at the World Cup in Qatar.

Brazil had already secured a place in the knockout stage. Tite made nine changes to his starting eleven, although a side featuring Ederson, Gabriel Martinelli, Rodrygo and Antony was hardly short of talent.

Devis Epassy was in goal for Cameroon.

He tipped a Gabriel Martinelli header over the bar in the first half. Early in the second, he pushed another Martinelli effort away, then recovered after fumbling a shot from Éder Militão.

Seven saves in all.

In stoppage time, Vincent Aboubakar scored. Cameroon won 1–0, becoming the first African team to defeat Brazil at a men’s World Cup.

The victory was not enough to reach the next round. Epassy, however, was named Player of the Match.

He was twenty-nine years old.

Nine years earlier, Epassy had left Stade Rennais without a professional contract.

He had spent five years at the academy, progressed into the reserves and hoped to join the professional squad. His reserve-team coach, according to Epassy, had supported him.

The contract never came.

There had been three other goalkeepers born in 1993 at Rennes: David André, Niall Burdon and Axel Farès.

Their experiences offer some context for Epassy’s departure — and for the work of the people who trained them.

Four Ways to Arrive

David André already knew Rennes.

He had joined the club at ten, progressing through its préformation — the early development stage before the main academy.

For André, entering the academy was the continuation of a childhood spent in its football system.

Niall Burdon had also grown up in the Rennes area.

The son of an Irish father and a French mother, he played for local clubs including L’Hermitage, Vezin-le-Coquet and Le Rheu before joining Stade Rennais in 2007. His Irish background would later lead to youth international recognition with the Republic of Ireland.

Devis Epassy came from the Paris region.

He had played for Red Star and Paris FC, and attended INF Clairefontaine.

Despite its famous name, INF Clairefontaine is not a professional club academy. It is a selective development programme run by the French Football Federation, where boys generally aged thirteen to fifteen receive specialist training while continuing to represent their clubs.

Epassy spent weekdays at Clairefontaine and played matches for Paris FC.

He had already attracted interest from Rennes.

« Rennes me suivait déjà avant que j’intègre l’INF. »

“Rennes had been following me even before I joined INF.”

He signed with the club during his first year at Clairefontaine, joining Rennes’ academy in 2008.

Moving to Brittany meant leaving his family, although boarding life was familiar to him. He had already spent the working week away from his parents at Clairefontaine.

Axel Farès came from much farther away.

He was from Martinique, the French Caribbean island thousands of kilometres from mainland France.

In early 2008, Rennes spotted him representing Martinique at the Coupe nationale des 14 ans, a national youth competition.

André, Burdon and Epassy were already there.

Farès became the fourth goalkeeper born in 1993 in the club’s development structure.

The surviving records do not explain why Rennes brought together four goalkeepers of that age, or whether such a number was unusual in French youth football.

The boys had arrived through four distinct routes. They also faced very different adjustments to academy life.

What Makes a Goalkeeper?

A year before the four entered the academy cycle, François Seguin described how Rennes trained its goalkeepers.

He was responsible for approximately twenty of them, from young children to players in the reserves.

His working day involved far more than standing beside a goal and watching shooting drills.

Training changed with age. Younger boys worked on basic skills, while older players faced more frequent sessions and greater technical and physical demands.

In 2007, Seguin explained that Rennes had begun adjusting training to the players’ physical maturity.

« Cette année, on a tenu compte de leur âge physiologique et non pas de leur âge civil. »

“This year, we took account of their physiological age rather than their chronological age.”

Medical examinations helped the staff determine the loads that young goalkeepers could safely handle in strength training.

A physically developed fifteen-year-old might sometimes work alongside reserve-team goalkeepers, despite the difference in their ages.

Seguin had also seen the position change.

Where explosiveness had once been the principal requirement, he now looked for height, power and the ability to play with the feet.

Recruitment was part of his work too.

He received scouting reports, travelled to watch prospects and invited goalkeepers to Rennes. He wanted to know whether they could reproduce in a match what they showed during training.

By June 2008, Seguin was leaving Rennes to become an assistant coach at Sedan.

In his farewell interview, he spoke about the different relationships he had developed with goalkeepers of different ages, and about the trust involved in coaching them.

He also mentioned a regret.

During his three years at Rennes, he had not managed to bring a young goalkeeper into the professional team.

The admission came just after Rennes’ youth team had won the Coupe Gambardella.

Seguin did not dismiss the trophy. He was pleased for the players, including goalkeeper Florent Petit. But a youth cup, he argued, was one stage in a career, not its destination.

Fabien Bardet took over the goalkeeper-development role in June 2008, arriving from the regional elite youth programme at Vichy.

Bardet would work with the generation of André, Burdon, Epassy and Farès.

He was also involved with the reserve-team staff. In a 2010 interview, Laurent Huard, the reserve coach, specifically named Bardet among those helping prepare his players.

We do not have Bardet’s individual assessments of the four goalkeepers or a record of how he decided their playing opportunities.

We do have the accounts of the players who lived through those decisions.

Friends, Rivals and the Bench

Axel Farès left Rennes in 2009.

He had arrived from Martinique but remained fourth in the goalkeeper hierarchy.

David André later recalled that Farès had struggled to settle completely and had suffered an arm injury that interrupted his progress.

That is André’s recollection, not Farès’s own explanation. Farès’s experience at Rennes is less well documented than those of the others.

For André, competition at Rennes had begun much earlier.

He knew his height would make an elite goalkeeping career difficult. At 1.76 metres, he was shorter than the profile increasingly favoured at the highest level.

But he believed he could progress.

During his first academy season, he played five matches at national youth level.

At the start of 2009–10, he was made captain, partly because he was the oldest in the team.

Then he played two or three matches he later judged to have been mediocre.

He lost his position.

« Je n’ai plus jamais eu ma chance. »

“I never got another chance.”

André believed that Burdon and Epassy were regarded as having greater potential.

He was not retained in 2011.

Burdon, however, had also been one of his closest friends.

They were competing for the same position, yet André remembered how they supported each other through those years. Speaking in 2016, he thanked Burdon for the friendship.

André remembered Epassy differently.

The teammate who would later face Brazil was, in his recollection, the joker of the group. He remembered Epassy singing Céline Dion in class.

On the pitch, André saw another side: a goalkeeper becoming increasingly confident, assertive and mentally strong.

Epassy himself later admitted that, when he first arrived at Rennes, he had relied too much on natural ability.

He needed time to understand what the academy demanded of him.

The competition was changing too.

By January 2012, Epassy was the first-choice goalkeeper in Rennes’ U19 side, competing in the national youth championship.

Burdon and the younger Imbad Ahamada were among the alternatives.

Burdon also played for an amateur side within the club’s structure, and briefly returned to the U19 starting position when Epassy was suspended.

His contract was approaching a decision.

In April 2012, local reporting identified Burdon as one of several players whose one-year contrat stagiaire was ending.

In the French development pathway, a contrat stagiaire was a formal trainee agreement. It allowed a young player to continue his training at a club, but it was distinct from signing a first professional contract.

Burdon was waiting to learn whether his agreement would be renewed.

He left Rennes that year.

Epassy remained, with a trainee contract of his own, signed in the summer of 2011.

In March 2012, he had spoken to Stade Rennais Online about the competition within the U19 side.

Several generations were competing to be selected for a Coupe Gambardella match against Le Mans.

« Tout le monde est concerné. »

“Everyone is involved.”

Epassy described a group in which players wanted to train well enough to be selected and in which competition was helping improve performances.

He was speaking at the time, not looking back years later.

Soon he would be playing against adults.

The Reserve Team Was Not Only for the Young

During the closing weeks of the 2011–12 season, Epassy made five starts for Rennes’ reserves in CFA2.

CFA2 — Championnat de France Amateur 2 — was then the fifth tier of French senior football.

Unlike U19 National, it was not an age-group competition. Professional clubs’ reserve sides played against adult teams, offering academy graduates a route into senior football.

Laurent Huard was coaching Rennes’ reserves.

In August 2012, as he prepared for the new season, Huard explained that some players were about to encounter adult football for the first time.

His aim was to prepare as many of them as possible to approach the professional squad.

Two years earlier, he had spoken about the challenge of balancing training with competitive playing time.

The reserve side was an important part of the academy pathway. Yet its matches were also used by players who already held professional contracts.

The 2012–13 goalkeeper records illustrate how this worked.

Of the reserve team’s twenty-six CFA2 league matches, twenty-five goalkeeper starts can be identified from the archived individual statistics.

Goalkeeper CFA2 starts, 2012–13Devis Epassy11Abdoulaye Diallo10Cheikh N’Diaye4Unidentified in the records consulted1

Diallo and N’Diaye were already professional goalkeepers.

Between them, they started fourteen of the twenty-five matches identified.

Epassy started eleven.

The figures do not tell us how Rennes selected a goalkeeper for each particular match. Nor do they establish that Epassy would have played all the others had Diallo and N’Diaye been unavailable.

They do show that three goalkeepers at different stages of their careers were sharing the same senior reserve competition.

Diallo’s position was especially interesting.

Born in 1992, a year before Epassy, he had made his Ligue 1 debut at seventeen.

He was already a professional, but still some distance from becoming Rennes’ first choice.

On 17 May 2013, Rennes announced that Diallo had signed a three-year contract extension, keeping him at the club until June 2016.

In the accompanying interview, Diallo explained that he wanted to become Rennes’ number one.

First, however, he needed matches.

« J’ai besoin de temps de jeu dans une équipe première. »

“I need playing time in a first team.”

He expected a loan.

Diallo had his professional contract, but wanted the experience that would help him compete for a starting place.

Epassy had accumulated senior reserve appearances. He wanted the contract Diallo already possessed.

In January 2014, Diallo would eventually move on loan to Le Havre in Ligue 2.

For Epassy, the decisive summer had already passed.

Three Goalkeepers on the First Day

On 19 June 2013, Johann Carrasso completed a permanent move from Rennes to Metz.

Carrasso had spent the previous season on loan, but had remained under contract at Rennes. Before his departure, the club had four professional goalkeepers: Benoît Costil, Abdoulaye Diallo, Cheikh N’Diaye and Carrasso.

On 1 July, Philippe Montanier held his first training session as Rennes’ new head coach.

The local report listed twenty-one players present.

Three were goalkeepers.

Costil.

Diallo.

N’Diaye.

Laurent Huard was also there, having joined Montanier’s first-team staff.

Epassy was not listed among the professional players at the session.

On 16 July, Rennes extended N’Diaye’s contract for another season.

Epassy, whose trainee agreement had come to an end, did not receive a professional contract.

In 2017, he described the summer from his perspective.

He said Huard had tried to help him obtain his first professional deal. But the professional group already had three goalkeepers, and Epassy waited for a transfer that might change the situation.

Nothing materialised for him.

Two years later, he described it again in an interview with Foot Mercato. This time he named all four goalkeepers previously under contract, including the loaned-out Carrasso.

« Mais c’était bouché. »

“But there was no opening.”

There had been movement in the squad: Carrasso had left, while Diallo and N’Diaye had received new agreements.

What we cannot recover is the discussion that determined the club’s final choice.

The public record does not establish whether Rennes preferred N’Diaye to Epassy for sporting reasons, experience, squad planning or some combination of factors.

Nor was there a rule prohibiting a club from employing more than three professional goalkeepers.

Epassy was describing the lack of an opening as he understood it.

He had another point to make.

For an outfield player, he explained, competition in one position did not necessarily close every possible route into a team. A defender might play centrally, wide or in another role.

A goalkeeper had no comparable flexibility.

« S’il n’y a pas de place, c’est mort. »

“If there’s no room, you’re out of luck.”

It is a player’s explanation of a difficult summer, and a particularly revealing one.

The professional goalkeepers needed playing time. The academy goalkeepers needed playing time too. The reserves served both.

And even a goalkeeper who reached that level still needed a separate decision about his professional future.

Epassy left Rennes in July 2013.

After Rennes

The next few years were not straightforward for Epassy.

He returned to the Paris region and continued training while looking for a club.

Lorient eventually took him into its reserves. He occasionally appeared on the first-team bench, but did not make a Ligue 1 appearance.

He moved to Spain with Guijuelo, returned to France with Avranches and Épinal, then went to Greece.

At Levadiakos, he established himself in the top division.

He also experienced another kind of contractual problem.

In a 2019 interview, Epassy said he had played nine league matches before being dropped amid a dispute over an automatic contract-extension clause that would take effect after his tenth appearance.

He continued training, but was not selected.

The setting was different from Rennes, although once again his playing opportunities were connected to contractual decisions.

By 2021, Epassy was playing international football for Cameroon, the country of his family heritage.

At the 2022 World Cup, he took over in goal following André Onana’s departure from the squad.

Then came Brazil.

Epassy had travelled a long way, through reserve teams, smaller clubs, changing coaches and different countries.

There is no reason to assume that the twenty-year-old who left Rennes in 2013 was identical to the twenty-nine-year-old who made those saves in Qatar.

The other three goalkeepers had left Rennes much earlier.

Farès joined Saint-Étienne before returning to Martinique, where the 2016 retrospective found him playing in the local league.

Burdon played in Ireland and Luxembourg, including a spell at Differdange where he won the Luxembourg Cup. He later combined football and study at Fort Lewis College in Colorado.

André’s plans changed repeatedly.

He studied law and played at AS Vitré after leaving Rennes in 2011. A move to the United States fell through because of administrative difficulties.

He then enrolled at a business school in Monaco, briefly training with an AS Monaco side before deciding he needed a break from football.

Eventually, a call from Saint Louis University in Missouri brought him to the United States in January 2013.

He played university football, completed his degree and found work in the technology industry.

By 2016, he was living in Saint Louis.

The boy who had joined Rennes at ten had built a life far from Brittany.

Would You Go Back?

When Epassy spoke about Rennes in 2017, he praised the academy.

Not only its football training, but the coordination between coaches, teachers, boarding staff and everyone else involved in the young players’ daily lives.

« Tout est bien structuré pour que le joueur puisse se sentir bien. »

“Everything is well organised to help the player feel at ease.”

He had enjoyed that environment and considered the club’s reputation for youth development justified.

He also remembered waiting for a professional contract that never arrived.

André had his own regrets.

He knew that his height worked against him. He remembered losing his position, then watching Burdon and Epassy move ahead in the hierarchy.

He was not retained in 2011, and the years immediately afterwards were difficult.

His plans for university took time to work out. There were setbacks in both football and education before he finally reached Saint Louis.

In 2016, he looked back on his years at Rennes.

He spoke about how hard academy life could be. Between fifteen and eighteen, he said, a player was partly cut off from the ordinary social life of teenagers.

He had found the experience demanding.

But he had also studied, played the sport he loved and eventually found his way to the United States.

André was asked whether, knowing all that had happened, he would enter the Rennes academy again.

« Je le ferais les yeux fermés. »

“I’d do it with my eyes closed.”

Sources

Firsthand Accounts and Player Testimony

1. Stade Rennais Online — “Le destin d’une génération” (26 July 2016)
Retrospective of Rennes’ 1993 generation, including David André’s extensive firsthand recollections and the later paths of André, Burdon, Epassy and Farès. Contains secondary quotations attributed to Niall Burdon from France Football; that original interview has not been independently inspected.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Le-destin-d-une-generation.html

2. Footballski — “On a discuté avec Devis Epassy, gardien de but de Levadiakos” (12 October 2017)
Firsthand interview covering Epassy’s childhood, INF Clairefontaine, recruitment by Rennes, the academy environment, Huard’s reported support, his departure and subsequent career.
https://footballski.fr/on-a-discute-avec-devis-epassy-gardien-de-but-de-levadiakos

3. Foot Mercato — “Levadiakos, Devis Epassy : ‘le club a arrêté de me faire jouer pour une histoire de contrat’” (28 May 2019)
Epassy’s firsthand account naming Rennes’ four contracted goalkeepers in 2013 and describing his later contractual dispute in Greece.
https://www.footmercato.net/a4936068238467210965-levadiakos-devis-epassy-le-club-a-arrete-de-me-faire-jouer-pour-une-histoire-de-contrat

4. Stade Rennais Online — “Devis Épassy : ‘Tout le monde est concerné’” (8 March 2012)
Contemporaneous interview with Epassy about the U19 side, competition for places and the Coupe Gambardella.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Devis-Epassy-Tout-le-monde-est.html

Academy Leadership and Goalkeeper Development

5. Stade Rennais FC — “Le meilleur Centre de formation de France depuis 3 ans” (25 June 2008)
Official account of Rennes’ third consecutive first-place ranking in the French academy assessment.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/le-meilleur-centre-de-formation-de-france-depuis-3-ans

6. Stade Rennais FC — “La formation rennaise fait sa rentrée !” (3 September 2008)
Contemporary report on ETP Odorico and Patrick Rampillon’s assessment of the academy’s aims.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/la-formation-rennaise-fait-sa-rentree

7. Stade Rennais FC — “François Seguin : ‘Le poste de gardien a évolué’” (19 June 2007)
Firsthand account of goalkeeper recruitment, training methods, physiological development and changing technical expectations.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/francois-seguin-le-poste-de-gardien-evolue

8. Stade Rennais FC — “François Seguin : ‘Plein de souvenirs’” (4 June 2008)
Seguin’s farewell interview, including his reflections on the Coupe Gambardella and the difficulty of bringing academy goalkeepers into professional football.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/francois-seguin-plein-de-souvenirs

9. Stade Rennais FC — “F. Bardet responsable des gardiens du Centre” (23 June 2008)
Official appointment of Fabien Bardet as the academy’s goalkeeper-development coach.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/articles/f-bardet-responsable-des-gardiens-du-centre

10. Stade Rennais FC — “Les Espoirs de retour jeudi” (30 June 2010)
Laurent Huard’s firsthand comments on preparing young players for the professional group, managing training and playing time, and Fabien Bardet’s involvement.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/les-espoirs-de-retour-jeudi

11. Stade Rennais FC — “CFA 2 - L. Huard : ‘le côté compétiteur est déjà présent’” (24 August 2012)
Huard’s contemporary description of the reserve team’s work and the transition into adult football.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/cfa-2-lhuard-le-cote-competiteur-est-deja-present

Competition and Contract Records

12. Stade Rennais Online — “Revoilà la Coupe Gambardella !” (4 January 2012)
Contemporary account of the U19 goalkeeper hierarchy involving Epassy, Burdon and Ahamada.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Revoila-la-Coupe-Gambardella.html

13. Stade Rennais Online — “Entraînements : un signe pour Beauverger ?” (18 April 2012)
Contemporaneous record of the one-year trainee contracts held by Burdon and other members of the generation.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/+Entrainements-un-signe-pour+.html

14. Stade Rennais Online — “Devis Epassy” (historical player profile)
Archived account of Epassy’s trainee contract and CFA2 appearances.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Devis-Epassy.html

15. Stade Rennais Online — “Abdoulaye Diallo” (historical player profile)
Career and match record, including ten CFA2 starts in 2012–13 and his subsequent loan.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Abdoulaye-Diallo.html

16. Stade Rennais Online — “Cheikh N’Diaye” (historical player profile)
Career and match record, including four CFA2 starts in 2012–13.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Cheick-N-Diaye,57.html

17. Stade Rennais FC — “Abdoulaye Diallo prolonge jusqu’en juin 2016” (17 May 2013)
Official contract announcement and firsthand interview about Diallo’s ambitions and need for first-team playing time.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/equipe-pro/abdoulaye-diallo-prolonge-jusquen-juin-2016

18. Stade Rennais Online — “Transferts, officiel : Johann Carrasso signe à Metz” (19 June 2013)
Contemporary confirmation of Carrasso’s permanent departure from Rennes.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/+Transferts-officiel-Johann+.html

19. Stade Rennais Online — “Premier entraînement sous la direction de Montanier” (1 July 2013)
Contemporary list of the players and coaching staff participating in the first professional training session of 2013–14.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/spip.php?id_article=3552&page=article.amp

20. Stade Rennais Online — “Contrats : une année de plus pour N’Diaye” (16 July 2013)
Contemporary reporting on N’Diaye’s contract extension.
https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/+Contrats-une-annee-de-plus-pour-N+.html

Later Academy Recognition and the World Cup

21. Stade Rennais FC — “Estéban Lepaul en Bleu accompagné de 7 joueurs formés au club” (18 September 2026)
Club report identifying seven Rennes academy graduates selected for the same French national-team squad.
https://www.staderennais.com/actualites/selections/esteban-lepaul-en-bleu-accompagne-de-7-joueurs-formes-au-club

22. Sky Sports — “Cameroon 1–0 Brazil: Vincent Aboubakar’s late winner not enough to earn last 16 place” (2 December 2022)
Match report documenting Brazil’s rotated starting team, Epassy’s saves and Cameroon’s victory.
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12757075

23. FIFA — “Le Cameroun réalise un exploit... en vain” (2 December 2022)Official FIFA report of Cameroon’s World Cup victory over Brazil.https://www.fifa.com/fr/articles/resume-cameroun-bresil-groupe-g-coupe-du-monde-2022-buts-qualifications

On 23 March 2004, AC Milan beat Deportivo de La Coruña 4–1 at San Siro.

Deportivo had taken the lead. For a while, they looked capable of making the European champions uncomfortable. Then Milan scored four times, turning a difficult away result into what appeared to be a commanding advantage.

Two weeks later, the teams met again at the Riazor.

Deportivo won 4–0.

They went through to the Champions League semi-finals, winning the tie 5–4 on aggregate.

We know how the story ended. But that is not where we should begin.

Instead, let’s return to the moment before the second leg, when neither team knew what the next 90 minutes would bring.

You are Deportivo’s coach. What would you change—and what would you keep?

And if you were Milan’s coach, how would you manage a three-goal lead?

Before the Rematch

The first leg was not simply a story of one team being better than the other.

Deportivo scored first and had periods in which they moved the ball well. Milan’s response, however, was devastating. Deportivo scored first and played a strong first half. Kaká equalised just before the break, then Shevchenko and Kaká scored in quick succession early in the second half. Andrea Pirlo added a fourth with a free-kick, completing Milan’s devastating turnaround.

The scoreline left Deportivo with a difficult problem: they needed to score at least three goals in the second leg just to take the tie to extra time, while conceding another goal would make their task harder still.

But the situation was more complicated than the aggregate score suggested.

Deportivo: Change enough, but not everything?

Javier Irureta’s side were still competing near the top of La Liga. They had won their league match against Real Sociedad 2–1 after the first leg, before drawing 2–2 with Real Betis ahead of the return match.

There was also a personnel change to consider. Víctor Sánchez had missed the first leg through suspension and was available again for the second.

That mattered because Deportivo were not approaching the match with exactly the same options as before.

Should Irureta keep the structure his team already knew? Should he make the attack more aggressive from the opening whistle? Or should he preserve the balance of the team and accept that the goals might come gradually?

A three-goal deficit creates urgency. It does not automatically make every conservative decision wrong, or every attacking decision right.

Milan: A lead to protect, or a match to play?

Carlo Ancelotti’s team had a very different problem.

Milan were leading Serie A comfortably. Their domestic results after the first leg were less convincing: they drew 2–2 with Chievo and 1–1 away to Modena. Those results did not erase their league advantage, but they remind us that the team was not winning every match effortlessly.

Milan also had a defensive change to consider. Alessandro Nesta, absent from the first leg through injury, returned for the second.

Up front, Ancelotti selected Jon Dahl Tomasson instead of Filippo Inzaghi.

That decision deserves attention, but not a retrospective verdict. Tomasson had scored twice against Parma shortly before the first leg and had scored again against Modena on 4 April. He was not an inexplicable selection. Inzaghi had also started the Modena match, so the available evidence does not establish that he was simply unable to play.

We can identify the selection. We should be more cautious about claiming to know exactly why Ancelotti made it.

Milan had three goals in hand. Should they play as they normally did, keep the ball and look for another goal? Should they reduce the risks they took? And how many players should remain available to threaten Deportivo on the counterattack?

These were real decisions, not questions with answers supplied by the final score.

Reference: Milan 4–1 Deportivo — Official UEFA match record

Your First Board: Deportivo

The situation: You are Javier Irureta. Your team lost the first leg 4–1 away from home. Now you have 90 minutes at the Riazor.

Copy-ready line-ups

Copy the player list into ZoneBoard, then place the players on the pitch yourself.

Start with the actual line-up as your reference. Keep the structure, change individual roles, or build a different shape.

The positions are yours to decide. Where would you place each player, and why?

Try ZoneBoard for free

AC Milan — First Leg

12 Dida
2 Cafu
19 Alessandro_Costacurta
3 Paolo_Maldini
26 Giuseppe_Pancaro
8 Gennaro_Gattuso
21 Andrea_Pirlo
20 Clarence_Seedorf
22 Kaká
7 Andriy_Shevchenko
9 Filippo_Inzaghi
—
27 Serginho
23 Massimo_Ambrosini
15 Jon Dahl_Tomasson
32 Cristian_Pedrocchi
77 Christian_Abbiati
24 Martin_Laursen
10 Manuel_Rui_Costa

Deportivo — First Leg

1 José_Francisco_Molina
4 Noureddine_Naybet
14 João_Paulo_Andrade
15 Joan_Capdevila
6 Mauro_Silva
8 Sergio_González
12 Lionel_Scaloni
21 Juan_Carlos_Valerón
23 Aldo_Duscher
7 Walter_Pandiani
19 Albert_Luque
—
10 Fran_González
2 Manuel_Pablo
9 Diego_Tristán
13 Gustavo_Munúa
5 César_Martín
3 Enrique_Romero
16 Djalminha

Use the first-leg formation as your reference point.

You do not have to throw it away. You can keep the basic structure and change individual roles, or you can redesign the team’s shape more substantially.

Put your plan on the board.

• Where will you create chances? Which spaces do you want to attack, and how will you reach them?

• Who joins the attack? How many players do you want arriving around the penalty area?

• What happens when you lose the ball? Who protects the space behind the attack, and how will you limit Milan’s counterattacks?

There is a trade-off here. Sending more players forward may help you score, but it can also give Milan the space they need to punish you.

The challenge is not to draw the most attacking formation imaginable. It is to build a plan that gives you a realistic route back into the tie.

What would you change—and what would you keep?

Your Second Board: Milan

Now change sides.

Reference: Deportivo 4–0 Milan — Official UEFA match record

The situation: You are Carlo Ancelotti. Your team won the first leg 4–1. You are away from home, and Deportivo must attack.

Now build Milan’s board.

Use the second-leg line-up as your starting point. Place the players where you think they should be to manage a three-goal lead without giving up the threat of another goal.

What would you change—and what would you keep?

Deportivo — Second Leg

1 José Francisco_Molina
2 Manuel_Pablo
3 Enrique_Romero
4 Noureddine_Naybet
14 João_Paulo_Andrade
6 Mauro_Silva
8 Sergio_González
18 Víctor_Sánchez
21 Juan_Carlos_Valerón
19 Albert_Luque
7 Walter_Pandiani
—
10 Fran_González
23 Aldo_Duscher
16 Djalminha
13 Gustavo_Munúa
15 Joan_Capdevila
24 Héctor_Berenguel
9 Diego_Tristán

AC Miran — Second Leg

12 Dida
2 Cafu
26 Giuseppe_Pancaro
13 Alessandro_Nesta
3 Paolo_Maldini
21 Andrea_Pirlo
20 Clarence_Seedorf
8 Gennaro_Gattuso
22 Kaká
15 Jon_Dahl_Tomasson
7 Andriy_Shevchenko
—
27 Serginho
9 Filippo_Inzaghi
10 Manuel_Rui_Costa
77 Christian_Abbiati
19 Alessandro_Costacurta
24 Martin_Laursen
32 Cristian_Brocchi

Start with the actual second-leg formation as your reference.

Would you keep the same approach, or change how the team manages the match?

• Where do you want to control possession? Can you slow the game down without becoming passive?

• Who stays forward? Do you need an outlet who can make Deportivo think twice before committing everyone to the attack?

• How do you defend space? If Deportivo push more players forward, how will your team respond without losing its own attacking threat?

Tomasson’s selection is part of the context, not a ready-made explanation for what happened. Consider what you would want from your front line in this situation: another goal, the ability to hold the ball, runs behind the defence, or a combination of these.

There is no need to guess Ancelotti’s private reasoning. Make your own decision with the information available before kick-off.

How would you manage the lead?

What Actually Happened

Now we can reveal the second leg.

Reference: Dazzling Depor ditch Milan — Official UEFA match record

Deportivo 4–0 Milan. Aggregate: 5–4.

Walter Pandiani scored in the fifth minute. Juan Carlos Valerón added a second in the 35th minute, and Albert Luque made it 3–0 just before half-time. Fran scored the decisive fourth goal in the 76th minute.

Deportivo had turned a three-goal deficit into a two-goal aggregate lead.

The comeback was not simply four isolated finishes. Deportivo created opportunities through more than one player and more than one attacking connection. Víctor Sánchez was involved in dangerous situations, Valerón contributed around the attacking area, and Luque offered a threat from the left.

Milan, meanwhile, were not without chances. They had opportunities of their own, including an early opening for Tomasson. The match was not a straightforward story of one side attacking and the other doing nothing.

The scoreline tells us what happened. It does not, by itself, tell us which alternative formation would have produced a different result.

Reference: How the Rossoneri were rumbled — Official UEFA match record

What Can We Learn from the Two Decisions?

The two teams entered the second leg with opposite incentives.

Deportivo needed to take risks, but they could not ignore the danger of Milan’s counterattack. Milan had a substantial lead, but simply retreating into their own half would not necessarily have been the safest way to protect it.

That tension is what makes this match useful for a tactical-board exercise.

A few distinctions matter.

What we know: Deportivo won 4–0. Víctor returned from suspension. Nesta returned from injury. Tomasson started ahead of Inzaghi after scoring in recent domestic matches.

What we can examine: How Deportivo might create more chances without losing all defensive protection; how Milan might retain an attacking outlet while managing the lead; and how personnel choices change the options available to a coach.

What we should not assume: That Tomasson’s selection caused the defeat, that Milan underestimated Deportivo, or that a particular formation would inevitably have changed the result.

A formation diagram shows starting positions. It does not automatically reveal every defensive assignment, pressing trigger or instruction given by a coach. Those claims need separate evidence.

The purpose of the board is not to manufacture certainty after the event. It is to make the decisions visible enough that we can discuss them.

Your Turn

Two teams faced the same 90 minutes from opposite directions.

Deportivo had to find a way back. Milan had to protect an advantage while remaining a threat.

If you could change one decision from the second leg, which would it be?

Share your board and explain the thinking behind it.

You can redesign Deportivo’s approach, rethink Milan’s game management, or make a case for keeping the original structure.

There is no single correct formation. The point is to make your football idea visible.

Historical formations are based on the match line-ups shown by UEFA. Board positions are illustrative, not tracking data.

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The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

Where Como Stands

Como’s current standing provides context for the questions explored here, but the two rankings measure different things.

Como’s recent progress provides context for the questions explored here, but rankings measure different things.

The UEFA club coefficient reflects results in European competitions over multiple seasons and is used for competition seeding. Opta’s Power Rankings estimate the relative strength of teams across countries and leagues using a model. Neither measure, on its own, tells us how Como makes decisions internally or whether its organisational model can sustain its progress.

The screenshots below are dated snapshots, not permanent assessments of the club.

A Plan, a Forecast, and a Result

The significance lies in the separation of perspectives. Fàbregas develops a plan for how the team should play; the data team prepares an independent forecast. After the match, the club can compare both with what actually happened.

A plan describes an intended approach. A forecast estimates what may happen. Comparing them could expose assumptions, improve decisions and give the club a basis for reviewing its reasoning. Neither automatically overrides the other.

This remains Suwarso’s account of Como’s process, not an independent examination of its internal records. The public information does not establish how forecasts are produced, how disagreements are recorded, or how consistently the procedure is applied.

The timing has also been described differently. Suwarso’s September 2026 interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport refers to 24 hours before kick-off, while an earlier interview with The Athletic describes the plan being shared roughly 48 hours before a match. The available evidence does not establish whether these refer to different practices or occasions. The central point is the comparison between the coach’s plan and a separately prepared forecast, not the exact timing.

Judging the plan, not just the result

Suwarso has described evaluating Fàbregas on more than whether Como wins or loses. In his account, the questions include whether the game plan was logically sound and whether the players carried it out on the pitch.

He cited Como’s victory over Juventus as an example of a match in which the plan had been executed perfectly, describing it as a ten-out-of-ten performance against the intended plan.

That is a revealing way to talk about football performance.

A result and the quality of the decisions that preceded it are related, but they are not identical. A team can execute a well-considered plan and still lose. It can also win despite a flawed plan, because of an individual moment, an opponent’s mistake or the unpredictable events that shape a match.

If a club evaluates a coach only by the final score, it risks confusing the quality of a decision with the outcome that followed it. If it evaluates only the plan, it risks overlooking whether the approach actually works on the pitch.

The distinction Suwarso describes attempts to keep both questions in view: was the plan sound, and did the team execute it?

For a club that wants to build a consistent football identity, that distinction could matter beyond any single match. It provides a possible basis for discussing performance without allowing every win to validate every decision or every defeat to invalidate the entire approach.

But the qualification remains important. A public example of a ten-out-of-ten assessment does not prove that Como uses a consistent evaluation framework across all its matches. We do not have the underlying assessment records or a series of comparable evaluations with which to test the claim.

Nor does a process for evaluating a plan tell us who has the authority to challenge it.

A club can review a coach’s reasoning after a match while still leaving the coach with substantial freedom to make the next decision. It can also share a forecast with its ownership without giving the owners a sporting veto.

The public account establishes that Suwarso says the process exists. It does not establish the precise boundary between scrutiny and authority.

That boundary becomes more interesting when we turn from match preparation to recruitment.

When the data says no: Lucas Da Cunha

Suwarso’s account of Lucas Da Cunha illustrates a possible tension between analytical assessment and a coach’s interpretation of a player.

According to Suwarso’s recollection in The Athletic interview, the data assessment of Da Cunha was not sufficiently convincing. Fàbregas, however, believed the player could succeed in a different role.

The point was not necessarily that the numbers were wrong. It was that the player might have been assessed against the wrong expectations. A player who looks limited in one role may offer more in another, depending on the structure, responsibilities and demands of the team.

Da Cunha later moved away from a more attacking role towards midfield. In a Como 1907 feature, he discusses the positional change and his greater comfort in midfield.

These accounts make role reinterpretation a plausible way to understand the story, but they do not establish the full recruitment chronology. Da Cunha’s move to Como was announced in January 2023, when Fàbregas was still a player. The public material cited here does not establish when the positional change was proposed, who initiated the recruitment, or what data the club had available at the time.

It would therefore be too strong to present Da Cunha as a proven case in which Fàbregas overturned a data team’s recommendation and subsequently demonstrated that the analysts were wrong.

The narrower point is that a coach’s contribution can involve challenging the assumptions behind an assessment, not simply choosing from a shortlist. Data can identify patterns and compare players, but it cannot by itself settle every question about how a player might function in a role that has not yet been tested.

The same principle works in the other direction: an analyst may identify a pattern that a coach has overlooked. The important question is how a club allows one form of judgement to challenge another without making either automatically decisive.

When the coach is unsure: Jayden Addai

Suwarso’s recollection of Jayden Addai presents a different kind of disagreement. In this account, Fàbregas was reportedly uncertain about the young winger’s immediate readiness, but was prepared to trust the wider group’s conviction in the player.

The contrast with Da Cunha is useful. In the Da Cunha account, the coach challenged an assessment because he believed a different role could reveal something the existing evaluation had missed. In the Addai account, he was willing to accept that the collective view might be stronger than his own initial judgement.

Both stories come from Suwarso’s recollection. They do not establish how representative these cases are of Como’s recruitment process, but they suggest that the club’s own account does not portray Fàbregas as the unquestioned authority on every player.

The two examples describe different ways a coach might participate in collective recruitment: challenging the assumptions behind an assessment, or accepting uncertainty when others see potential he is not yet convinced by.

Scouts and analysts may identify potential that a coach cannot yet translate into a clear role. Conversely, a coach may see how a player’s value could change within a particular system. The question is whether the process gives these different perspectives room to challenge one another.

A collective process, with one particularly influential voice

Suwarso has described recruitment at Como as a process involving several forms of assessment. Ludi, the sporting director, has discussed how the club considers multiple profiles for a position, ranks candidates and then proceeds to negotiations. Other accounts describe filters that include suitability for Fàbregas’s playing system.

Suwarso has also said that recruitment decisions require majority agreement.

Taken together, these statements describe a process in which recruitment is not presented as the isolated responsibility of one person. Data, scouting, playing-style fit, behavioural assessment, the coaching staff and football leadership all have a part to play.

But collective decision-making does not necessarily mean equal influence.

Suwarso has explicitly described Fàbregas’s voice as the most influential in the football process. He has also characterised the board as serving Cesc’s vision.

That matters because Fàbregas is not simply another participant offering an opinion. He is the head coach, the person responsible for turning recruitment decisions into a team on the pitch, and a shareholder in the club.

Those positions give his judgement a particular significance. A player may be attractive to the scouting department, score well in an analytical assessment and fit the club’s broader recruitment strategy. But if the coach does not believe the player can contribute to the team, the value of that recruitment becomes questionable.

Suwarso has made precisely that practical point: there is little value in signing a player whom the coach will never use.

This is not, by itself, proof that Fàbregas possesses a formal veto over transfers. Nor does it mean that every decision is made to satisfy his preferences. It does, however, identify a constraint that any recruitment process must confront.

Recruitment is not finished when the contract is signed. The player must still be integrated into a team, given a role and used in a way that justifies the decision.

The coach therefore has a form of practical influence that extends beyond the recruitment meeting. But practical influence, formal authority and final decision rights are three different things.

The available accounts do not fully establish how those things relate at Como.

There is also a limit to what can be inferred from the club’s descriptions of its football board. Different interviews and secondary reports give different descriptions of the board’s composition and size. The accounts are not sufficiently consistent to reconstruct a definitive membership list or a complete map of decision rights.

It would be misleading to resolve those discrepancies by simply selecting one version.

The more defensible conclusion is that Como describes recruitment as a collective process in which Fàbregas has exceptional influence, but the public record does not fully establish how that influence is bounded.

What does the president contribute?

The question of authority becomes more complicated when we consider Suwarso’s own position.

Como’s project did not begin as a conventional football operation. Suwarso has described its origins in a media and entertainment context, including an initial idea involving the club as a setting for Indonesian television documentaries. The project subsequently became something larger, and Suwarso moved to London in 2023 to run the club in person. He became president in October 2024.

That background is relevant, but it should not be used to assume that Suwarso lacks football knowledge. A career outside the traditional football hierarchy does not establish an inability to understand the sport, just as a traditional football career does not guarantee good judgement.

The more useful question is how an executive with this background establishes a basis for evaluating football decisions.

Suwarso’s public accounts point to several possible elements: the coach’s own explanation of his plans, independent data analysis, recruitment procedures, collective agreement and post-match review.

That is one possible function of the process Suwarso describes. It does not prove that the process was designed to compensate for his background, nor does it tell us how much independent football judgement he personally exercises.

The ownership structure adds another layer. The club’s owners, Suwarso as president, Fàbregas as coach and shareholder, and Ludi as sporting director do not occupy identical positions. Their interests may overlap, but their responsibilities are different.

It is tempting to describe the arrangement as a simple hierarchy, with the owner at the top and the coach beneath him. The public evidence does not support such a neat picture of how sporting authority is exercised in practice.

A more useful way to understand the structure is to ask how information and judgement move between the people involved.

Who explains the plan? Who develops an independent assessment? Who decides whether a player fits? Who determines whether the result reflects a sound process? And who has the authority to change direction?

Como has offered some answers to the first questions. The last remains less clear.

Data, outside expertise and the limits of what we know

Suwarso has also named external analytical providers, including Ludonautics, the company founded by former Liverpool head of analytics Ian Graham, and Jamestown Analytics. He has described building Como’s own data team alongside external relationships.

That is worth noting because it places Como’s analytical work within a wider structure rather than presenting it as a single technology or an isolated department.

But the public evidence considered here does not establish the precise role Ludonautics plays in Como’s decisions. Its name should not be treated as proof that Como has adopted a particular decision-making model, nor that an external consultancy is responsible for the process described above.

The same caution applies to comparisons with Liverpool.

Graham’s work at Liverpool is a useful point of reference for thinking about how data, scouting, video, coaching and recruitment can contribute to decisions. But the fact that Como works with a company founded by Graham does not establish that Como operates the same system, or that its internal responsibilities resemble Liverpool’s.

The more productive question is not whether Como is trying to reproduce another club’s model. It is how Como combines its own football judgement, analytical work and organisational structure.

The details that matter most are not necessarily the names of the companies involved. They are the relationships between the people making decisions, the evidence they use and the authority each person has when they reach different conclusions.

The question of succession

There is a longer-term question behind all of this.

Como’s public accounts place Fàbregas close to the centre of its sporting identity. Suwarso has described his football voice as particularly influential, and the club’s approach is repeatedly explained in relation to his vision.

That can be a strength. A coach with a clear idea of how the team should play can give recruitment a coherent purpose. It can help scouts and analysts evaluate players against a shared set of requirements. It can also make the team’s development easier to understand.

But a club’s ability to recruit and develop players is not the same as its ability to preserve its decision-making capacity when a particular individual leaves.

In an interview with Rivista Undici, Suwarso discussed Fàbregas’s role in choosing a successor. The available wording and translations differ on the exact degree of responsibility involved, so it would be unwise to present a specific succession mechanism as settled fact.

The important point is that succession has been discussed publicly, while the detailed mechanism remains unclear.

What would happen if Fàbregas left? Would the club’s existing recruitment process provide a sufficiently clear basis for identifying a successor with a compatible football philosophy? Would the next coach inherit a system of evaluation that could accommodate a different tactical approach? Or would the club have to reconstruct a significant part of its sporting logic around a new individual?

These are not criticisms of Fàbregas or predictions that he will leave. They are questions about the difference between a club that benefits from one person’s judgement and a club that can preserve its ability to make good decisions beyond that person.

Ludi’s contract extension announcement has also described Como as a club not built around individual leadership, while other public statements have presented Fàbregas as central to its football identity. These statements need not be contradictory. A club can reject dependence on a single individual while recognising that a particular person is currently central to its project.

But the distinction has to be demonstrated through decisions, not just declared in interviews.

A future coaching change, a documented disagreement over recruitment, or evidence that the club can maintain a coherent recruitment process under a different coach would tell us more than any general statement about institutional independence.

The Test Ahead

Como’s public accounts describe a club trying to bring different forms of football judgement into the same conversation, while placing Fàbregas close to the centre of its sporting identity. The unresolved issue is how that arrangement works when the people involved disagree.

Three questions matter.

First, when the coach’s plan and the data team’s forecast conflict, can the forecast change a decision before kick-off, or is its main purpose to inform the subsequent review?

Second, when a recruitment decision fails, how does the club distinguish a poor assessment from a failure to use the player effectively? That distinction matters if the club is to learn from mistakes rather than simply defend or abandon the original decision.

Third, what would survive a change of coach? A successor would not need to reproduce Fàbregas’s football exactly. But the club would need to know which principles, evaluation practices and organisational capabilities it wants to preserve — and which should change with the next coach.

The public accounts do not answer these questions fully. That does not mean Como lacks answers internally; it marks the limits of what can responsibly be concluded from interviews and published descriptions.

Como’s progress makes these questions worth asking, but success alone does not prove that its decision-making model is repeatable. Nor does a ranking tell us whether the club has built an organisation capable of sustaining that progress.

A project can be coherent because one individual provides its direction. An institution must also be able to explain how decisions are made, how they can be challenged, and how the capacity to make them is preserved when people change.

Suwarso’s accounts offer a partial view of Como’s attempt to build that structure. They show how the club says it brings different forms of judgement into the same conversation, but not the full limits of each participant’s authority.

When the data forecast and the coach’s plan disagree, who decides which one the club believes — and what happens when that person is no longer there?

Sources

The article distinguishes between reported facts, statements attributed to Como participants, and editorial interpretation. Descriptions of Como’s internal procedures are based on participant accounts, not independently inspected club records.

• Mirwan Suwarso interview — Rivista Undici, 16 March 2026: Italian original | English edition. Covers Como’s organisational approach, Fàbregas’s influence and succession planning.

• Mirwan Suwarso interview — La Gazzetta dello Sport, 14 September 2026: Italian original | English edition. Suwarso describes the match plan, the data team’s forecast and the post-match report.

• The Athletic FC Podcast — “Cesc Fabregas, data, and Disney: Inside Como,” 13 November 2025: Podcast episode | Apple Podcasts. Includes Suwarso’s account of recruitment, data and succession planning. The machine-generated transcript has not been fully checked against the audio.

• Lucas Da Cunha’s move to Como — OGC Nice: Transfer announcement | Como 1907 feature. These sources provide transfer and player-context information but do not establish the full chronology of his recruitment, data assessment or positional change.

• Carlalberto Ludi’s contract extension — Como 1907: Official announcement. Provides the club’s public description of Ludi’s role and its organisational direction.

• Ludonautics: Official website | Training Ground Guru — Ian Graham launches his own company. Establishes the background of Graham’s company, not its precise role in Como’s internal decisions.

• UEFA Club Coefficients, 2026/27: UEFA ranking table. The coefficient reflects European competition performance over multiple seasons and is used for competition seeding. Como’s displayed total should not be treated as a direct measure of its own European results without considering the national-association figure.

• Opta Power Rankings: Global club ranking | How the rankings are calculated. Opta’s model estimates the relative strength of teams across countries and leagues. The ranking is updated daily, so the article’s screenshot represents a dated snapshot, not a permanent position.

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

The Salah Story Has Been Told Before

The familiar version goes something like this.

Jürgen Klopp liked Julian Brandt. Liverpool’s data preferred Mohamed Salah. The numbers won the argument. Salah was signed, scored 32 Premier League goals in his first season, and the rest became history.

There is truth in that story.

But Graham’s own account is more interesting.

When asked about the meeting where Liverpool decided on Salah, he explained:

“The data never made it into the presentation.”

That sounds strange if you imagine Liverpool as a club where spreadsheets replaced football judgement.

They didn’t.

Graham explained that the data helped determine the names on the shortlist and informed the clips shown to Klopp. Michael Edwards then explained the player through video: what role Salah played at Roma, how that role might translate to Liverpool, and why the club believed he could work there. Klopp made the final decision.

So the important part of the Salah story isn’t that data beat Klopp.

It is that the data had already changed the conversation before Klopp entered the room.

A Model Does Not Begin With a Player

This is where Graham’s work becomes more interesting.

A player model looks objective. A number looks objective.

The question behind the number isn’t.

In his book, Graham describes Liverpool’s Player Classification system. Firmino had initially ended up in the striker category, where his shooting numbers did not make him particularly impressive. But Michael Edwards thought Liverpool was looking at him in the wrong way.

Edwards insisted that they examine Firmino as a No. 10.

They did.

Graham’s team analysed his games role by role. As a striker, Firmino looked ordinary. As a No. 10, he looked like one of the best young players in Europe.

The player had not changed.

The question had.

That distinction is easy to miss.

Data did not discover some hidden property inside Firmino that nobody else could see. Someone first proposed a different way of looking at him. Graham’s department then made that new comparison possible.

That is a much more interesting description of analytics.

Firmino Was Not the Answer. He Was a Different Question.

This is also why Firmino is more revealing than Salah.

Salah is a story about ranking.

Firmino is a story about classification.

If you compare Firmino with other No. 9s, you get one answer.

If you compare him with No. 10s, you get another.

Graham’s own description of the classification system makes the purpose clear: they wanted to separate who the player was from how good the player was.

That sounds like a technical detail.

It isn’t.

A footballer can occupy the same nominal position as another player while doing a completely different job.

That is something a tactics board makes obvious. A label such as “striker” tells us very little about what a player actually does once the ball starts moving.

Firmino eventually became Liverpool’s false nine.

But the important part of this story happened before that shape was visible.

Someone looked at the player and asked a different question.

Then Graham’s model was able to answer it.

Salah Changed the Ranking, Not the Decision

Salah shows the other side of the process.

Graham’s models rated him highly. In his own account, Salah was an outlier among Liverpool’s shortlist, particularly in his ability to increase his team’s chance of scoring through shooting and chance creation.

But the number did not tell Klopp:

Sign Salah.

Liverpool still had to decide whether the player would work in their football.

Graham describes the process almost like a relay.

The data established the comparison.

The video showed what the player actually did.

Edwards explained why those actions could translate from Roma to Liverpool.

Klopp decided.

There is something important in the fact that Graham wasn’t even usually in those meetings. He says he attended them “very rarely”. His job was not to own the decision. His job was to make part of the decision more difficult to ignore.

That is a much less glamorous role than “the man who discovered Salah.”

It is also probably closer to the truth.

Benteke Was Good at a Question Liverpool Didn’t Ask

Then there is Christian Benteke.

This is where the story stops being a success narrative.

Graham did not think Benteke was a bad footballer.

He thought he was the wrong footballer for Liverpool.

Benteke was a target man. Liverpool, Graham argued, simply did not play with a target man. In his book, he is even more direct:

“Benteke is a very good footballer, but he was absolutely the wrong player for Liverpool.”

That is a different kind of data story.

The question was not:

Is Benteke good?

It was:

What does Liverpool need this player to do?

Those are not the same question.

And this is where Graham’s description of data becomes useful. In another interview, he described data as a “filtering tool”, particularly useful for filtering out players with a high failure rate. He also repeatedly stresses that data is not the whole answer.

Benteke shows why.

A good player can still be a bad answer.

Keita Could Measure Ability. It Could Not Guarantee Function.

Naby Keita makes the problem even harder.

Graham was one of Keita’s biggest believers.

He had followed Keita from Salzburg to Leipzig. The data rated him exceptionally highly, and Graham pushed Liverpool to take him seriously. When Keita eventually arrived, Graham expected him to become a world-class player.

It didn’t happen that way.

But even Graham doesn’t describe Keita simply as a bad player.

His explanation is much more uncomfortable: Keita’s style did not quite fit Klopp’s preferred way of playing. Injuries made things worse, but there was also a football problem. Liverpool’s midfield demanded more stability; Keita was willing to take risks with the ball.

Graham later put it memorably:

“My view was we need a surprise in midfield and Naby was that surprise.”

And then:

“But he was surprising the coaches more than he was surprising the opposition.”

That is almost the entire problem in two sentences.

The model could identify ability.

It could not guarantee that the ability would become useful inside Liverpool’s particular football.

What Data Changed Was Not the Decision

Put these cases together and the pattern becomes clearer.

Firmino changed the question.

Salah changed the ranking.

Benteke exposed the difference between quality and fit.

Keita exposed the difference between ability and function.

None of these requires data to become the final decision-maker.

In fact, Graham’s own description of Liverpool’s process argues against that interpretation.

He describes four factors: data, scouting, the manager and finance. If the manager said no, it was no. If the finances did not work, it was no. Data was one part of the system.

And Graham is unusually clear about what data cannot see.

Body orientation. The quality of a touch. Personality. Character. Leadership. Whether a manager will trust a player.

Some of those things may eventually become measurable.

At the time, they weren’t.

Graham doesn’t try to hide that limitation.

That honesty matters more than the usual “data vs. intuition” story.

Data Made the Argument Comparable

Perhaps the most useful way to think about Graham’s contribution is not that he made football more objective.

Football isn’t objective.

It is that he made some football arguments comparable.

A scout might say a player looks excellent.

A coach might say he fits the system.

A sporting director might like his character.

An analyst might say his numbers are exceptional.

Those statements are not interchangeable.

Liverpool’s system gave them a way to put some of those observations next to one another.

And sometimes that meant disagreement became useful.

Firmino is the clearest example.

Edwards did not simply accept the model’s first answer. He challenged the category itself.

Graham’s response was not to defend the model.

He ran the analysis again.

That is an important detail.

The value of a model is partly determined by what happens when someone asks it a better question.

But the Question Was Never Graham’s Alone

This is where the mythology around Graham needs to be resisted.

He did not sit in a room and invent Liverpool’s football from a spreadsheet.

Graham himself repeatedly gives credit to the people around him. His account of Liverpool’s recruitment is collective: data, scouting, video, finance, Michael Edwards and, most importantly, the manager. His own book explicitly describes the success of the process as dependent on those parts working together.

Even the Salah story makes this obvious.

Graham’s data ranked Salah highly.

Edwards translated the player.

The scouting department supplied its own judgement.

Finance made the deal possible.

Klopp decided.

And then Klopp had to actually use the player.

There is no single author in that sequence.

The Shape Does Not Begin on the Pitch

This is where Ian Graham becomes relevant to this series.

The visible Shape came later.

Before Salah was standing on the right, Liverpool had to decide what they wanted from that position.

Before Firmino became a false nine, somebody had to recognize that “striker” was an inadequate description.

Before Robertson became Liverpool’s attacking left-back, the club had to decide that attacking output from the position mattered enough to accept uncertainty elsewhere. Graham recalls that Robertson’s attacking profile was clear to the model, while his defending was much less certain.

The board shows us the result.

It doesn’t show us the selection problem that came before it.

That is Graham’s part of the story.

Not the Shape itself.

The questions that made the Shape easier to build.

The Question Before the Player

Football analysis often starts with the player.

How good is he?

How many goals does he score?

How much does he create?

How fast is he?

But Graham’s work at Liverpool suggests another place to start.

What are we actually asking this player to do?

Sometimes changing that question changes the answer.

Sometimes the answer changes the ranking.

Sometimes the player turns out to be good, but wrong for the job.

Sometimes the numbers are right and the fit is wrong.

And sometimes the player never gets the chance to show what the model predicted.

That is not a failure of data.

It is the reality of trying to turn a complex football problem into a decision.

Graham’s contribution was to make parts of that problem measurable, comparable and discussable.

He did not design Liverpool’s Shape.

He helped build some of the machinery that decided which players could inhabit it.

The Shape is visible.

The question before the player usually isn’t.

That is where the story starts.

Sources

• Ian Graham, The High Performance Podcast — “How Liverpool Used Data to Sign Mo Salah, Alisson and Van Dijk.”

• Ian Graham, TransferRoom Live — “The Four-Step Process Behind Every Great Liverpool Transfer Under Jürgen Klopp.”

• Ian Graham, Men in Blazers — Running the Game — “Digging Through Analytics To Spot Talent.”

• Ian Graham, How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football’s Data Revolution. Century, 2024.
  Penguin Books — How to Win the Premier League

• Ian Graham, How to Win the Premier League — Google Books.
  Google Books — How to Win the Premier League

• Liverpool FC, “Behind the Badge: The physicist who leads Liverpool’s data department.”
  Liverpool FC — Behind the Badge: Ian Graham

• Penguin author biography — Ian Graham’s career at Liverpool, his role as Director of Research, and the development of Liverpool’s in-house analytics operation.
  Penguin Books — Ian Graham

• Sky Sports, “How data gave Liverpool their edge: Lessons on how to win a title.”
  Sky Sports — How data gave Liverpool their edge

• The Independent, interview with Ian Graham on Liverpool’s recruitment process and his book.
  The Independent — Ian Graham on Liverpool’s data revolution

• The Guardian, “Signing Roberto Firmino: data, repeat viewings and a gut feeling.”
  The Guardian — Signing Roberto Firmino

• The Athletic, “How Liverpool used data to transform their transfer strategy.”
  The Athletic — Liverpool transfers and Ian Graham

• The42, interview/reporting on Ian Graham, Liverpool’s analytics operation and the club’s recruitment process.

• Liverpool FC, official historical material on Ian Graham and the development of the club’s data department.
  Liverpool FC

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

A football match contains too much information to watch everything equally.

Twenty-two players.

The ball.

The space around the ball.

Runs that happen away from it.

What happens before the pass.

What happens after the pass.

A scout has to choose.

De Visser’s method was built around that choice.

He has described watching individual players closely, recording what they did well and what they did badly, and evaluating them across different categories.

It sounds systematic.

And it was.

But the interesting thing is what happened after the categories.

The numbers were not the end of the process.

They were supposed to lead somewhere.

To a judgement about the player.

And eventually, to a judgement about what that player could become.

The Notebook Matters

One of the most revealing pieces of evidence is not a famous quote.

It is a page of notes.

The page is headed:

PSV VOETBAL NOTITIES

It records a Brazil–Uruguay match from 6 February 2000.

That match really happened.

Brazil U-23 drew 2–2 with Uruguay at the Estádio do Café in Londrina in the final round of the South American Pre-Olympic tournament. Brazil had already secured its Olympic qualification by beating Chile two days earlier. The match record lists Alex as No. 10 and Ronaldinho as No. 7.

The page is not a clean tactical diagram.

It is a working document.

Names.

Positions.

Arrows.

Marks.

Relationships.

The players are placed onto the pitch.

Among them are Ronaldinho and Alex.

There is another document.

It is dated the same day.

The heading reads:

Sterkte & Zwakte Analyse

Strength & Weakness Analysis.

And it identifies the player as:

RONALDINHO DE ASSIS MOREIRA

The document is divided into four broad areas:

Technisch.
Taktisch.
Persoonseigenschappen.
Fysiek.

Technical.

Tactical.

Personal qualities.

Physical.

There are numbers throughout the sheet.

But the most interesting part is not the numbers.

It is the handwriting underneath them.

What Does He Actually See?

One handwritten line reads:

SUPER TALENT IS VOORAL TECHNISCH.

The player is technically a super talent.

Another note points to something more specific.

VOLGENS MIJ IS HIJ HET BEST OM DE SPITS HEEN SPELEND.

In my opinion, he is best playing around the striker.

And then:

HIJ IS GEEN ECHTE TARGET MAN.

He is not a real target man.

That changes the meaning of the form.

Because de Visser was not only asking:

How good is this player?

He was also asking:

What kind of player is he?

And then:

Where does he belong?

A player can score highly in several categories and still require a different answer about where he should play.

The form gives de Visser a way to describe Ronaldinho.

And at the bottom of the page, the judgement becomes specific:

He is best playing around the striker.

He is not a target man.

From Evaluation to Role

This is where the document becomes particularly interesting.

“Technical.”

“Vision.”

“Physical.”

“Character.”

These are characteristics.

But around the striker is a role.

And “not a target man” is a boundary around that role.

The distinction matters.

De Visser was not simply collecting information about a young footballer.

He was beginning to translate that information into a footballing possibility.

The player was not just a set of qualities.

He had a place.

That is the point at which scouting starts to touch Shape.

Not because the scout is designing the team’s complete tactical system.

He is not.

But because his judgement can influence the way other people understand what a player is capable of doing.

A player enters a club as a person.

A scout has to describe what the club might have in front of it.

Sometimes that description is numerical.

Sometimes it is a sentence.

Sometimes it is a position on a pitch.

Kevin De Bruyne

Then there is Kevin De Bruyne.

The story is familiar.

De Visser followed him at Genk and became convinced by what he saw.

In his own accounts, he has described De Bruyne’s technique, vision and ability with both feet, and said that he was one of the best players he had ever scouted. One secondary account quoting de Visser’s Master Scout describes him as an attacking midfielder with a superb first touch who could immediately move the game and create openings.

But there is something more important than the praise.

De Visser acted.

He took a tape of De Bruyne to Roman Abramovich after becoming concerned that Chelsea’s scouting department was not moving quickly enough. According to the account, Abramovich watched the tape and told the scouting staff that De Bruyne had to come.

That gives us a different part of the process.

With Ronaldinho, we can see the judgement.

With De Bruyne, we can see what de Visser did when he believed in the judgement.

He acted on it.

What Happened Next Is Well Known

De Bruyne eventually left Chelsea, rebuilt his career at Werder Bremen and Wolfsburg, and joined Manchester City in 2015.

The rest is well known.

There is no need to retell his Manchester City career here.

The photograph does the job.

It shows the distance between the young player de Visser was watching and the player standing with European football’s biggest club trophy.

The interesting question is not what De Bruyne became.

It is what de Visser saw before anyone knew what he would become.

Seeing a Player Is Not the Same as Knowing the Future

This distinction matters.

Scouting is not prophecy.

A good judgement does not guarantee a career.

De Visser himself has spoken about players he rated highly who did not reach the level he expected.

That is part of the work.

The scout does not control the future of the player.

He can only make a judgement with the information available at the time.

That makes the Ronaldinho document more interesting, not less.

The value of the document is not that it predicted everything Ronaldinho would become.

It is that, at one particular moment, someone looked at a young player and tried to answer a difficult question:

What am I actually looking at?

And then another:

What might this player be for a team?

The Five Things

De Visser’s scouting language repeatedly returns to the same broad areas.

Technique.

Vision.

Physical qualities.

Mentality.

Character.

That sounds almost mechanical.

But football is not mechanical.

A player can have excellent technique and poor decision-making.

A player can have outstanding physical qualities and lack the mentality required to use them.

A player can be difficult to place.

The scout therefore has to combine categories that do not naturally belong together.

He has to watch the player.

Then watch him again.

Then decide what matters.

The numbers help organize the observation.

They do not replace it.

I Have to Smell the Grass

This is why one of de Visser’s most memorable phrases is also one of his simplest.

He wants to “smell the grass.”

The phrase is not really about nostalgia.

It is about proximity.

Get out of the chair.

Get away from the screen.

Watch the player.

Watch the training.

Watch how he behaves when the ball is not the centre of attention.

Watch what happens when the game becomes difficult.

Data can tell you something.

A match report can tell you something.

A video can tell you something.

But the scout is still looking for the things that do not appear cleanly in a spreadsheet.

The player.

The person.

The reaction.

The movement.

The detail before the obvious event.

What Does a Scout Leave Behind?

A coach leaves a formation.

An analyst leaves a presentation.

A set-piece coach leaves movements.

A scout often leaves something much less visible.

A name.

A score.

A sentence.

An arrow on a pitch.

A judgement.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, you get to see the actual paper.

In de Visser’s case, the Ronaldinho documents let us look over his shoulder.

One page shows the match.

Another evaluates the player.

And at the bottom of the second page, the judgement becomes surprisingly specific:

He is best playing around the striker.

That sentence is small.

But it contains more than a rating.

It tells us that the scout was not only asking whether Ronaldinho was talented.

He was already thinking about where that talent belonged.

That is the distance between seeing a player and giving him a place in the game.

Sources

• Cor Potcast, S04E10, “Piet de Visser over Kevin de Bruyne, scouten en talenten ontdekken,” 30 September 2022. Episode page

• RSSSF, Brazil international records, Brazil 2–2 Uruguay, 6 February 2000. RSSSF Brazil records

• RSSSF Brasil, Brazil 2000–2003 records. RSSSF Brasil

• Folha de Londrina, contemporary reports from the 2000 Pre-Olympic tournament. Folha de Londrina

• Manchester City, “Kevin De Bruyne signs for City,” 2015. Manchester City

• Bleacher Report, “The Making of a Magician: How Kevin De Bruyne Became One of the World’s Best.” Article

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

Bruins Slot himself once described his approach in simple terms:

“Ik probeer op mijn amateur-filosofische wijze die trainer te doorgronden.”

“In my amateur-philosophical way, I try to understand that manager.”

He was talking about studying the opposing manager — behaviour, habits, recent line-ups, substitutions and comments.

That is a slightly different idea of analysis.

It is not only about asking what a team does. It is about trying to understand the habits and decisions behind what it does.

The A4 Sheet

One of the clearest memories comes from Ronald Koeman.

When Koeman was a player at Barcelona, he saw how Bruins Slot worked alongside Johan Cruyff. Before European matches, Koeman recalled, Cruyff would receive an A4 sheet containing information about the opposition.

The sheet could contain details about individual players.

In Koeman’s recollection, one goalkeeper was described in terms of his preferred foot, his ability with high balls, the distance of his distribution and how comfortable he was playing with his feet.

An A4 page has a physical limit.

You cannot put everything on it.

Someone has to decide what is worth keeping.

Ajax’s retrospective on Bruins Slot records Koeman’s memory of these sheets and describes how Cruyff used the information with the team.

That makes the A4 more interesting than it first appears.

It was not simply a report.

It was a filter.

What Survives the Filter?

Modern football analysis can make the opposite problem easy to imagine.

There is always more video.

More data.

More clips.

More events.

The difficult part is deciding what deserves attention.

Bruins Slot’s work seems to have been built around that judgement.

NOS recalled one example from his time studying opponents for Barcelona. Before facing Manchester United in 1994, Bruins Slot correctly predicted that Peter Schmeichel would be left out because of the competition’s foreign-player rules. The players laughed at the prediction. He was right.

Elsewhere, Bruins Slot described travelling to Norway in the snow as simply part of how he worked:

“Zo is mijn werkwijze.”
“That’s how I work.”

That attitude is perhaps as revealing as the prediction itself.

Arsenal: Two Right-Backs

Sometimes the information stayed on the page.

Sometimes it changed the players on the pitch.

Koeman remembered one such moment from Ajax’s Champions League match at Arsenal in February 2003.

Arsenal had Ashley Cole at left-back and Robert Pires on the left. Koeman recalled both as highly attacking players, with Pires moving inside while Cole pushed forward.

Bruins Slot’s recommendation was strikingly simple:

“We moeten daar twee rechtsbacks tegen zetten.”

“We have to put two right-backs against them.”

The players were Hatem Trabelsi and Nigel de Jong.

The important part was not the formation label. It was the relationship.

Pires could move inside. Cole could advance. The two-right-back idea was a way of accounting for those movements.

The two-right-back idea was a way of matching the problem Bruins Slot had identified.

Koeman followed the recommendation. Ajax’s retrospective records his recollection that de Jong, the “second right-back”, then scored the equaliser, and Koeman later called the intervention a meesterzet — a masterstroke.

UEFA’s contemporary match report confirms the match itself: Arsenal drew 1–1 with Ajax at Highbury on 18 February 2003, with Nigel de Jong scoring Ajax’s equaliser in the 17th minute.

But the distinction matters.

The match record tells us what happened.

Koeman’s recollection tells us how he remembers Bruins Slot’s intervention.

We should not turn that into a stronger claim than the evidence allows. We cannot say that Bruins Slot’s recommendation caused de Jong’s goal.

What we can see is a sequence:

opponent behaviour → observation → recommendation → player roles → visible shape

The information had become a decision.

Freeze the Shape

Freeze the Arsenal match for a moment.

Pires has moved inside.

Cole is pushing forward.

Two Ajax players are there to deal with those relationships.

That is something a board can show very well.

It can show the positions.

The movement.

The space.

The relationship between players.

What it cannot show is the part that happened before the players took those positions.

It cannot show the hours of observation.

It cannot show the previous matches Bruins Slot had watched.

It cannot show the judgement that made this particular relationship worth discussing.

And it cannot show the conversation in which an observation became a recommendation.

The shape is visible. The selection that produced the shape is not.

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When Prediction Becomes Visible

Bruins Slot’s work was not always about changing his own team’s shape.

Sometimes it was about making the opponent less surprising.

Peter Bosz remembered the 2017 Europa League final against Manchester United that way.

Ajax knew United were going to use long balls towards Marouane Fellaini. Bosz later recalled that the match unfolded largely as Bruins Slot had predicted: Ajax knew what was coming and were not surprised. Ajax’s documentary preserves that recollection.

There is something important in the limitation of that story.

Ajax lost the final 2–0.

So this is not a story about an analyst who “solved” Manchester United.

The prediction and the result are two different things.

Knowing what is likely to happen does not mean you can stop it.

Analysis can reduce uncertainty.

It cannot remove the opponent.

From Analysis to Possibility

Another story from the Ajax documentary shows a different side of Bruins Slot’s work.

Peter Bosz recalled a conversation about Daley Sinkgraven playing at left-back.

Bruins Slot brought up an example from Barcelona: Sergi.

The comparison was not about making the two players identical. It was about showing that the same qualities could work in a different position.

Bosz initially dismissed the idea.

Then he tried it.

Sinkgraven played well.

Bosz later described the idea as entirely Tonny’s.

That story is different from the Arsenal example.

There is no opponent pattern to counter here.

Instead, Bruins Slot connected two situations that were separated by time and context.

A previous example became a possibility.

The possibility became something a coach could test.

That is another thing an analyst can do with what he sees.

The Analyst as a Translator

The A4 sheet.
The Arsenal recommendation.
The prediction about Fellaini.
The Sinkgraven example.

They were different pieces of work.

But the same pattern runs through them.

Bruins Slot saw something.
He decided it was worth passing on.
He connected it to a problem.

What happened next belonged to the coach and the players.

That distinction matters.

Koeman and Bosz’s recollections do not establish Bruins Slot as the sole author of these decisions. They show someone whose observations entered the decision-making process around the team.

The work was not necessarily to make the decision.
It was to make a useful decision possible.

Sources

Ajax — Meesterscout | Verhalen over Tonny Bruins Slot
The central source for the recollections of Ronald Koeman, Peter Bosz and other Ajax figures, including the A4 sheet, Arsenal example and Manchester United final.

NOS — Bruins Slot, meesterspion en succesvolle rechterhand van Cruijff en Koeman
Includes Bruins Slot’s own recollections and his description of how he studied opposing managers, as well as career context.

NOS — Tonny Bruins Slot, vermaard om zijn analyses, op 73-jarige leeftijd overleden
Career chronology and his later work as Ajax’s opponent analyst.

UEFA — Ajax hold their own
Contemporary match report for Arsenal 1–1 Ajax, Highbury, 18 February 2003, including Nigel de Jong’s equaliser.

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

A football team can move together without every movement being individually instructed.

Eleven players can react to the same situation, close the same space, move towards the same problem and create an advantage around the ball.

From the outside, we see the result.

The players have shifted.

The spaces have changed.

The shape looks different from a few seconds earlier.

But what happened before the shape appeared?

What did those players see?

That question leads to Helmut Groß.

What Should the Players See?

One of Groß’s most revealing descriptions of football is remarkably simple.

He argued that the player ultimately has to be able to make the right decision quickly when under extreme pressure of time or space.

„Es geht am Ende für den Spieler darum, sich in größter Zeit- oder Raumnot schnell für das Richtige zu entscheiden.“

“In the end, the player has to be able to quickly make the right decision when under the greatest pressure of time or space.”

The interesting word here is not quickly.

It is right.

Speed alone does not solve a football problem.

A player can run quickly in the wrong direction.

A team can press aggressively and still leave the wrong space open.

A defender can react immediately to the ball and still fail to recognise what the next action might be.

For Groß, the solution was connected to what happened before the action.

Players had to perceive.

They had to analyse.

They had to decide.

Then they had to act.

He later described this sequence explicitly:

„schneller wahrnehmen, schneller analysieren, schneller richtig entscheiden, schneller handeln.“

“Perceive faster, analyse faster, make the right decision faster, act faster.”

That is a very different way of looking at a football shape.

The shape is no longer the starting point.

It is the visible consequence of a series of decisions.

The Ball Changes the Picture

Groß’s work is strongly associated with ball-oriented zonal defending.

In a 2024 interview looking back at the development of his ideas, he described the principle this way:

„Die Weiterentwicklung daraus ergab dann die ballorientierte Raumdeckung, wo wir in Ballnähe immer versuchten, eine Überzahl an Spielern zu erreichen – egal ob wir den Ball hatten oder der Gegner.“

“The further development from that was ball-oriented zonal defending, where we always tried to achieve a numerical advantage near the ball — whether we had the ball or the opponent did.”

There is an important distinction here.

This is not simply a formation.

It is not:

Four defenders here.

Four midfielders there.

One striker there.

Instead, the location of the ball changes the problem.

And when the problem changes, the collective response changes with it.

In a 2009 interview, Groß described the defensive idea in similar terms: when the opponent attacks, players should shift so that, as far from their own goal as possible, several players can attack the ball carrier and deny him the time and space for a useful action.

The important object is therefore not the static arrangement of eleven players.

It is the relationship between the ball, space, time and the players who can influence the situation.

That relationship is what creates movement.

Faster Perception, Faster Decisions

This is where Groß’s interest in cognition becomes more than a side note.

In his 2013 FAZ interview, he argued that football was approaching physical limits while leaving considerable potential in cognitive abilities.

The important point is not whether every part of that prediction proved correct.

The important point is what he thought the next advantage would come from.

Not simply running faster.

Seeing earlier.

Analysing faster.

Making the right decision sooner.

Acting on it.

That becomes particularly important in collective defending.

If one player sees the situation first but the other ten do not respond, the advantage disappears.

If several players recognise the same problem at roughly the same moment, however, the team can move as a unit.

That is the beginning of the collective game Groß was interested in.

What Did They Watch?

There is another part of Groß’s story that is easy to miss.

Ralf Rangnick later recalled that, after encountering the ideas of ball-oriented defending, he and his friend Helmut Groß began studying Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan in extraordinary detail.

In a 2009 interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Rangnick put it plainly:

„Später habe ich mit meinem Freund Helmut Groß jedes Spiel von Arrigo Sacchis AC Mailand in alle Einzelteile zerlegt.“

“Later, with my friend Helmut Groß, I took apart every game of Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan into its smallest parts.”

That is a revealing sentence.

Because the Milan they were studying was not some anonymous team waiting to be discovered.

Sacchi’s Milan was full of extraordinary individual talent.

Franco Baresi.
Paolo Maldini.
Ruud Gullit.
Marco van Basten.

And in the summer of 1988, Frank Rijkaard joined them.

By then, the team was becoming the Milan that would dominate Europe over the next two seasons.

Sacchi took over Milan in 1987, won Serie A in his first season, and then won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990.

There was no shortage of individual quality to admire.

But Rangnick’s wording points somewhere else.

They were not simply watching Milan because Milan had great players.

They were taking the games apart.

And that raises a more interesting question.

What happens between the players?

When Baresi moves, what changes around him?

When the ball moves, how does the line respond?

When one player steps towards the ball, who covers the space behind him?

How does a group of players create the impression that the ball carrier is suddenly surrounded?

Rangnick later described the effect of Sacchi’s Milan in almost exactly those terms: making the ball carrier feel as if he were playing against all of the opposing players at once.

That is a very different object of attention from individual talent.

The player is still important.

But the more interesting unit becomes the relationship between players.

The space between them.

The movement that one player makes possible for another.

And the collective response to the ball.

We should be careful not to put words into Groß’s mouth and claim that every one of these questions was consciously formulated by him while watching Milan.

The sources do not allow that level of reconstruction.

But the episode gives us a useful window into the kind of football education he and Rangnick were pursuing.

They were not satisfied with seeing the final shape.

They wanted to take the game apart.

Repeat Without Repeating

There is another Groß phrase that helps explain how he thought players should learn.

„Das Motto heißt: wiederholen ohne zu wiederholen.“

“The motto is: repeat without repeating.”

At first, this sounds contradictory.

How do you repeat something without repeating it?

The answer lies in the difference between repeating a movement and repeating a principle.

If a coach asks players to reproduce exactly the same movement every time, the players can learn the picture.

But football does not reproduce the picture.

The ball moves.

Opponents move.

Spaces open and close.

The pressure arrives from different directions.

The available action changes.

So the player needs something more durable than a memorised movement.

In another passage, Groß explained the idea as training essentially the same thing while not allowing the players to recognise that they are doing so.

The situation changes.

The underlying problem remains.

The player has to recognise the problem again and find the appropriate solution.

That is a much closer fit with his emphasis on perception and decision-making.

The objective is not to make eleven players perform a choreography.

It is to make eleven players capable of recognising situations and responding according to shared principles.

The Swarm

Groß also used the language of the Schwarm — the swarm.

He spoke about creating numerical superiority in situations on the pitch, not simply through faster running but through anticipation, intelligence and cooperation.

„Es geht darum, noch effektiver als Schwarm für Überzahlsituationen auf dem Feld zu sorgen.“

“The aim is to become even more effective as a swarm in creating numerical superiority on the pitch.”

That word matters.

A swarm is not a formation.

It does not describe eleven fixed positions.

It describes a group responding collectively to a changing situation.

The individual still matters.

But the value of the individual action increases when it is connected to the actions of the players around him.

Groß gave an example in the context of winning the ball back: a risky pass is played, the ball is lost, and several players immediately react together to recover it.

He called the result kontrolliertes Chaos — controlled chaos.

„Das sieht manchmal chaotisch aus, aber es handelt sich meist um kontrolliertes Chaos mit oft sehr hoher Kreativität.“

“It sometimes looks chaotic, but it is usually controlled chaos, often with a very high level of creativity.”

The phrase is useful because it captures a tension at the heart of collective football.

From the outside, movement can look chaotic.

From inside the system, it can be highly coordinated.

The players do not necessarily occupy the same places.

They recognise the same problem.

Groß and Rangnick

The relationship between Groß and Rangnick needs some care.

It is tempting to turn it into a simple story: Groß had the ideas, Rangnick carried them into professional football.

The evidence is more interesting than that.

Rangnick encountered Groß while both were working in the Württemberg football environment, and Groß became an important early influence on him. Their work developed around ball-oriented defending and how those ideas could be taught.

Rangnick later became the more visible figure.

He explained the ideas publicly, implemented them in professional football and developed them in different environments.

Groß remained more often behind the scenes: observing, discussing, teaching, advising and working on the underlying concepts.

That difference is important.

The story is not about one man secretly inventing modern football and another man carrying it into the world.

It is about a relationship in which ideas were observed, discussed, taught, tested and subsequently developed.

And perhaps that is why the Milan story matters.

Before either man became associated with a particular football philosophy, they were students of the game themselves.

They watched.

They stopped.

They studied.

They took matches apart.

Then they tried to understand what could be taught from what they had seen.

What We Can Actually Reconstruct

This is where the evidence needs to stop us from telling too neat a story.

We can establish that Groß was closely associated with the development of ball-oriented zonal defending in Germany.

We can establish that he and Rangnick worked together on a teaching system.

We can establish that Groß spoke explicitly about:

• perception,

• analysis,

• decision-making,

• action,

• numerical superiority,

• collective movement,

• training under changing conditions.

We can also establish that he regarded cognitive development as an important area for football.

And we can establish from Rangnick’s own account that he and Groß studied Sacchi’s Milan in great detail.

What we cannot reconstruct with the same confidence is a precise Groß tactical diagram from the 1980s.

The original Groß–Rangnick teaching guide has not been located in the sources used here.

So there is no reason to invent exact distances, fixed numerical rules or training exercises and put them on his account.

There is also no reason to claim that every later form of pressing, Gegenpressing or positional football can be traced directly back to Groß.

The stronger story is actually narrower.

Groß was interested in how players perceive a changing football situation, how they make decisions under pressure, and how those decisions can become coordinated collective behaviour.

That is enough.

From What Players See to What the Board Shows

This is where ZoneBoard can be useful.

Not by animating Groß’s football.

Not by pretending to reproduce his original training system.

And not by showing a supposedly authentic Groß formation.

Instead, the board can freeze the problem.

The visual for this article should use two static ZoneBoard situations.

Situation 01 — Central

A central situation around the ball.

The ball carrier is visible.

The nearby players are visible.

The supporting defenders are positioned so that the local numerical relationship can be understood.

The point is not to claim:

“This is Groß’s original setup.”

It is to give the reader a concrete situation in which the question can be asked:

What should the players see here?

What changes if the ball moves?

Which player can engage?

Who provides support?

Where does the available space become dangerous?

Where can numerical superiority be created?

The board freezes the moment so the reader can inspect it.

Same principle. Different situation.

Situation 02 — Wide

Now place the same underlying problem in a wider area of the pitch.

The positions change.

The available spaces change.

The distances change.

But the underlying question remains.

Where is the ball?

Which players can influence the situation?

How can the group create numerical superiority?

How does the collective shape respond?

The two boards should therefore not look identical.

That is precisely the point.

Same principle. Different situation.

This is also where Groß’s phrase wiederholen ohne zu wiederholen becomes useful.

The board does not need to show movement.

The reader can see two different situations and understand that the principle is being applied to both.

And, if they open ZoneBoard themselves, they can move the pieces and test other arrangements.

The product remains what it is: a board for creating and examining a football situation, not a video or animation tool.

The Shape Is the Consequence

This brings us back to the question in the title.

What should the players see?

Not a formation number.

Not a frozen tactical diagram.

Not necessarily the same movement they performed five seconds earlier.

They need to read the situation in front of them.

The ball.

The space around it.

The opponent’s options.

The positions and possibilities of their teammates.

And then they have to decide.

When several players do that together, something becomes visible.

They shift.

They close.

They support.

They create numerical superiority.

They deny time and space.

They recover the ball.

And the shape changes.

The shape, in this sense, is not the beginning of the story.

It is the result.

That is what makes Helmut Groß interesting for this series.

His contribution is not most usefully remembered as a formation, a famous match, or a single tactical rule.

It is better understood as a question about the player.

What do you see?

And once you see it, what do you do?

Sources

Helmut Groß — Primary / Firsthand Sources

• Helmut Groß — SPOX, 2009
  „Helmut Groß: ‚Ralf hat sich verliebt‘“
  Interview with Helmut Groß.
  Used for Groß’s explanation of ball-oriented defending, shifting towards the ball, numerical superiority, and winning the ball as quickly as possible.

URL: To be confirmed. Confirmed as a 2009 article from SPOX.

• Helmut Groß — im Spiel, Heft 124, 2024
  Interview / feature on Helmut Groß and his football ideas.
  Used for Groß’s retrospective explanation of the development of ballorientierte Raumdeckung, numerical superiority near the ball, regaining the ball quickly, and the development of his coaching work.

  https://www.imspiel-magazin.de/app/uploads/2024/03/im_spiel_124_helmut_gross.pdf

• Helmut Groß — Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 August 2013
  „Im Gespräch: Trainer Helmut Groß: ‚Ich mag das kontrollierte Chaos‘“
  Interview by FAZ with Helmut Groß.

  Used for Groß’s comments on:

  • faster perception, analysis, decision and action;

  • cognitive abilities;

  • training and “wiederholen ohne zu wiederholen”;

  • swarm behaviour and numerical superiority;

  • “kontrolliertes Chaos”;

  • video analysis;

  • decision-making under pressure of time and space.

  https://www.faz.net/aktuell/sport/fussball/im-gespraech-trainer-helmut-gross-ich-mag-das-kontrollierte-chaos-12342163.html

• Helmut Groß — prisma Interview, 2021
  „Der Trainerflüsterer“
  Interview with Helmut Groß.

  Used as supplementary firsthand material for his explanation of ball-oriented zonal defending, the contrast with man-marking, numerical superiority around the ball, and his professional background as a bridge engineer.

  https://www.ksk-gp.de/content/dam/myif/ksk-goeppingen/work/dokumente/pdf/ihre-sparkasse/Presse_und_Media_Center/prisma/Prisma_2_21_screen_Einzelseiten.pdf

• Ralf Rangnick — ESPN, 2020
  “Ralf Rangnick on RB Leipzig’s success and being the godfather of gegenpressing”

  Rangnick describes Helmut Groß as an early mentor, explains that Groß introduced him to ball-oriented zone marking, and describes their intensive study of AC Milan.

  https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37608193/ralf-rangnick-rb-leipzig-success-being-godfather-gegenpressing

• Ralf Rangnick — Coaches’ Voice
  “My Epiphany”

  Rangnick describes meeting Helmut Groß, a trained structural engineer who had introduced Ballorientierte Raumdeckung, and says that they began writing coaching manuals together. He also describes studying Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan through repeated video analysis.

  https://learning.coachesvoice.com/ralf-rangnick-rb-leipzig-and-bundesliga/

• Ralf Rangnick — Fußball-Journal / Niedersächsischer Fußballverband, 2001
  “Interview des Monats”

  Rangnick discusses Dynamo Kyiv, ball-oriented zonal defending, his work with Helmut Groß in the Württemberg coaching staff, and the principle of creating numerical superiority around the ball.

  https://www.nfv.de/fileadmin/user_upload/NFV/Inhalt/Verband/NFV_aktuell/NFV_Journal/Dokumente/2001/NFV_10_2001_Internet.pdf

• Ralf Rangnick — Süddeutsche Zeitung interview, 22 January 2005
  Interview reproduced by indirekter freistoss.

  Rangnick discusses Helmut Groß, saying that Groß had convinced him over several years of the advantages of complete zonal defending. He also describes Groß’s engineering background, his analytical approach, and their discussions about Dynamo Kyiv and Valeriy Lobanovskyi.

  Accessible reproduction:

  https://www.indirekter-freistoss.de/2005/01/22/wenn-es-mit-amateuren-geht-funktioniert-das-mit-jeder-mannschaft/

• Ralf Rangnick — localglobal interview / profile

  Contains Rangnick’s statement that Helmut Groß remained a close friend and that they worked together in Stuttgart, Hoffenheim and at RB Leipzig.

  https://localglobal.com/de/rangnick/

• derStandard / Ballesterer, 11 October 2023
  “Wie Teamchef Rangnick den modernen Fußball prägte”

  Used for historical context around Groß, Rangnick, the Württemberg coaching environment, SC Geislingen, and the development of alternative approaches to man-marking in the 1980s.

  https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000190382/wie-teamchef-rangnick-den-modernen-fussball-praegte

• Oliver Wohlmuth, University of Graz, 2015
  Evaluierung und Weiterentwicklung eines Testprofils zur Bestimmung der sportartspezifischen Leistungsparameter im Fußball

  Master’s thesis.

  Used as a secondary source for the section discussing Groß’s views on athletic limits, cognitive abilities and the need to recognise and solve situations quickly.

  Important: the thesis cites the 2013 FAZ interview as its Groß source. Therefore it should not be treated as an independent primary source for Groß’s statements.

  https://unipub.uni-graz.at/obvugrhs/content/titleinfo/436095/full.pdf

• Christoph Biermann / Süddeutsche Zeitung material on Ralf Rangnick and Helmut Groß

  Referenced indirectly through contemporary reporting on the development of ball-oriented zonal defending and Rangnick’s relationship with Groß.

  Where quoted or paraphrased through the 2005 interview reproduction, the source above should be preferred.

• Ralf Rangnick — LAOLA1, 4 December 2014
  Interview concerning his football philosophy and influences.

  https://www.laola1.at/de/red/archiv/redaktion/fussball/bundesliga/interview/red-bull-salzburg-ralf-rangnick-interview/

• Ralf Rangnick — Rund Magazine, 2008

  Interview with Rangnick discussing the development of ball-oriented zonal defending and the changing tactical landscape in German football.

  https://www.rund-magazin.de/uploads/images/das_magazin/pdfs/0805.pdf

• Helmut Groß — taz, 2002
  „Ich will den perfekten Fussball“

  Contains Groß discussing numerical superiority around the ball and his understanding of modern football.

  https://taz.de/Ich-will-den-perfekten-Fussball/%211094914/

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

When Gallardo Couldn’t Speak

The first scene comes in the second leg of River’s 2018 Copa Libertadores semi-final against Grêmio.

Gallardo had been suspended.

He was in the stadium, but he was not supposed to communicate with his coaching staff or players.

Broadcast footage showed him in the stands using a radio. Contemporary reports identified Biscay on the touchline as one of the people receiving communication, while Argentine reporting also described communication with another assistant, Hernán Buján.

The exact chain of instruction cannot be reconstructed from the footage.

We can see Gallardo with the radio.

We can see Biscay on the touchline.

We can see River’s staff working around the restriction.

We cannot know exactly what was said between them at every moment.

Then came half-time.

Gallardo went down to the dressing room.

Years later, he explained why:

“Bajé en el entretiempo contra Gremio y les dije que estaba feliz y orgulloso de lo que estaba viendo… bajé porque necesitaba decírselos.”
“I went down at half-time against Grêmio and told them I was happy and proud of what I was seeing… I went down because I needed to tell them.”

It was not necessarily a tactical intervention.

It was a human one.

River came back to win the match and reach the final.

Gallardo’s actions, however, brought further disciplinary consequences.

CONMEBOL subsequently prohibited him from communicating with the coaching staff, officials and players by any means during the next match.

That next match was against Boca Juniors.

This time, Biscay was the man standing where Gallardo normally stood.

“It Looks Like the FBI”

Before the match at La Bombonera, Biscay was asked about his unusual position.

His answer was unusually clear:

“Estoy ocupando un lugar que no me corresponde. Marcelo tendría que estar sentado aquí… Realmente no me siento cómodo porque el DT es Marcelo.”
“I am occupying a place that is not mine. Marcelo should be sitting here… I really don’t feel comfortable because Marcelo is the manager.”

He was not presenting himself as River’s new manager.

He was covering for the manager.

And then there was the communication problem.

“No me he comunicado con él todavía. Nos pusieron inhibidor de señal. Parece que acá vino el FBI para controlar que no habláramos.”
“I haven't communicated with him yet. They put in a signal jammer. It seems the FBI came here to make sure we didn't talk.”

The joke is memorable.

The situation behind it was not.

The normal connection between the manager and the bench had been deliberately removed.

Biscay had to work without the person he had spent years working beside.

And yet River went into the match with the same footballing project.

What Happened at 58 Minutes?

The final in Madrid gives us a different kind of evidence.

Here, rather than trying to reconstruct an invisible communication chain, we can look at one decision and listen to the person on the bench explain it afterwards.

At 58 minutes, Leonardo Ponzio came off.

Juan Fernando Quintero came on.

It became one of the defining substitutions of the final.

But the interesting question is not simply:

Why did Biscay bring on Quintero?

The available evidence does not establish that Biscay alone made that decision.

Gallardo later said the change had been foreseeable:

“El cambio de Juanfer por Ponzio podría haber ido de entrada pero era necesario saber qué hacían ellos… el cambio por Leo estaba cantado a los pocos minutos.”
“The Juanfer-for-Ponzio change could have happened from the start, but it was necessary to see what they were doing… the change for Leo was obvious within a few minutes.”

Contemporaneous reporting from inside the River staff also indicated that the possibility of bringing Quintero on for a holding midfielder had already been discussed before the match.

So this was not necessarily a piece of improvisation invented at 58 minutes.

But Biscay’s explanation tells us something more interesting than who gets the credit.

It tells us what problem River were trying to solve.

More Options of Pass

“Creíamos que teníamos que tener más opciones de pase.”
“We believed we needed more passing options.”

That is the first clue.

Biscay then described the problem more precisely:

“We couldn’t break that line of Boca’s midfielders.”

River could start its attacks.

But starting an attack was not the same as progressing through Boca’s structure.

Then came the next part:

“La entrada de Juan nos dio calidad de pase… nos dio triangulación por la derecha junto a Nacho.”
“Juan’s entry gave us quality of passing… it gave us triangulation on the right together with Nacho.”

And then:

“Con la entrada de Juan tratamos de conseguir eso que Nacho Fernández y Pala pudieran recibir entre líneas con los pases milimétricos que tiene Juan.”
“With Juan’s entry we tried to get Nacho Fernández and Pala to receive between the lines, with the precise passes that Juan has.”

Ten minutes later, River produced one of the combinations Biscay had been describing.

There is a lot packed into those sentences.

Quintero is often remembered simply as a creative player.

Biscay’s explanation is more structural.

He talks about:

passing options.

Boca’s midfield line.

triangulation.

receiving between the lines.

Quintero is often remembered simply as a creative player.
Biscay's explanation points somewhere more structural: what becomes possible when another passing connection enters the structure.

Freeze the match around that moment and the problem becomes easier to see.

Before the change:

River could initiate possession, but struggled to break Boca’s midfield line.

After the change:

Biscay described an attempt to create more passing options, more right-side combinations, and opportunities for Nacho Fernández and Pity Martínez to receive between the lines.

The board does not need to answer:

What was Biscay’s master plan?

It can ask a smaller, more concrete question:

What changed in the available passing structure?

That is enough.

The Man Next to Gallardo

Biscay’s importance to Gallardo’s staff did not begin in 2018.

It began much earlier.

The two had known each other since their time in River’s youth system. Biscay was older, and later recalled looking after Gallardo when they were young players.

When Gallardo began his managerial career at Nacional in 2011, Biscay was there.

He remained alongside him through River, Al-Ittihad and the return to River.

Gallardo has described the relationship in unusually personal terms:

“Matías Biscay no es solo un compañero, es un hermano de la vida.”
“Matías Biscay is not only a colleague; he is a brother for life.”

He also described Biscay as:

“una de las personas que inició allá por 2011 conmigo.”
“one of the people who started with me back in 2011.”

This matters because Biscay’s role cannot be understood simply as that of an assistant who happens to be available when the head coach is absent.

There is a long accumulated relationship underneath it.

After the 2018 final, Biscay described that relationship himself:

“Con respecto a Marcelo realmente no nos dijimos nada porque estábamos tan emocionados… muchas veces no necesitamos hablar porque no nos entendemos con las miradas… ya nos conocemos hace tiempo.”
“As for Marcelo, we didn’t really say anything to each other because we were so excited… often we don’t need to speak because we understand each other with just a glance… we’ve known each other for a long time.”

“Regarding Marcelo, we really did not say anything because we were so emotional… many times we don’t need to talk because we understand each other through looks… we have known each other for a long time.”

That quote is easy to misuse.

It does not prove that Gallardo and Biscay were secretly communicating during the final.

It describes what happened around the emotional aftermath of the match.

But it does tell us something useful about the relationship: by that point, years of shared work had created a level of familiarity that Biscay himself described as requiring very few words.

And other people around River also saw Biscay as part of a larger decision-making structure rather than a lone substitute manager.

After River’s win over Grêmio, River president Rodolfo D’Onofrio said:

“Desde que bajó del micro, no tuvo más contacto con nosotros. Lo del partido, resuelven Biscay y Buján.”
“From the moment he got off the bus, he had no more contact with us. Match matters are resolved by Biscay and Buján.”

Biscay and Buján were part of the structure that had to function when Gallardo could not.

What the Touchline Can Tell Us

Listen to how Biscay describes the game. He keeps coming back to lines, numbers, passing options and space.

The evidence here suggests something more interesting.

Biscay’s public explanations repeatedly return to relationships between players, spaces and numbers.

In February 2026, years after the 2018 final, Gallardo was sent off during River’s match against Argentinos Juniors.

Biscay again had to speak from the touchline.

His explanation of the match was strikingly familiar:

“Sabíamos que iba a ser un partido muy disputado en la mitad de la cancha.”
“We knew it was going to be a very contested game in midfield.”

And:

“Tratamos de poner más gente en la mitad de la cancha.”
“We tried to put more people in midfield.”

He explained that Argentinos had many players dropping into midfield, and that River tried to match that:

“Tratamos de emparejar esa mitad de la cancha con más gente.”
“We tried to balance that midfield area with more people.”

This does not prove a complete, timeless “Biscay philosophy.”

But it gives us another glimpse of the vocabulary he uses when explaining football.

He talks about the midfield.

About numbers.

About passing options.

About breaking lines.

About where players can receive.

That is the part of his work we can actually observe.

The rest remains hidden.

We cannot hear every instruction given from the touchline.

We cannot reconstruct every conversation between Gallardo, Biscay, Buján and the players.

We cannot know who first proposed every substitution.

And we cannot turn a shared staff process into a single person’s tactical authorship.

A tactical board can reconstruct the shape.

It cannot reconstruct a private conversation.

Freeze the Shape

So what should we put on the board?

Not “Biscay’s tactics.”

Not a reconstruction of what happened inside the coaching staff’s heads.

Instead, freeze the match around the 58th minute.

Before 58’

River are trying to progress against Boca’s midfield structure.

The problem Biscay later described:

not enough passing options

difficulty breaking Boca’s midfield line

limited access to the spaces behind it

After 58’

Ponzio comes off.

Quintero comes on.

Biscay described the intended change through:

more passing quality

a right-side triangle with Nacho Fernández

more precise final passes

opportunities for Nacho Fernández and Pity Martínez to receive between the lines

That is what a tactical board can make visible.

The board cannot tell us exactly what Biscay said to Quintero.
It cannot tell us who first proposed the substitution.
It cannot show the conversations that had already happened during the week.

But it can show the football problem Biscay chose to describe.

Not:
Who was the secret genius behind River’s shape?

But:
What did the person standing on the touchline actually have to see?

When Gallardo’s voice disappeared from the touchline, Biscay did not suddenly become a different manager.

He had to carry an existing footballing language into view.

We can see part of that work: the passing option, the midfield line, the player between the lines.

We cannot see all of it.

The shape is visible. The people behind it usually aren’t.

Sources

• CONMEBOL disciplinary decision, 2018 — AFA / CONMEBOL disciplinary ruling

• Gallardo tuvo que seguirlo desde un palco y comunicado por lo bajo — El Día, October 31, 2018

• Matías Biscay post-match interview after River–Grêmio — October 31, 2018

• Matías Biscay press conference, November 11, 2018 — AS Argentina

• Matías Biscay on the signal jammer at La Bombonera — Infobae, November 11, 2018

• Matías Biscay press conference after the 2018 final — December 10, 2018

• Marcelo Gallardo retrospective on the 2018 final — Clarín

• Rodolfo D’Onofrio comments on the match-day staff decisions — Clarín

• Matías Biscay after River Plate–Argentinos Juniors — February 13, 2026

• Marcelo Gallardo on Biscay and the Ecuador staff — La Nación, 2026

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

A football shape is visible. The work that produces it often isn’t.

When Arsenal line up for a corner or a wide free-kick, the cameras show the usual picture: bodies jostling at the edge of the box, a coach gesturing from the technical area, a carefully struck delivery. Commentary tends to split it into two camps—either a masterclass in planning or a defensive breakdown.

Nicolas Jover works in the space before that picture settles. His path started in performance analysis, looking at patterns on screens, before he specialised in set pieces. At Arsenal, the results show up on the pitch. He builds around what the players already do well, adapts to the moment, keeps the conversation open, and aims to leave the opposition unsure.

Arteta, Declan Rice and others who have worked with him talk about trust and shared ownership rather than orders from the touchline. Looking at Jover is less about one individual and more about watching how the quiet seconds before the ball is struck take shape.

The Shape We Can See

Consider Anfield, 23 December 2023. Liverpool versus Arsenal.

Arsenal win a free-kick on the inside-left. Martin Ødegaard stands over it. Inside the Liverpool box the shape looks odd. Several Arsenal attackers start clearly beyond the defensive line, standing in offside positions.

As Ødegaard begins his run-up, the cluster turns together and moves back towards onside positions as the ball is delivered. The movement is coordinated. Ødegaard’s inswinging delivery finds Gabriel Magalhães, who meets it cleanly. The goal stands after a VAR check for offside.

This is not presented as Jover’s personal invention for that exact moment. Arsenal have used variations of starting offside and timing the return across different matches. It is simply an observable shape. In the seconds before the ball arrives, the positions between attackers and defenders have already changed. The question becomes what created the space.

Before the Ball Arrives

On television the eye follows the ball. But much of the work of a set piece has already happened before the kick is taken.

The ball has not arrived, yet the play has begun. Defenders have to decide what to do with the movement in front of them: hold their line, follow a runner, or drop. When attackers start in unexpected places or time a late collective movement, those decisions can change the shape of the box before the ball is even played.

Jover’s route into the role was straightforward. He studied sports performance analysis in Sherbrooke, Canada, worked as a video analyst at Montpellier and with the Croatian national team around the 2014 World Cup, then moved into specialised set-piece work at Brentford, Manchester City and Arsenal. He moved from analysing the game as a video analyst to working specifically on set pieces.

From Video Analyst to Set-Piece Coach

His own words, from French interviews, set the tone:

“La clé pour moi c’est d’avoir toujours en tête que le plus important c’est la réussite collective.”

“The key for me is to always keep in mind that the most important thing is collective success.”

“Je suis pas là pour démontrer un savoir mais je suis là pour apporter le maximum à l’équipe.”

“I’m not here to prove knowledge, but to bring the maximum to the team.”

He builds on what the players already offer:

“J’essaye de m’appuyer sur leur point fort.”

“I try to build on their strengths.”

“C’est pas moi qui impose des choses… l’idée c’est qu’on travaille ensemble.”

“It’s not me imposing things… the idea is that we work together.”

“C’est eux qui sont sur le terrain et donc c’est normal de prendre en compte leur avis… je préfère être au contact du joueur et échanger.”

“They are the ones on the pitch, so it’s normal to take their opinion into account… I prefer being in contact with the player and exchanging ideas.”

Designing Uncertainty

At the centre of the attacking work sits one clear aim:

“Offensivement, c’est de créer de l’incertitude.”

“Offensively, it’s about creating uncertainty.”

Uncertainty here is not a collection of tricks. It is the simple football problem the defender faces. Which runner matters? When does the movement start? What happens if you follow one and leave another free? What changes if you hold?

The movement gives the defenders questions to answer while the attacking side has to keep its own timing and communication clear. The same idea has to flex according to the opponent. What works against a deep zonal block will look different against aggressive man-marking.

The Players Are Part of the Design

The players remain part of it. Arteta has spoken about the belief Jover helps create around set pieces as a genuine way to win matches. Former Brentford manager Dean Smith noted the buy-in Jover secured from players who often treat dead-ball work as a chore. The collaboration is ongoing rather than one-directional.

A clear example came with Declan Rice. Rice later said that Jover and Arteta had seen something in him that others had not. In the Champions League tie against Real Madrid, Rice faced a direct free-kick. Jover indicated that he should cross the ball. Rice looked at the wall and the goalkeeper, decided the situation called for a different strike, and took it. Arteta later said the staff are there to help “paint the picture” of the available options, but the players have to make the decision. He praised the initiative.

What Does a Set-Piece Coach Actually Design?

That moment sits at the heart of the question.

What does a set-piece coach actually design?

Not just the movement.
Not just the delivery.
Not just the routine.

Around the routine are the players’ strengths, the timing of the runs, the relationship between the taker and the attackers, and the room for a player to change the picture when the moment demands it.

The coach prepares the conditions. The players still decide.

Freeze the Shape

This changes how you watch. Broadcasts follow the ball and show the outcome. A tool that freezes the frame gives you time to look at the distances, the body positions and the relationships before the kick is taken.

A broadcast shows what happened; a tactics board gives you time to look at what was happening.

The next time a set piece is awarded, do not only watch the ball. Watch what happens before it arrives.

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Sources

• Arsenal — “Arsenal Analysed: 9 reasons why we shined in 23/24”
  Arsenal’s 2023/24 set-piece record and Jover’s role. Arsenal — Arsenal Analysed: 9 reasons why we shined in 23/24

• Premier League — “Why Arsenal are leading the way for set-piece innovation”
  Arsenal’s wide free-kick routines, including the Liverpool goal, and the use of movement and timing around the offside line. Premier League — Why Arsenal are leading the way for set-piece innovation

• The Guardian — Liverpool 1–1 Arsenal, 23 December 2023
  Match report and live coverage of Gabriel’s goal from Ødegaard’s free-kick and the VAR offside check. The Guardian — Liverpool 1–1 Arsenal

• ESPN — “Arteta hails Rice for ignoring set-piece coach vs. Real Madrid”
  Rice’s account of Jover’s instruction to cross, his decision to shoot, and Arteta’s comments on player decision-making. ESPN — Arteta hails Rice for ignoring set-piece coach vs. Real Madrid

• Nicolas Jover — French interview
  Interview source for Jover’s own comments on collective success, player strengths, collaboration, uncertainty and his approach to set pieces. Original French recording; transcript used for research and quotations should be checked against the video before publication. Nicolas Jover — Interview avec Nicolas Jover, assistant Mikel Arteta (Arsenal), spécialiste CPA

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

Tottenham Hotspur were level at 0–0 with Wolverhampton Wanderers at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Premier League, Matchweek 3, Sat 20 Aug.

It was the 64th minute of a tight Premier League match.

Spurs earned a corner.

Son Heung-min approaches the ball and delivers an inswinging corner toward the front post.

Ivan Perišić attacks the near-post area, gets in front of his marker, and glances the ball across the face of goal.

Harry Kane attacks the space at the far post and heads the ball into the net from close range.

1–0.

Three points for Tottenham.

To the naked eye, it is a classic set-piece goal: an accurate delivery, a glance at the near post, and a clinical finish at the back.

But pause the sequence just before Son kicks the ball, and another layer becomes visible.

The ball has not moved yet.

The players already have.

But because his work raises a more specific question:

Who designs the Shape before the ball arrives?

Open play is constantly changing. Players move, opponents react, spaces appear and disappear.

A set-piece is different.

For a few seconds, players can begin from deliberately established positions. Movements can be rehearsed. One player’s movement can be intended to affect another player’s defender.

The ball has not arrived yet, but the interaction has already begun.

The Corner

According to the Premier League’s tactical review of Tottenham’s goal against Wolves, Spurs loaded the near-post area with several players.

As the corner was taken, Tottenham players attacked the front-post zone.

That movement mattered because Wolves were using a combination of zonal and man-marking responsibilities.

The movement toward the near post drew defenders with it.

Perišić attacked the space in front of the first zonal defender and made the first contact with the ball.

At the same time, Kane was able to attack the space that had opened at the far post.

He escaped his marker.

Perišić’s flick-on found the area Kane was attacking.

Kane finished.

The entire sequence is over in a couple of seconds.

But the interesting part is what happened before the ball reached anyone.

The corner was not simply a delivery from Son to Kane.

It was a sequence of positions, movements, reactions and spaces.

Freeze the play before the corner is taken.

You can see several things at once:

• Tottenham’s concentration of players around the near-post zone

• the direction of the initial movement

• the defenders being drawn toward that movement

• Perišić’s route toward the first contact

• the space Kane is able to attack at the far post

The ball is almost irrelevant for a moment.

The structure is the story.

4,830 Ways?

There is another reason Gianni Vio is an interesting figure in this discussion.

For years, the number 4,830 has been associated with his work on set pieces.

The number appears in accounts of Vio’s career and has also been attributed directly to him in interviews. But the public record does not establish precisely what the number counted — whether individual routines, variations, or something else.

The number itself is therefore less interesting than the question it creates.

Does a set-piece coach really need thousands of completely different plays?

Or is the job something more structured?

In a 2025 interview with Fanpage, Vio was asked how many routines he prepares for a match.

His answer was:

“One. Corner and wide free-kick. Better one clear idea, with small variations, but executed well.”

That is a much more useful description of the job.

Not thousands of isolated tricks.

One idea.

Small variations.

Execution.

The same interview also captures another part of Vio’s philosophy:

“There is no routine without freedom. I believe in ‘organized freedom’.”

That phrase is useful because it changes how we look at a set-piece.

The purpose of organization is not necessarily to control every movement.

It can be to create a situation in which players have a clearer set of possibilities.

So What Does a Set-Piece Coach Actually Design?

When we think about a set-piece, we usually focus on the obvious parts.

The taker.

The delivery.

The header.

The finish.

But the work behind the sequence can begin much earlier.

A set-piece coach can work on things such as:

Starting positions

Where players stand before the ball is delivered can influence how defenders organize themselves.

Initial movement

A run toward one area can cause a defender to move, opening another area.

Forcing a choice
A movement can force a defender to choose whom to follow or which space to protect. The choice itself can create the opening elsewhere.

Timing

The player who eventually attacks the target space may need to arrive only after the defensive reaction has happened.

This changes the question.

The job is not simply:

Where should the ball go?

It can also be:

What should happen before the ball gets there?

That is the part of the game that is easy to miss when watching a corner at full speed.

The Shape Before the Ball

Look again at the Wolves goal.

Before Son’s foot touches the ball, there is already a chain of interactions.

Tottenham’s players move toward the near post.

Wolves’ defenders react.

That reaction changes the available space.

Perišić attacks the first contact.

Kane attacks the space behind it.

The goal is not contained in any one of those actions.

It emerges from their relationship.

This is where freezing the sequence changes what you see.

Instead of following the ball, you can follow the players.

Instead of asking where the pass went, you can ask why the space was available.

Instead of looking only at the scorer, you can look at the movement that made the scorer’s position possible.

And that is precisely the kind of moment that is difficult to see when the entire sequence lasts only a few seconds.

One Idea, Many Variations

The Premier League’s review of Tottenham’s corners also examined similar patterns against Newcastle United, Bournemouth and Leicester City. The specific movements differed, but the analysis shows Tottenham repeatedly using movement around the near-post area to create opportunities elsewhere.

That makes Vio’s phrase — one clear idea, with small variations — particularly interesting.

A routine does not necessarily have to mean one fixed sequence that is reproduced identically every time.

The useful distinction may be between a pattern and a script.

A script says:

Player A runs here.
Player B runs there.
Player C finishes.

A pattern says:

We want this defensive reaction.
If it happens, attack the space it creates.

The second approach leaves room for what Vio calls “organized freedom.”

And it gives players something more useful than a memorized sequence: a structure within which they can make decisions.

What We Usually Don’t See

Set-piece coaches occupy an unusual position in football.

When the plan works, the goal belongs to the players.

When it does not work, the coach rarely appears in the frame.

Their work is often invisible precisely because it has become movement.

A defender steps toward the near post.

Another follows a runner.

A player arrives half a second later.

A space opens.

Someone attacks it.

Then the ball arrives.

The final image is simple.

The structure behind it is not.

In a November 2025 interview with Arizona TV, Vio described set pieces as a way to “break the balance” and create problems for the opposition while exploiting the players available to his team.

He also described carrying a small notebook and pen, using spare moments to write down ideas.

And when his team scores from a set piece, he said he experiences it almost as if he had scored himself.

Those comments reveal something about the work that the final highlight does not.

A set-piece coach is not simply designing where a ball should land.

They are looking for ways to change the conditions around that ball.

Freeze the Moment

The Wolves goal took only a few seconds from the corner to the finish.

On the match report, it is simply Harry Kane’s goal.

But freeze the moment immediately before the delivery and the picture changes.

You can see the players.

You can see the spaces.

You can see the defensive assignments.

You can see the movement that is about to happen.

And you can ask a different question:

Which movement matters most?

The first surge toward the near post?

The defender following it?

Perišić’s run?

The space Kane attacks?

There may not be one correct answer.

That is part of the point.

A board does not have to tell you what the tactic means.

It can simply give you enough time to look.

Try ZoneBoard for Free

The Board Is the Point

ZoneBoard is not a tactical AI.

It does not decide whether a set-piece is correct.

It does not automatically analyze the match.

It does not tell you which player should move where.

It is a board for taking one selected football idea and giving it a visible, stable shape.

For a sequence that normally disappears in two or three seconds, that can be enough.

The ball arrives.

The moment disappears.

The board lets you freeze it.

What happens before the ball arrives?

That may be where the most interesting part of the corner begins.

Sources

• Tottenham Hotspur — Gianni Vio joins Antonio’s coaching staff, 11 July 2022.

• Premier League — Adrian Clarke, How Spurs free Kane to score from corners, 11 December 2022.

• Tottenham Hotspur — Harry Kane breaks THREE records with winning goal | HIGHLIGHTS | Spurs 1-0 Wolves. Watch on Tottenham Hotspur’s official YouTube channel

• Fanpage — Gianni Vio, lo specialista delle palle inattive: “Per ogni partita basta preparare un solo schema, 4 November 2025.

• Arizona TV — interview with Gianni Vio, 1 November 2025. Watch the Arizona TV interview

• Be Magistral — Gianni Vio, especialista en acciones a balón parado, 3 March 2022. Watch on YouTube

The People Behind the Shape

We usually see football through the players and the manager. But the shape of a team is also influenced by people working around them — analysts, assistants, set-piece coaches and others whose work rarely appears in the final picture.

This series looks at those people through specific examples: what they actually did, what they said about their work, and what we can reconstruct on a board.

Lars Kornetka once made a video that was half garbage.

That is not a metaphor. Looking back on his early work under Ralf Rangnick, he put it plainly:

“Am Ende war die Hälfte meines Videos Müll, andere wichtige Aspekte hatte ich komplett übersehen.”

“In the end, half of my video was garbage — other important aspects I had completely overlooked.”

He watched the match, built a video from what he had seen, and a large part of it turned out to be the wrong material. He had missed other things entirely.

This is a strange way to introduce someone who later worked with Austria’s national team and became a head coach himself. Yet it is a more honest starting point than the usual profile opener, and it says something true about the job: watching football closely is not the same as knowing what to do with what you have watched.

Learning What Mattered

Kornetka did not figure out that difference on his own. Rangnick and Helmut Groß, another longtime figure in his coaching circle, went through his early work with him and showed him what actually mattered and what did not. There is a quote from that period that Kornetka still uses when he talks about how it happened:

“Das Gute an dir ist, dass deine Festplatte noch leer ist und man sie bespielen kann.”

“The good thing about you is that your hard drive is still empty, and it can be recorded onto.”

It is a blunt compliment: you know nothing yet, which means something can still be put there. Not a grand statement about talent. More an assessment of a blank slate that happened to be usable.

Kornetka has summarized the process himself:

“Es war letztlich learning by doing, um die Analyseinhalte bis ins Training transportieren zu können.”

“It was ultimately learning by doing, in order to be able to carry the analysis content through into training.”

The goal, in other words, was never simply to “watch more football.” It was to get analysis onto the training pitch in a form coaches and players could use. That is a narrower, more practical target than it sounds, and it took getting it half-wrong first to understand what it required.

Seeing Everything

Years later, describing how the analysis department around the Austrian national team operates, Kornetka gave an account that is worth sitting with:

“Wir versuchen, alle alles zu sehen und alles zu wissen, um dann eine konkrete Meinung herstellen zu können.”

“We try to see everything, all of us, and to know everything, so that we can then form a concrete opinion.”

That “we” matters. This is not one analyst with a private method. It is a staff trying to cover as much ground as possible collectively, so that nothing important slips through somewhere in the group.

But seeing everything is only the first step. Between a staff that knows everything and a locker room at halftime, something has to be turned into something the players can use. Kornetka again:

“Wir versuchen, so vorbereitet zu sein, dass wir in der Halbzeit schon alle Punkte auf dem Schirm haben und uns dann nur noch kurz beratschlagen, wie wir sie präsentieren – per Video, per Taktiktafel oder einfach nur verbal.”

“We try to be prepared enough that by halftime we already have all the points in mind, and then only need to briefly discuss how to present them — by video, by tactics board, or simply verbally.”

Notice what is being decided in those few minutes. Not what happened in the match — they already know that. What is being decided is how to present it. A clip. A tactics board. A sentence, said out loud.

Austria Against Poland

The clearest example of this in Kornetka’s own recent work is Austria’s 3–1 win over Poland at EURO 2024.

Austria’s plan for that match was broadly working. It was not a case of a game plan collapsing and needing a full rebuild at the break. The issue was execution: Austria gave the ball away too easily, and those turnovers gave Poland more moments in the game than Austria wanted.

One specific adjustment had already been made during the first half. According to Kornetka, the staff had noticed that Christoph Baumgartner was not sufficiently involved on the right and moved him into a more central position.

At halftime, the staff showed the players “a few scenes” to reinforce that the underlying plan was sound, but its execution needed to improve. Austria also came out applying more pressure on the ball after the break.

Austria won the second half of the game, and the match finished 3–1. It would be tidy to say that the halftime adjustments caused that turnaround. The evidence does not support drawing such a straight line — football halves have their own randomness, and Poland’s choices mattered too.

What the account does support is more modest: a staff that had already diagnosed the problem, made a small number of specific changes, and communicated them briefly.

What an Analyst Is Actually For

None of this suggests that Kornetka has some singular theory of football analysis. But the workflow itself points to something worth noticing.

An analyst’s usefulness is probably not measured by how much footage eventually reaches the players. The staff, collectively, may need to know an enormous amount — formations, patterns, individual tendencies, set-piece variations, everything contained in the idea that “we try to see everything.”

The players, at halftime, with fifteen minutes and a game still to play, cannot be given everything the staff knows. They need the few conclusions that change what they do in the second half, delivered in whatever form gets there fastest — a video, a board, a sentence.

What emerges from Kornetka’s account is a layer of judgment between what a staff knows and what a team hears.

Learning What to Pass On

Kornetka does not present himself in these accounts as someone who has figured all of this out permanently. During his time with Austria, he worked alongside other staff members under Rangnick’s final authority, contributing to conclusions that were discussed and adjusted before anything was shown to the players.

He has already been wrong in a way he still describes without dressing it up.

That, more than any specific tactical insight, is probably the honest version of what the job looks like: a person trying, match after match, to take in more than anyone could use and hand over less than everyone saw — and sometimes getting that balance wrong in ways that eventually become clear.

It is a similar problem, at a much smaller scale, to why a tool like ZoneBoard exists at all.

Most of the analytical work happens somewhere else — in a room, in a staff’s collective head, in hours of footage nobody outside will ever watch. ZoneBoard is not built to do any of that.

It is built for the moment after: taking one idea that has already been chosen and giving it a place to become visible.

Sources

• SPOX, interview with Lars Kornetka (2017)

  https://www.spox.com/fussball/news/lars-kornetka-interview-video-analyse-bayer-leverkusen/3762341

• 90minuten.at, interview/feature with Lars Kornetka (2024)

  https://www.90minuten.at/de/red/magazin/hintergrund/lars-kornetka---der-ueberzeugungstaeter-an-rangnicks-seite/

• Sky Sport Austria, coverage of Austria–Poland, EURO 2024 (2024)

  https://www.skysportaustria.at/fussball-em-rangnick-vertrauter-kornetka-schwaermt-von-oefb-trainerteam-bild/

• ORF Sport, “ÖFB-Kotrainer Kornetka wird auch Braunschweig-Coach” (10 March 2026).
  https://sport.orf.at/stories/3153448/

• Sky Sport Austria, “Verstärkung fürs ÖFB-Trainerteam” (14 September 2026).
  https://www.skysportaustria.at/verstaerkung-fuers-oefb-trainerteam/

Correction (2 November 2026): An earlier version described Kornetka as still working with Austria’s national team. He left the coaching staff in July 2026. The article has been corrected to reflect this.

La olla a presión del minuto 87

Real Madrid 0–1 Atlético. Minuto 87. Lisboa, 2014. Y entonces llegó la ola. Entraron Marcelo e Isco. El Madrid adelantó todas sus líneas. El Atleti resistía en el área. Puedes hacer UN solo cambio. ¿Qué mueves? Un jugador. Una posición. Una línea. Muéstranos tu pizarra. ⚽️

El dilema del "Estado del Partido": Bloque bajo vs. Ataque total El Atlético de Diego Simeone estaba a escasos minutos de levantar su primera Champions League. Manteniendo el 1-0 tras el cabezazo de Diego Godín, el Atleti se replegó en un bloque bajo (4-4-2) compacto. Sin embargo, perder a Diego Costa por lesión a los 9 minutos dejó al equipo sin una referencia arriba para aguantar el balón y dar aire a la defensa. Por otro lado, Carlo Ancelotti arriesgó todo. Con la entrada de Marcelo e Isco, el Real Madrid encerró al Atlético en su propia área, cargando las bandas y acumulando rematadores. Echa un vistazo a la pizarra táctica del minuto 90.

¿Cuál es tu jugada?

Ponte en la piel del entrenador en el minuto 90 de una final de Champions League. • Si eres Simeone: ¿Añades un tercer central para reforzar el juego aéreo, o mantienes el 4-4-2 para pelear los segundos balones en el balcón del área? • Si eres Ancelotti: ¿Cómo rompes un bloque que coloca a todo el equipo defendiendo en su área? ¿Cargas el segundo palo o buscas combinaciones cortas para sacarlos de su zona? Si tuvieras la pizarra delante, ¿qué cambio harías para asegurar la victoria... o para forzar el empate en el minuto 93? 💡 Recrea la final de Lisboa 2014 en ZoneBoard Diseña tu estructura defensiva o planea el ataque desesperado de los últimos minutos en ZoneBoard.

Forma aproximada

Las posiciones históricas son ilustrativas, no son datos de seguimiento.

🌐 Leer este artículo en inglés

Plantillas y alineaciones (Para configurar en ZoneBoard)

Abrir ZoneBoard

Real Madrid
1,Casillas
15,Carvajal
2,Varane
4,Sergio_Ramos
5,Coentrão
6,Khedira
19,Modrić
22,Di_María
11,Bale
9,Benzema_López
3,Pepe
12,Marcelo
17,Arbeloa
23,Isco
24,Illarramendi
21,Morata

Atlético de Madrid
13,Courtois
20,Juanfran
23,Miranda
2,Godín
3,Filipe_Luís
8,Raúl_García
14,Gabi
5,Tiago
6,Koke
19,Diego_Costa
9,David_Villa
1,Aranzubia
12,Alderweireld
4,Mario_Suárez
11,Cristian_Rodríguez
21,Diego
24,Sosa
7,Adrián

UEFA Champions League Final 2013-14
May 24, 2014. Estádio da Luz, Lisbon.

Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid were minutes away from their first-ever UEFA Champions League title. Holding a 1–0 lead built on Diego Godín’s header, Atlético did what they did best: they retreated into a compact, low-block defensive structure to protect the penalty box at all costs.

On the other side, Carlo Ancelotti threw everything forward. Marcelo and Isco came off the bench to add dynamism, pushing Real Madrid’s line higher and higher into Atlético’s half.

Take a look at the game-state board below at 87 minutes.

Game-State Dilemma: Ultra-Low Block vs. All-Out Attack

Atlético suffocated the central space with two tight lines of four, leaving no room between the midfield and the defensive line. Real Madrid, desperate for an equalizer, flooded the box with aerial targets while overloading the flanks to generate high-volume crosses.

It was the ultimate Game-State battle: Survive 5 minutes of injury time, or find a way through the wall.

We all know what happened in the 93rd minute—Luka Modrić’s corner, Sergio Ramos’s iconic header, and a match transformed forever in extra time.

What’s Your Move?

Put yourself in the manager’s shoes in the 90th minute of a Champions League final.

• If you are Simeone: Do you add an extra center-back to reinforce the aerial duel, or keep the 4-4-2 shape to contest the second balls around the box?

• If you are Ancelotti: How do you create space against a team that refuses to come out? Do you overload the far post, or pull players out with short combinations?

If you had the board in front of you, what change would you make to secure the win—or force the equalizer?

💡 Recreate the 2014 Lisbon Final in ZoneBoard Test your defensive setup or design the ultimate late-game attack on ZoneBoard.

Approximate shape

Historical positions are illustrative, not tracking data.

👉 Leer este artículo en Español

Rebuild the 2014 Final in ZoneBoard

Open ZoneBoard

Copy and paste this roster text into ZoneBoard to instantly load the full squad (Starting XI + Bench):

Real Madrid
1,Casillas
15,Carvajal
2,Varane
4,Sergio_Ramos
5,Coentrão
6,Khedira
19,Modrić
22,Di_María
11,Bale
9,Benzema
7,Ronaldo
25,López
3,Pepe
12,Marcelo
17,Arbeloa
23,Isco
24,Illarramendi
21,Morata

Atlético Madrid
13,Courtois
20,Juanfran
23,Miranda
2,Godín
3,Filipe_Luís
8,Raúl_García
14,Gabi
5,Tiago
6,Koke
19,Diego_Costa
9,David_Villa
1,Aranzubia
12,Alderweireld
4,Mario Suárez
11,Cristian Rodríguez
21,Diego
24,Sosa
7,Adrián

UEFA Champions League Final 2004-2005
May 25, 2005. Atatürk Olympic Stadium, Istanbul.

Milan were three goals up at half-time.
Then Dietmar Hamann came on.
Liverpool changed shape. Gerrard moved into a more advanced role.

Fifteen minutes later, it was 3–3.
Look at the two boards.

Kick-Off

The Half-Time Shift

Second Half

What’s Your Move?

You’re 0–3 down at half-time.
You can make ONE change. What do you move?

A player.
A position.
A line.

Show us your board.

We all remember Istanbul.
The comeback. The noise. The penalties.
But look at the pitch.
Two boards. One change. A different game.

💡 Want to build your own 2005 Istanbul board?
Build your own 2005 Istanbul board in ZoneBoard.

Open ZoneBoard

Approximate shape

Historical positions are illustrative, not tracking data.

Rebuild the 2005 Final in ZoneBoard

Copy and paste this roster text into ZoneBoard to instantly load the full squad (Starting XI + Bench):

Liverpool
1,Dudek
3,Finnan
4,Hyypiä
5,Baroš
6,John_Arne_Riise
7,Kewell
8,Gerrard
10,Luis_García
14,Xabi_Alonso
21,Traoré
23,Carragher
20,Carson
9,Cissé
11,Šmicer
16,Hamann
17,Josemi
18,Núñez
25,Bišćan

Milan
1,Dida
2,Cafu
3,Maldini
7,Shevchenko
8,Gattuso
11,Crespo
13,Nesta
20,Seedorf
21,Pirlo
22,Kaká
31,Stam
46,Abbiati
10,Rui_Costa
15,Tomasson
27,Serginho
4,Kaladze
5,Costacurta
24,Dhorasoo

„Schau mal auf den Sechser.“

Dann verschiebst du einen Spieler. Noch einen. Vielleicht die Viererkette etwas nach hinten. Du willst kurz zeigen, was im Halbraum passiert – und plötzlich ist die Hälfte des Bildschirms mit Menüs, Buttons und irgendwelchen Leisten voll.

Nicht gerade das, worauf deine Zuschauer schauen sollen.

Und wenn nebenbei OBS läuft, der Chat offen ist, Alerts reinfliegen und irgendwo noch ein Browser-Tab mit dem Spiel offen ist, braucht man auch kein Taktik-Board, das daraus einen kleinen Belastungstest für den Rechner macht.

Wir fanden: Das kann einfacher sein.

Deshalb haben wir ZoneBoard gebaut.

Kein großes Analyse-System. Keine Sammlung von 300 Funktionen. Einfach ein Spielfeld, auf dem du zeigen kannst, was du gerade meinst.

Die Spieler dahin ziehen, wo du sie haben willst. Eine Bewegung zeigen. Eine Linie zeichnen. Kurz erklären, warum die Restverteidigung so steht oder warum der gegnerische Achter ständig im Halbraum auftaucht.

Und danach wieder weg damit.

Das Spielfeld soll im Mittelpunkt stehen – nicht das Werkzeug.

Das war für uns der wichtigste Punkt: Wenn du im Stream eine taktische Idee erklärst, sollen die Zuschauer die Idee sehen. Nicht deine Benutzeroberfläche.

Darum verschwindet die Bedienung weitgehend aus dem Bild, sobald du sie nicht brauchst. ZoneBoard ist für den Moment gedacht, in dem du mitten in einer Diskussion sagst: „Warte. Ich zeig dir kurz, was hier passiert.“

Und ja: Du musst dich nicht erst registrieren.

Kein Account. Keine Mailadresse. Kein Login.

Du öffnest ZoneBoard im Browser und legst los.

Auch deine Daten müssen dafür nicht irgendwohin geschickt werden. ZoneBoard läuft lokal im Browser. Es gibt keinen Server, auf dem deine Boards darauf warten, irgendwann wieder abgeholt zu werden.

Das ist nicht nur eine Datenschutz-Aussage. Es macht das Tool auch angenehm unkompliziert.

Tab auf. Taktik erklären. Tab zu.

Und wenn du streamst, gilt dasselbe Prinzip für die Performance: OBS darf laufen, der Chat darf laufen, die Alerts dürfen laufen. Das Board soll sich dabei nicht in den Mittelpunkt drängen.

Eigentlich sollte ein Taktik-Board genau das Gegenteil tun.

Denn am Ende geht es nicht um das Board.

Es geht um die Szene, die du gerade erklären willst.

Um den Innenverteidiger, der einen Schritt zu spät rausrückt. Um den Sechser, der den Passweg nicht schließt. Um den freien Halbraum. Um Gegenpressing, das funktioniert – oder eben überhaupt nicht.

ZoneBoard ist einfach dafür da, diese Dinge sichtbar zu machen.

Wenn du Fußball nicht nur schaust, sondern ständig dabei bist zu erklären, warum etwas passiert, kannst du es hier ausprobieren:

ZoneBoard öffnen

Und wenn dich interessiert, wie wir über Fußball, Taktik und die Werkzeuge dahinter nachdenken, kannst du den Newsletter abonnieren.

We got fed up with it.

So we built ZoneBoard. A proper, browser-based tactics board that actually respects the way people make football content in 2026. Pitch first. Everything else second.

The tools sit quietly out of the way. Your audience sees the analysis, not a control panel. It runs local-first, so it stays smooth even when you’re juggling chat, alerts and a full graphics package. No account. No login. Open the tab and you’re away.

That’s it, really. Built for the lot of you who spend your evenings talking half-spaces, build-up patterns and why the gaffer keeps dropping the same lad into the wrong channel. YouTubers, Substack writers, Twitch streamers — anyone trying to show rather than just talk.

Try ZoneBoard for Free