Football fans, and especially Ligue 1 fans, will have noticed that the last few seasons have been conducive to the use of three axial defenders schemes. At first glance, one might think that the transition to a three-way defense would cost more to the full-backs and other wingers transformed, without warning, into pistons.
More intense participation in the attack, sometimes in the game when they are asked to return to the axis, energy-hungry defensive returns to recompose a defense to five the loss of the ball … The reconversion in piston does not always happen without some losses benchmarks. As evidenced by the difficulties of Benjamin Pavard to get used to this position in Blue.
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Yet these 2.0 laterals are not the only ones to suffer from what they can experience as a (small) tactical revolution. For central defenders, the transition is not always easy. This Saturday, it is an unrecognizable Loïc Badé with Rennes who finds Lens where he shone in the heart of a three-way defense. At first glance, however, the job doesn’t seem so different. So what problems can this change pose?
There are players who are struggling
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For Nicolas Gillet, central defender past, among others, by Nantes and Lens, it is above all a question of adaptation. Because if “tactically, it’s necessarily a little different, overall the content remains the same. (…) However, there are players who find it difficult to come to terms with this change“, he assures us.
He who knew the defense to three, including a memory vivid in the Champions League with Nantes in 2001 against Lazio of Rome (victory 1-0), never had the impression of really undergoing this tactical change: “I had to adapt a bit by starting to do it but it was not day and night between the two systems”.
A duel between Nicolas Gillet and Pauleta, during the Bordeaux-Nantes of 2001-02.
Credit: Eurosport
“In the way we trained at the time in Nantes, we apprehended a lot of positions and ways of playing. We were led in training to develop qualities to understand all situations in a match”, Adds the former Canary. Without this ability to adapt, a player’s tactical baggage becomes fragile in the face of a new system.
Nicolas Gillet was particularly marked by an unusual management of the width: “With Nantes we had Sylvain Armand on the left piston and Frédéric Da Rocha on the right, both very much forward. We found ourselves in the corridors with a lot of space to manage, it was sometimes difficult”. Another particularity, the duels. “It’s a bit disturbing because we find ourselves, playing three, without a direct opponent in his zone. It can be embarrassing for those who like the contact”Adds the ex-Lensois.
Fear of change?
For defenders familiar with the art of four-man defense and who have only benefited from this approach in their training or career, the barrier to moving to three can be quite simply mental. Oswald Tanchot, coach passed through the benches of Le Havre and Amiens, has already switched from one system to another several times in his career. “Many players of a certain generation have always played four behind. When we told them ‘we’re going to three’ they were already afraid before they hurt”He observed.
Oswald Tanchot, Le Havre trainer.
Credit: Getty Images
He who began his playing career in 1990, agrees: “I knew a time with players who said ‘I don’t play three, I don’t know how to do it‘”. Quite a lot of work to do in training, therefore, and not necessarily tactical. For a player to be comfortable, he must be accustomed to uncertainty, to change.”When we are used to switching from one to the other, I think we have great self-confidence and great wealth, entrusts the former Picardy trainer. A professional player must be able to play in both”.
Also a question of profile
Even with players with a high football IQ who are able to adapt, the move to three behind is not a magic formula. Nicolas Gillet reminds us: “It depends on the profiles. There are players who find it difficult to adapt to this”, And it is not for nothing.
It is first necessary to differentiate the more “modern” three-way fenders from the “traditional” ones. The latter are more often than not a compact row of fives with sidelites that go up little, if at all. “Barça de Cruyff who played three behind with protagonist football and Germany in the 90s with two stopper and a libero were two very different things”Professes Tanchot. For a more recent example, Jorge Sampaoli’s 3-5-2 at OM differs from the three centers that Michel Der Zakarian could field in Montpellier.
In the formations with three defenders, able to take an offensive accent, which flourish in recent years in Ligue 1, we first need fast and mobile defenders. “When we have pistons which behave like eccentric mediums, analyse Oswald Tanchot, defenders will have more space to cover in width and depth”. Hence the ease that some full-backs play the roles of central defender in this system, such as Azpilicueta with Chelsea.
César Azpilicueta
Credit: Getty Images
It is also a question of belief against which it is necessary to fight among the players, tempers all the same the ex-Amiénois. When we defend with two central, when a side is beaten in his back, the axial finds himself defending in large spaces”.
Increased participation in the game
In addition to speed, the defender who finds himself in a line of three must exhibit all the characteristics of the modern defensive player. Including technical quality. Nicolas Gillet has found himself several times in the position of an eccentric central defender, on the right and on the left, and remembers a new responsibility in the emergence of the ball.
“The exit door is often one of the two off-center central defenders. If there is no de facto lag from these players, the game can become sterile.”He warns. “These third right or left axis defenders can even come to animate the width, to pose problems to the opponent in his pressing.”Adds Oswald Tanchot.
Defenders bringing together more or less these characteristics, within three axial formations, exist. Players like Antonio Rüdiger at Chelsea or even William Saliba at OM shine in part thanks to these systems. Fast, mobile, technical and able to adapt: the perfect defender for a three-way hinge is ultimately a perfect defender, period.
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