I’ve always wanted to like John van ’t Schip. His dulcet Dutch tones, the nice suits, the glowing tan – irrespective of a Melbourne winter. And yet over four seasons across two stints, his Melbourne City have like their fellow Victorian in the famous Keating barb, often looked “all tip, no iceberg”.
Fast forward to 2015, and with four new transfers this January, City are once again a work in progress; but credit where credit is due – the Dutchman has done what very few in the A-League have done, and shown a way to neutralise the side he considers “the best footballing team in the league”.
It may have come in for considerable stick from the half-time pundits, but the fact is Van ’t Schip’s drastically remodelled 5-2-2-1 was crucial in giving City a path to victory in this game.
It’s a common debate in football: do you play to the personnel or do you play to a set tactical system? Someone like Kenny Lowe gets the most out of his squad, modulating his structure to match his best available XI, whereas Tony Popovic will often allow quality players to ride the pine, if they don’t suit his 4-2-3-1 tactical formation.
Here Van ’t Schip has done well to fashion both a formation that plays to his individual XI’s best qualities, but also, and more importantly, neutralises Adelaide’s greatest attacking threats.
Call it a 5-2-2-1 defensively that morphed into a 3-4-3 in attack, City’s first-half formation offered three critical tactical advantages: it pinned back Adelaide’s wide forwards, thus isolating Bruce Djite up front; it provided cover for the late runs of danger-men Marcelo Carrusca and Sergio Cirio; and it allowed Melbourne’s own playmakers, Aaron Mooy and Robbie Koren, to operate in a “dual-10s” role.
1. Occupy Adelaide’s wide forwards with defensive work
The general wisdom holds that if full-backs get forward, opposition wingers are expected to track them back. When you ask your wide-backs to “bomb on” though, the risk is you leave yourself exposed on the counter-attack; just ask the Melbourne City of the Hoffman/Ramsay/Garuccio/Germano days.
With Adelaide playing a 4-3-3, with Djite as a lone striker, and City starting with five at the back, there are effectively two spares – should Jack Clisby and Safuwan Baharudin push high and then City lose possession, the centre-halves Patrick Kisnorbo and Connor Chapman are able to slide wide, and provide effective cover.
With both Mooy and Koren, and Erik Paartalu and Massimo Murdocca playing very centrally, Melbourne’s two wing-backs had tremendous space to exploit wide, as they did across the opening 30 minutes. In fact, in the time that Adelaide had failed to create a scoring chance of note, left wing-back Clisby had had no fewer than four shooting chances as he combined excellently with Mooy. In a team boasting the threats of Josh Kennedy, Koren and Mooy, not even Josep Gombau could have expected that City’s greatest attacking threat would come from the former Perth Glory offcut.
2. Stop the ‘Killer Cs’
While the all-conquering Brisbane Roar boasted the “Killer Bs” of Broich and Berisha, Adelaide offers its own star combination in Carrusca and Cirio, especially when the latter is played centrally, as he did here. With nine assists between them, John van ’t Schip was eager to limit the space on the ball for Adelaide’s gifted playmakers. If Paartalu or Murdocca were caught further up-field, any one of City’s three centre-backs would race out of the line to press the Adelaide duo.
It was a conscious and effective tactic from the Dutchman, with Carrusca especially starved of service – and as he and Cirio pushed further forward or wide to find space, it left too big a distance in midfield, between them and the holding midfield Jimmy Jeggo, who was filling in for the sorely-missed Isaias.
3. Get your own playmakers on the ball in dangerous areas
With both Mooy and Koren leading City’s press, once this first line of defence was breached the two attacking midfielders could look to drop either side of Jeggo to provide key outlets in transition. As highlighted, on countless occasions the combination of Mooy and Clisby proved dangerous, but with Tarek Elrich driving into midfield (as Gombau likes to instruct his centre-backs to do), it often enabled Koren and Mooy to probe space around an isolated solitary Adelaide United centre-back.
While Koren was relatively subdued, Mooy was instrumental – as he has been all season for City – providing seven key passes into the box (the next best on field at that stage was two) – and providing the attacking impetus to keep Adelaide on the back foot.
For all this, however, it was Adelaide who took the lead. Having been bested for the opening half an hour, Adelaide conjured something from nothing through the trickery of Cirio and Pablo Sanchez – aided by mental, if not physical, fatigue from the City defenders from a demanding tactical system.
If you ever wanted to see the importance of psychology in football, go back and watch the final 15 minutes of this first half. With no tactical adjustments, City go from a team in full control, to a defensive unit at sixes and sevens.
As Van ’t Schip confirmed post game – the half-time tactical adjustment wasn’t a concession that his bold strategy didn’t work; it was a forced change, due to the psychological blow that City had once again dominated and opponent, but found themselves trailing.
“When they made the goal,” he stated, “you could see we lost a bit the control. They started dominating and you could see the confidence was dropping. So we had to change at half-time and get Willo back.”
Reverting to a more traditional 4-3-3 in the second half, City found great joy on the right flank through the fresh legs of David Williams.
Whilst all three goals came under this tactical formation, for the opening five or so minutes of the second half, City looked second best, as freed from their additional markers, Carrusca and Cirio found more space in front of the Melbourne backline.
With Williams’s energy came a set piece, excellently finished by Baharudin for Melbourne’s equaliser, and the confidence so sorely missing from the 30th minute came swelling back. Throw in an excellent cross from Koren to find Kennedy and inside five minutes City had the momentum to push on.
Adelaide fans leaving the stadium may have reflected that both Awer Mabil and Carrusca had off days – but this misses the fact that both were specifically targeted in the tactics of Van ’t Schip. That both ended the game with bookings for petulance and were substituted early spoke volumes to their respective frustrations in being starved of possession for most of the first half.
Over the last year, City have only once won back to back games. Whether Van ’t Schip can harness the confidence from this impressive victory will be decisive in Melbourne’s finals chances.
