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Tactical Fouling


KentVillan

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Anyone else fed up of seeing Man City (especially) use tactical fouling to stop counter attacks? The counter attack is one of the most exciting things in football, and nowadays you rarely see them, because everyone has been drilled on "taking the foul".

I don't have any issue with teams playing physical football, but there's nothing more annoying than watching a promising break just ended with an arm around the chest, or a little trip.

In the League Cup final, Man City had 70% possession, but they led the foul count by 13 - 7. I swear every time they lost possession in attack it ended with a Man City foul.

Last night I saw Mendy foul Forestieri, completely deliberately, no yellow card in a rare breakaway situation for Wednesday.

We know from the Amazon documentary that it's a drilled tactic, organised by the coaches.

IMO the only way to fix this is to have a "team foul" system which punishes the whole team for accumulated fouls. But referees also need to be trained better in understanding what a tactical foul is, because sometimes they seem completely oblivious to how important the foul was. Just drives me nuts when blatant deliberate fouls don't even merit a talking to from the ref.

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I think a foul where there is no intention to play the ball, it should always be a yellow card - regardless of the position on the pitch. So long as a yellow card is brandished, I've no problem with it. But I agree it's absolutely wrong when nothing is done.

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It's Pepe's masterclass, he's implemented it at Barca, Bayern and City.

Extremely effective as big clubs get away with it far more than a small club would.

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4 minutes ago, kurtsimonw said:

I think a foul where there is no intention to play the ball, it should always be a yellow card - regardless of the position on the pitch. So long as a yellow card is brandished, I've no problem with it. But I agree it's absolutely wrong when nothing is done.

I don't agree but i don't disagree either.

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I mean it’s not really anything new, although it may be more used now. There has always been the “taking one for the team”. Barry whilst at us was a master of it 

Edited by mikeyp102
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2 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

I mean it’s not really anything new, although it may be more used now. There has always been the “taking one for the team”. Barry whilst at us was a master of it 

It’s the way it’s used in combination with the high press that bothers me, and the coordination across the whole squad. I think it’s gone up a level. In the past I was more conscious of tactical fouls being used to deal with star players or whatever, but City put the foul in on whoever breaks with the ball, every single time. Very rarely see them concede a counter attack goal even though their style suggests that should be their main weakness.

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Every City player is instructed to do it as soon as they lose the ball. The earlier the better.

If you do it high up the pitch before the opponents get up to speed on the counter the less chance it is you get the yellow card.

It's extremely cynical and effective. And since Sterling or De Bruyne is less likely to get carded for pulling down say a Bournemouth player than vice versa it's even less risk for them.

Very high % goals in todays football are scored on the counter, they are more or less nullifying this by this tactic, and they are allowed to get away with it.

It's very entertaining to watch Pep when he is questioned about it. He does not like that at all.

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19 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

The ones when they just hack someone down and "take the booking" should be a straight red.

This all day long.
 

Unless you can be shown to be actively trying to win the ball, it should be a red card.

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2 hours ago, bobzy said:

This all day long.
 

Unless you can be shown to be actively trying to win the ball, it should be a red card.

James Milner committed a tackle, from behind, like this in the Chelsea game this week and nobody seemed to realise that it should be a straight red. In fact the commentators commended him for the foul. He completely hacked the player to the ground with a serious chance of doing harm. 

Edited by villa89
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There needs to be a widening of the interpretation of what a clearcut scoring chance is to include wide open counter attacks, even if it's still in the counter-attacking team's half.

Any cynical challenge in that situation should be a red, but again, it's absolutely the kind of thing that will be called far leniently for the likes of Man City and Liverpool.

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I think there's a big difference between bringing someone down who is in full flight running at your box to prevent a breakaway and the type of tactical foul city engage in.

On most occasions it's a yellow when you're chasing a man back and trip him, I'm fine with that. What City are able to do is play with nine men in your half because as soon as someone loses the ball, there's a hand on a shoulder or a little nudge or a pull to stop play - it's not even really designed to prevent a breakaway, it's just to stop play so that those players can get back into position - it enables them to be really bold in terms of numbers going forward - because they can "cheat" back into their defensive set up through a "gentle" foul in your half.

I guess the problem then is that these aren't dangerous challenges, they aren't meant to hurt a man and they're very unlikely to do so and as such, they don't merit a booking unless you've got one player who has done four or five - in theory the free kick is punishment enough. In practice, the free kick maybe isn't enough of a compensation for the advantage gained, but I'm not sure what you can do within the rules to change that, or how you can change the rules to punish it directly.

What I would really like to see more of is players booked for standing over that free kick, or for nudging the ball four yards away before it's taken or for carrying it away for a bit - if a player is stood in front of a free kick just a couple of yards away and not moving away from the ball and the player taking the free kick can hit him with it, he should be booked - simple as.

I think if you stopped the delaying of the free kicks you'd take away some of the positional advantage of the tactical foul and add more value to that free kick. I think the problem right now is that if they introduced that then suddenly there'd be ten bookings a game for it - but it's the only thing I can see that helps rebalance things a little.

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I hate this element to Citeh's game.

It's particularly annoying as it's taking advantage of the grey in the game. I don't think anyone has an issue with those tackles where you make a legitimate attempt to get the ball but make sure you get the man, which are usually the last ditch type and inevitably lead to a card. But Citeh don't do that usually. It's usually a 'soft' challenge, done asap, usually in the opponent's half. They escape the dangerous element, they escape the goal scoring opportunity element, but it's still cheating to get an advantage. But it's so based on the context it requires the ref to weigh the decision more than the obvious dangerous or clear goal scoring opportunity situation. So they'll usually avoid the card.

It's **** shit.

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