Tactical growth on show as Women’s Euros enters knockout stage

GENEVA: When Norway’s plan for their opening Women’s Euro clash with Switzerland was thrown into disarray by a first-half goal for the hosts, it marked the first of many occasions that coaches at the tournament have had to adjust their tactics on the fly.

At halftime in that game, Norway coach Gemma Grainger managed to get her side to calm down and change tack. They went on to win 2-1 and then topped Group A with three wins in three games to set up a quarter-final clash with Italy in Geneva on Wednesday.

“For me, the best coaches make those decisions in game. It’s easy to sit after a game, look at the video footage, look at the review and say, ‘You know, we should have done this, we should have done that’ — for me, the best coaches do that in game,” Grainger told Reuters.

Up against another master tactician in Switzerland coach Pia Sundhage, the battle of wits ebbed and flowed through the game with Grainger and the Norwegians targeting the space behind the Swiss defence and the hosts trying to hit them on the break.

“In football, I think you have to take the space that you’re given, and that was where the space was. For them, they played a direct game — I think that that was their game plan, to try and stretch us and also to build a little bit of pressure,” Grainger explained.

“When you’re dealing with long ball after long ball, you have to have high concentration, high focus. We knew that our forward players were quicker than their back-line players, so we had to get the ball in behind, but with good quality as well.”

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Communication is key when making adjustments, and though coaches trust players to solve the problems they encounter on the pitch, they are expected to do so within the tactical principles laid out in the game-plan.

“We just follow her instructions,” Norway midfield linchpin Vilde Boe Risa told Reuters when asked how much scope she and her teammates have to improvise.

“What we should change in the way we press, the way we play out, that’s not up to us, we only have to do our best while we’re out there, and deliver the game plan.”

ADVANCED TACTICS

The 30-year-old, who plays her club football at Atletico Madrid, said that the tactics in the women’s game have become much more advanced since she made her national team debut in 2016, and that teams were forever changing and adapting in order to create even a small advantage.

“People understand how we play, and they close us down quite a lot, so we end up playing quite a lot of long balls, which is not really the part of our game or how we want to play, but we just need to adapt to it,” she said.

Grainger pointed to a couple of tactical trends that she would be paying close attention to as the eight teams left in the competition head into the quarter-finals.

“If games turn into too many transitional moments as the tournament goes on, that’s certainly going to affect (their stamina),” she said.

“We know that Spain are a high-possession team … I think game by game, we could be seeing that trend evolve, but for me, for now, it’s the transitions.”

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