“How we remedy issues will depend on if we play towards a man-marking workforce or an entire zonal workforce,” mentioned Matos.
“If you play towards an entire zonal workforce, crucial factor is that you simply perceive that it’s essential to transfer them. By shifting the opposition, you create areas, you create a free participant.”
A lot of the historic success of positional play has been underpinned by that very same concept – discovering the free participant.
Towards zonal defences, an attacker can occupy a spot between opponents and change into a free, unmarked participant. If a defender comes throughout to mark him, they threat leaving one other attacker unmarked elsewhere.
However the rise in man-to-man stress lately presents a special problem. With defenders following particular person opponents, the free participant can stop to exist altogether.
To resolve this downside, Matos has drawn on his time in China for solutions.
“In China, I understood that to reach at a extra positional recreation, you can have completely different steps beforehand,” he mentioned.
“There’s a profit to having extra gamers shut to one another, quite than spreading them over area.
“When you unfold them over area, you’re demanding that, technically, they’ll remedy many conditions one-v-one. If they arrive nearer to the ball, you possibly can generate extra prospects. You may create a tempo that permits different gamers to be higher within the huge areas.”
It’s distinctive type of play however these overloads have given Swansea additional options across the ball, serving to disorganise each zonal and man-marking techniques.
Matos added: “Particularly for those who play with a midfielder outdoors, you possibly can overload one facet a bit of bit extra. Let’s change the ball right here 5 instances, eight instances after which after we go, we actually go.”
