[ad_1]
After six penalties and six World Cup eliminations (1990, 1998 and 2006) and the Euro (1996, 2004 and 2012), England has finally , defeated the Indian sign to win against Colombia and qualify for the quarter-finals of the Russian World Cup. An incredible relief for the English who could not take any more to have to take a flight for London without having been beaten in the regulation time. It was worth a few pitchers thrown in the air …
Some would say that a penalty shoot-out is just a lottery but the English coach Gareth Southgate does not agree. Twenty-two years ago, he missed the decisive penalty, eliminating his team in the semifinals of the Euro at home against the Germans. "I had two decades to think about it. It's not a question of luck. It's about making a gesture under pressure. There are things you can work on, things that can be useful for player preparation. " In a Guardian article.
After overcoming this trauma, the British retained the lessons from the past because to prepare his band for the World Cup, Southgate left nothing to chance. The English never stopped training in this exercise by multiplying the shots, studying the dives of the opposing goalkeepers, choosing in advance the names of the five shooters. The technical director of the British federation, Dan Ashworth, has even commissioned a study on shootouts. Thanks to this, he discovered that the British were starting faster than other nations after the whistle of the referee. The staff invited the shooters to imitate the patient Cristiano Ronaldo
Southgate, which the English media presents as "intelligent" "creative" "curious" "meticulous" ] or "Sensitive", also organized mini-golf competitions at rallies at the hotel. Team games of five, during which the players had the right to deconcentrate their opponents to make them crack. This is not the only sport that the English technician used.
The arrested phases: the NBA
Southgate also quickly understood the importance of working the kicks stopped and more precisely in the part of a major international competition. The staff once again relied on the statistics by calculating that 11% of goals had, for example, been registered following a corner at the last World Cup. On this type of phase, he noted the effectiveness of the last two teams holding the trophy.
" Spain and Germany have a fabulous game but when you look at how many goals they have or in the case of Spain, how much they conceded on kicks-it is a parameter that certainly played a key role in their success ", argued in a podcast of the BBC
To improve the ratio of his team, the former English international went draw on the basketball side. And to be inspired, what's better than the NBA? On the other side of the Atlantic, he witnessed an opposition between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the New Orleans Pelicans. He especially took the opportunity to meet Glen Taylor, the owner of the first franchise cited, to ask him for advice on how players found spaces on the field or used the screens to mark.
A technique that his players used to open the scoring against Panama. A Wall Street Journal article shows how Ashley Young managed to block a defender to free up space so his teammate John Stones could score.
Southgate's work on these set pieces seems to have worked since the Three Lions have scored four goals in either a free kick or a corner since the start of the competition. . In defense, on the other hand, we can not say as much. In the knockout stages, Colombia scored on the first corner conceded by the English.
Communication: the NFL
A big fan of American football since the 1980s, the English coach has twice attended the Super Bowl. In the USA, he visited several clubs: Seattle Seahawks, Minnesota Vikings and New England Patriots.
If he's immersed himself in the NFL's very pro environment, it's mainly to copy the way they manage communication.
" I think that sometimes, during major tournaments, the relationship between our players and the media has been a bit of a conflict. The Super Bowl seems very open, much more relaxed, there seems to be a lot more respect between people ", he analyzed on Sky News.
To lighten the media pressure before to go to Russia, the English coach gathered his twenty-three players in a gym in St. George's Park, the local Clairefontaine. His goal: to organize a kind of " speed-dating media " . On the spot and for forty-five minutes, the players responded individually to the press and there were no questions banned or oppressive press to control what was said.
" This was certainly the most relaxed environment in which the team never spoke, wrote a Telegraph reporter. It is a long way from the time when Joe Hart refused to talk about the team's darts tournaments during a miserable Euro 2016 campaign. »
The fighting spirit: the rugby
To remobilise his troops precisely after the slap received two years ago against a country of 330,000 inhabitants, the English technician wished to meet Eddie Jones, his counterpart in rugby. Interesting to the extent that the latter managed to revive the XV of the Rose after the debacle of the World Cup 2015. Jones had, as a reminder, managed the feat of winning in the aftermath of this failure, the first Grand Slam since 2003.
To inculcate this culture of winning, Southgate did everything to emulate the philosophy of the win of the All Blacks . For this, he has engaged the services of two men. First, the mental coach Gilbert Enoka who had introduced the "no dickheads policy" in the group to weld them and avoid conflicts. Southgate also worked with Owen Eastwood, a consultant on team building, who also worked with New Zealand rugby players.
This "guru" is known to have successfully galvanized the Blacks before a victory at Twickenham, telling the story of Andrew White, a former international who had survived four battles of the First World War before rebuilding his life around rugby. A seven-minute video was produced this year by the staff to show the British the necessary efforts to achieve to get their finger on success.
The English coach is open and does not look rancorous either, since In addition to incorporating his penalty against the Germans in this little clip, he concluded a memorandum with the German federation so that the Teutons can let him some advice to properly approach the competition.
Source link
