Middendorp’s tactics at Chiefs

In early December last year, Kaaizer Chiefs parted waysw with Giovanni Solinaas after a run of just one win in six league matches. In came Ernst Middendorp. Two months into his second reign at Amakhosi, we look at how the German’s tactics, results and methods compare to those of his predecessor. How Solinas worked

The highly-qualified Italian coach had a decent start to life at Kaizer Chiefs. On October 1, after three Absa Premiership wins in a row, his stats compared to his predecessor, Steve Komphela were impressive. The Soweto giants were having more possession, 33.2 more passes and 17.5 more passes in the final third at that point compared to Komphela’s final season in charge.

The Italian coach stuck firmly to a flat 4- 4- 2 formation with two wide players and two strikers, plus Siphelele Ntshangase in a two- man midfield. This left a broken team with five players to attack and five to defend. In a recent interview, Daniel Cardoso explained that Solinas used to have the players “on the training ground for three hours running against mannequins”. This is referred to as pattern play, something many Italian coaches favour to work on choreographed movements with high repetitions. This is fairly quick to implement and the players often show an early improvement in playing style. However, once opponents study you and can predict your movements, results tend to suffer. An ideal example of this was in Chiefs’ 1-0 defeat to Polokwane City in October. They had 61.5% possession that day, but had only nine shots all game as Jozef Vukusic’s team sat off and blocked passing lanes.

These types of training can often get repetitive for the players, and because much of it is unchallenged, it is not always easy to transfer into a game against opponents and under pressure.

Tactically, Solinas initially played a very attacking game with plenty of freedom for his attacking players. In early October, he compared Khama Billiat to Lionel Messi by saying, “Barcelona have 10 players and Messi. Kaizer Chiefs have 10 players and Billiat.” The Zimbabwean was given complete license to attack with no real defensive duties and he responded with six goals and four assists in his first 14 games under the coach. In the wide areas, Dumisani Zuma was regularly on one flank and Bernard Parker on the other, and neither tracked back to protect their fullbacks. Teams like Bidvest Wits and Golden Arrows absolutely destroyed Chiefs on the counter-attack. Wits had just 38.9% of the ball against Solinas’ charges, inviting them to attack and then picking them off on transitions. Once results started turning against the coach, he dropped Ntshangase and brought George Maluleka back into the side. As pressure grew on the coach after losing to Orlando Pirates in October by trying to press high, he changed tactics completely for a second Soweto Derby in the Telkom Knockout and played very defensively instead. The Naturena-based outfit lost anyway. Opponents had easily figured out how to stop them and Chiefs felt they needed to act before the season became a complete write-off.

On the evidence of his spells at Free State Stars and at Chiefs, Solinas is a good coach for a smaller side where his patterns of play can improve average players. At Amakhosi, a coach is needed that can introduce clear principles of play that players then execute based on situational decision-making.

HOW THEIR RESULTS COMPARE

If we look at a basic overview of the key stats, we can see how Middendorp compares so far to his predecessor, Solinas. SOLINAS MIDDENDORP 14 League Games 8 1.29 Points Per Game 1.75 1.14 Goals scored 1.5 0.93 Goals Conceded 1.13 12.93 Shots 12 11 Shots Conceded 10.5 54.41% Possession 51.01% 18 Total Points 14 Looking at the above stats, we get a good picture of the improvements under the new coach. In league action, Middendorp is taking 1.75 points per game compared to Solinas’ 1.29. This is despite the very difficult fixture list that the German coach started with. Both coaches faced Cape Town City, Mamelodi Sundowns, Bidvest Wits and Orlando Pirates. However, Middendorp has already also faced SuperSport United and has been in charge for six fewer games. With eight games left this season, Chiefs don’t face any of the top four again. This shows that the new coach has had something of a baptism of fire with all of the other top five sides to face in his first six league games in charge, but he now has a more favourable set of fixtures ahead. Amakhosi are scoring more goals per game under Middendorp (1.5 to 1.14) thanks to their three-goal haul against Highlands Park, despite being without Billiat and Manyama in that game. The Soweto giants are scoring more goals even though they are having fewer shots per game (12.93 to 12), but this is unsurprising considering the big teams they have faced. Defensively, the side are conceding slightly more goals under Middendorp, but that is unsurprising with Khune out injured and such a tough fixture list to contend with. If the three goalkeeping howlers were removed, Chiefs would have a much better defensive record than under Solinas. They are conceding less shots per game now than under the Italian coach.

What Middendorp changed Training:

The first clear change in Chiefs is that they now play at a much greater intensity. Ernst Middendorp is famed as a coach who preaches intensity in training with lots of small-sides conditioning games. Like any coach, he has certain movements he prefers from his players and particular areas he wants them to position themselves, so there is naturally a degree of pattern play. However, this is tempered by exercises to improve decision-making under pressure in small spaces.

Middendorp’s tactics

Since taking over, the former Maritzburg United mentor has made some changes to how the team plays. Firstly, he has used three genuine central midfielders in every game besides the Soweto Derby, where he used a flat 4-4-2. These three midfielders feature one deeper man to assist the build-up, with two players to the sides who look to help defend in wide positions, press the opponents’ deepest two midfielders, and look to find space between the lines. That deeper man has to be able to break lines with his passing and Maluleka is therefore the coach’s ideal man for that position. He played as the “number six” against SuperSport, Wits, Sundowns and Pirates as Katsande was either missing, dropped or used in defence.

Middendorp will usually mix and match personnel around that midfield triangle – either by playing a fourth player centrally to form a midfield diamond or by using a back three with wingbacks. The coach has predominantly used three formations:

3-5-2: This shape has very attacking wingbacks who look to drive the opposition’s wingers into defensive areas. If they go forward untracked, then the opposition’s fullbacks need to deal with them and that creates a nice two versus two in the middle for Billiat and Leonardo Castro to exploit. If the opposition’s wingers do drop back, then they often end up in a back six and can’t threaten Chiefs a great deal. The two forwards tend to be “split”. That means that they each occupy the space between a central defender and a fullback, a static zone referred to as the half-space.

4-3-1-2: A midfield diamond gives Chiefs control over the central areas and, with a pure number 10 behind the front two, it gives the opposition defensive midfielder a real headache to make sure he does not leave his two central defenders to face three players centrally. Once again, the width in this shape comes largely from the fullbacks overlapping, but the two side shuttlers are also expected to move wider at times, and they have a tough task to track the fullbacks from the other side if play is on their flank. If the ball is on the left

flank, for example, expect the entire midfield four to shift over and leave the right flank unguarded. This can be exposed with a quick switch. This rarely happens though, because teams are outnumbered from behind, the side and in front and give the ball away.

4-3-3: This is often a formation used for the second half of games. A wingback comes off, one of the three central defenders plays as a stay-at-home fullback ( Teenage Hadebe often does this job at left back), and two wide forwards are used. With no top-class wingers at Chiefs, Bernard Parker has become the side’s go-to man as a touchline-hugging right winger. He has performed admirably in this role and seemingly earned a new contract due to his displays.

In-game tinker man

One of the best descriptions of the tactics employed by Middendorp was made by Pitso Mosimane after Sundowns nicked a late 2-1 win thanks to Vries’ mistake:

“You know coach Middendorp is very awkward, he plays awkward football to be honest. Very good tactician. Not easy to figure him out, but at halftime we sorted it out. We changed a few things. For us it was a relief to see the left back, Godfrey Walusimbi, coming out because we had a problem with the two wingbacks, and it created a little bit of stress on our wingers to track back.”

In that game, a 3-5-2 formation was used. With Katsande dropping into a role as the third centre-back, it gave the now-departed Walusimbi and Siphosakhe Ntiya-Ntiya on the right flank real license to bomb forward. This drove Sundowns’ wingers back into their own half.

Middendorp expected Mosimane to adjust, so he went to 4-3-3 at the break to secondguess him. There has barely been a game under Middendorp where Chiefs have played the same formation for a full game. As a team starts to gain an advantage in a certain area, so the coach pushes an extra player. wide or an extra player into midfield or adds a central defender. He is constantly looking to create issues for the opponents.

Set-up vs. Pirates

In the recent Soweto Derby, Middendorp utilised another strategy. He used a flat 4-4-2 shape to spread Bucs wide and try to get Billiat isolated against a slow defence. He also decided that he could not dominate midfield if danger men Vincent Pule and Thembinkosi Lorch were playing between the lines and finding space. His solution was to do a man-marking job on those players, particularly when Pirates were looking to play on transitions. If Bucs were breaking, Kgotso Moleko and Ntiya-Ntiya would track the dangerous Pirates duo. Moleko did a great job in nullifying Pule, whilst Lorch was kept quiet for most of the game before a late run saw him open Chiefs up to equalise.

Middendorp used four different formations in that game, but perhaps brought on Katsande too early and handed the initiative to Bucs. In fairness, the logic behind the alteration seemed sensible as Milutin Sredojevic’s side had added extra attacking players from the bench.