Football’s First Defender

Klopp is a coach who advocates offense very much in his bones, otherwise he would not lead the Hornets that shocked the European arena, allowing Dortmund to play a good-looking "Youth Storm" all year round.

Regarding the understanding of offense, although in Klopp's tactical philosophy, it is not like Barcelona's pass-and-control team, which pursues the ultimate and incorporates the goalkeeper into the pass-and-control system.

However, in terms of offensive exploration in other positions, Klopp still has to achieve the ultimate offensive end.

Needless to say, the position of full-back.

In the tactical concept of modern football, the value of the offensive ability to the full-back is actually more important than the defensive end.

Don't you see that in the transfer market, full-backs with excellent offensive ability are all priceless?

It is very difficult for a team, in the two full-back positions, to gather world-class offensive full-backs like Real Madrid.

That not only requires money, but also requires the transfer department to be able to recognize the pearls and discover potential players in advance.

Because when the full-back is really worthy, especially if he is a full-back in a wealthy family, he can't dig it if he wants to.

Marcelo, Carvajal, and even Coentrao on the bench were all in Real Madrid's lineup early on. In terms of personnel reserves, Real Madrid is willing to "spend money".

For the players of their own youth training system, they would rather pay some transfer fees, but also rent them out, prepare to play them back in the future, or sell the players at a slightly lower price, and then set a priority purchase option in the contract.

For a player like Marcelo, when he was young, Real Madrid was optimistic about his potential, bought it directly at a high price, and put it in the first team to grow slowly.

Although some people couldn't play well and made Real Madrid spend a lot of money, but in terms of the final return, at least Real Madrid has never been short of people in the position of full-back.

For Klopp, purely in the position of full-back, he is actually very envious of Real Madrid's reserves.

If you have a Marcelo in your hands, wouldn't all problems be solved?

When Klopp took over Liverpool, it may be that the three positions of full-back and goalkeeper are not to his liking.

In Klopp's heart, the players in these three positions are barely available, but they are definitely not the best option in Klopp's eyes. If there are suitable players in the transfer market, Klopp will definitely give priority to them. These three positions are staffed.

As for the goalkeeper, Mignolet has made a lot of mistakes this season. Moreover, Miliole, as a goalkeeper with a goal line, has a very prominent problem of too small defensive range in the development of current professional league tactics.

Although Klopp does not require Mignolet to have excellent passing ability, the goalkeeper's ability to attack is weak. This is a huge weakening of the empty defense in the backcourt after Klopp requires high pressure in the frontcourt.

That is to say, Liverpool has a central defender like Yang Feng with a huge defensive range and accurate judgment in front of him to protect him, so that Mignolet's weaknesses are not fully revealed.

But if the goalkeeper's defensive range can be expanded, it will be a huge supplement to the defense of Yang Feng and others, and Yang Feng can also share more defensive energy in front.

Although they won the first game repressively, the weaknesses of the starting two full-backs, Moreno and Klein, are still very obvious.

Norwich just has limited player strength and cannot complete the targeting of Liverpool's two full-backs.

However, Moreno's body is weak, and Klopp is very worried about whether he can guarantee the safety of the team's two wings when facing stronger opponents.

It's just that these positions are now scarce talents in the football world. There are really good players who "float" into the transfer market, and they are all there with high prices and are snapped up by many giants.

Klopp is now in these positions, in order to quickly find players to supplement, he can only find some non-hot players, or find out if there are any players he likes from Liverpool's own youth training system.

For the highly competitive Premier League, if you want to stabilize your defense in a strong matchup, you can only control the offensive level of the full-backs, but this is also a big loss for the construction of the entire team's offense.

How to decide whether to let the full-back players participate more in offense or defense.

Originally, Klopp was still struggling with how to use the current lineup to fight a strong matchup.

Is it the main offense to hurt each other, or the main defense, sacrificing a certain amount of their own side attack ability.

But now, suddenly discovering Yang Feng's stable long pass ability in the game, Klopp found a better solution.

In the final analysis, if the full-back wants to take the defense into account, he must at most only have one person in the front, and there must be someone behind to stay in the position.

Then it will actually make Liverpool's frontcourt attack line less people, which will affect Liverpool's offensive launch waves.

However, as a central defender, Yang Feng, who did not appear in positional battles in the past, can be positioned higher, even five to ten meters earlier, and can rely on his long-passing ability to act as an organizational midfielder if.

Then, with Yang Feng in the rear to dispatch the pass, Liverpool's midfielder can completely save a candidate for personnel dispatch in the middle.

In fact, among Klopp's own three midfielders, Henderson and Milner, who are lagging behind, are not so good at scheduling long passes. Carrying out and Nong Gong going forward are players who are good at going forward to find opportunities.

It's just that for the overall offensive effect of the team, it is still necessary to keep people in the middle for simple handling and transfer of the ball.

This also makes Henderson and Milner can only attack forward in turn, unable to create threats at the same time.

This is actually a waste of offensive resources.

Now, if Yang Feng can be allowed to complete the previous defensive tasks on the defensive end as a central defender, but on the offensive end, he can play as an organizational midfielder in charge of the team's pass scheduling, then it will be of great help to Liverpool's offense .

In this way, Henderson and Milner's comprehensive offensive ability can be liberated at the same time, and in fact, it also compensates for the weakening of the forward penetration of the full-back.

Even when the game situation is not conducive to Liverpool, when the team needs to attack, with Yang Feng participating in the attack, and the two full-backs attacking at the same time, Liverpool's upper limit of offensive strength will be further improved.

Of course, changing Yang Feng's position will definitely not happen overnight.

Playing as a central defender when defending and a defensive midfielder when attacking is not only a change of position, but also a test of the player's stability and ability to handle the ball.

You must know that if Yang Feng moves a little earlier for the team's better offense, even if it is only 5 to 10 meters, the pressure he will receive from the opponent's defense will be completely different from when the midfielder receives the ball.

Moreover, unlike previous games, where only occasional long passes were sent on the counter-attack end, in real games, to play the role of a midfielder that Klopp expects, it is necessary to continuously send high-quality, stable long passes. For Yang Feng, this was something that he had never tried in previous games.

Under the opponent's considerable defensive pressure, he needs to receive the ball and complete the long pass transfer quickly, and also requires extremely precise placement, and all of this is done in an unfamiliar position.

For Yang Feng, this is indeed a considerable challenge.

"However! Challenges are fun, aren't they?"