This is spot on
http://www.espnfc.com/copa-america-...2501422/copa-america-defending-miguel-delaney
Copa America provides reminders of how defending should be done
by Miguel Delaney
SANTIAGO, Chile -- At one point last season, a South American centre-back was talking to a journalist he was close to about the reasons for the progress he had made in a high-end European league.
"The success I have here is because I can actually defend," the player said. "I can't make a 30-yard pass like the guy I play beside, but I can actually tackle. I can get in their faces."
It is a reality Europe could have to face up to and that this summer's Copa America has only emphasized: many "traditional" defenders now come from South America. While that continent is producing most of the game's best ball-winners, Europe is mostly coaching ballplayers.
You have to consider only the state of the transfer market, as well as the standard of play at Chile 2015. Properly battle-hardened centre-halves like Giorgio Chiellini of Juventus and Italy are now at a premium for the European super clubs, but there is a plethora of such players at the Copa America.
Several examples played in the Group B meeting between Argentina and Uruguay. The former featured Nicolas Otamendi, Ezequiel Garay and Pablo Zabaleta, as well as Javier Mascherano and Lucas Biglia in front. Meanwhile, the latter had perhaps the best centre-half in the world -- Diego Godin -- as well as Jose Gimenez and Arevalo Rios. There was, in short, plenty of aggression.
It is little wonder that the match produced only one goal, or that the winner came from one of the most excellently executed moves of the tournament, with every touch up to and including Sergio Aguero's header from Zabaleta's cross utterly perfect.
Besides that moment, both defences otherwise gave nothing away. The manner in which Garay definitively made sure he got a body part close to any loose ball in the box, or the way Godin threw everything into an aerial challenge, reminded of perhaps the peak defensive performance of the last decade: Fabio Cannavaro in the 2006 World Cup.
Throughout that tournament, the Italian captain radiated the feeling he would just do whatever was required to get any kind of disruptive touch on the ball. The key was that any forward would have as a difficult a job as possible to score. It seemed almost a matter of obsession, his root motivation on the pitch. Very little would be offered up for free.
It is an attitude increasingly absent from the European game. In the Champions League last season, there were 1.7 errors per game leading to a shot or goal, according to WhoScored. During the Copa America group stage, the number was at just 0.94.
The reality was perhaps best displayed in Brazil's 1-0 defeat to Colombia. Manager Dunga's side totally ran out of ideas and resorted to endless crosses, but there never seemed any danger of a Colombian responding with the kind of loose header of which even defenders as accomplished as Raphael Varane and Mats Hummels have been guilty.
Unlike Cannavaro and Otamendi, whose beard adds to his look of intimidation, a greater number of European defenders seem primarily charged with proactive play and bringing the ball out of defence.
Much of this might be the flip side -- and possible consequence -- of Arsene Wenger's suggestion from last season that South America is also the "only continent to develop strikers today".
The Arsenal manager
told the Wall Street Journal in September that European coaching's move toward universal technical qualities has meant the loss of more specific positional traits, which are often reliant on hard experience and honing intuitions.
UEFA countries, Wenger argued, are no longer offering "guys who get in the box and will score that 90th-minute diving header, even if it means putting their heads into the post. It doesn't exist anymore."
Wenger elaborated on why that might be the case in a news conference later in the season.
"Maybe in our history -- street football has gone. In street football, when you are a 10-year-old, you play with 15-year-olds so you have to be shrewd, you have to show that you are good. You have to fight to win impossible balls. When it is all a bit more formulated, then it is less about developing your individual skill, your fighting attitude. We have lost that a little bit in football."
The South American strikers Wenger described are what South American defenders first play against, and many of them display same traits, including the Godin-esque "putting their heads into the post", that "shrewdness", that "fighting attitude." It all leads to fewer errors and to a harder time for forwards.
It's difficult not to pin the erosion of defending in Europe on more sanitised and homogenised coaching, and it is a point
Gary Neville argued in October.
"With old school coaches, 60-70 per cent of your training ground work would be defensive," Neville wrote. "Where your foot would be, the position of your hips, how often you would have to turn your head to avoid ball-watching.
"I started off with a high defensive base. Players now are starting out with a high technical grounding and learn the defending later. My era of men who retired around 2009-2010 were the last crop of predominantly defensively-trained players. Coaching has shot off in another direction, towards the technical. I've had that confirmed by people at academies. The technical and attacking work is now around 80 per cent with 20 per cent reserved for defensive skills.
