Lets March to Victory!

Seville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of 7 meters (23 ft) above sea level.

Put the Marks on the league Maps, because this week we are heading there for one of our most demanding battles in La liga and the gateway for the December Mini league between league table five masters, at least at the moment.

This is the type of games I like most; extremely unpredictable from a tactical prospect, Sevella is a team that has all the tools to perform almost any tactical approach you can think about.

They have a solid defense and defensive midfielders to create a closed locked game and park a train- not only a bus- in their box, but keep being a threat in counter attacks having Aderiano/Capel on the left, and Navas – aside of this game- on the right.

They can play high pressure game trying to press our guys in their own field rather than waiting them in front of Palop, and for that – added to what’s mentioned above- they have players like Renato and Romaric-if in form, without forgetting Fabiano one of the most dynamic strikers in the world, a very mean guy when he put pressure on his opponent’s ball holder – read this, pique.

Their threat? Again, I believe they have one of the best offense structures in La liga , what do you need more than solid Defensive midfielders in front of an already tested defense, then two wingers with pace and technique on the flanks, and a perfect duo of Tall lethal Kanoute and dynamic explosive Fabiano, what’s more is that they both have that scoring instinct and clinical finishing.

Their weakness: Aside of being unstable till now (Sevilla info), I think their main weakness may come from the tactical defect itself, Lately I noticed that the teams who are complicating the game mostly for Barcelona are the teams who enter the game with a “lost but with dignity” mentality, how is that?

As a coach, and when your team face a stronger opponent, you usually do your plans to complicate that opponent night, trying to get anything out of the game, so you give lot of tactical instructions for your players how to deal with each and every danger you know your stronger opponent can cause, in brief, you play to protect your face from your opponent continuous punches during the game.

But some coaches realize that this is an exhausting and inefficient approach to the games where you face not only a stronger opponent, but an opponent like Barcelona who has numerous ways to cause threat. So they feel the best way to approach the game is to prepare their team to fight more than to resist, they take some tactical decisions (defensive ones) to limit the threat as much as possible, but at the same time they don’t kill their players desire to cause damage.

In ancient military strategies there was a fixed fact called “don’t destroy the bridge”, which means, when you surround your enemy, always keep a tiny exit door for them, so they resist you with a hope that at any moment they want they still can run away for their lives thru that bridge on the river behind them, but when you ruin that bridge, you create a stronger resistance from a fierce enemy who know they are now fighting for their lives, or self dignity, not for victory.

Barcelona smashing results ruined all the bridges and thru spreading fear they boosted their opponents’ determination to stand on the way. If they lost, so what? They play against Barcelona the crusher, if they won then, Hail! Hail!

Conclusion: Sevilla performance in this game depend completely on how they will approach it, if they will be over obsessed by Barcelona strength, focusing too much on how to stop the offense tsunami coming from Catalonia, they will lose it. If I would be Manolo Jiménez, I would so much go for a broken bridge strategy, generating my players flame and playing an open game with no way to look back, and there is how I see Sevilla complicating things for their visitors, Kanoute in the box –that alone need two defenders to deal with- Fabiano running and tracking the gaps and spaces, Aderiano/Capel forcing Alves to do more defensive job than waiting him beside Navarro on the left back, Tom de Mul/Renato running the show from the right flank, incase Navas was not available.

Line up expected:

Palop (GK)- Defense: Mosquera, Squillaci ,David Prieto , Navarro on the left (unless if Sebastián Squillaci and Escudé are inform for this game), Fazio plus may be Maresca or Rinato instead of Romaric for more defensive depth, Adriano/Capel on the left, and on the right the absence of Navas could be covered either by Renato, or Tom De Mul ( a player to watch). Yet it’s also possibility that Jiménez may use Capel on the left and Adriano on the right.


More Sevilla Highlights.


Barcelona:

Interestingly, what I said about Sevilla attitude is also applied on Barcelona. Guardiola must be aware of Sevilla threat, but if we change our game to overcome that, we lose. Certainly some tactical flavors will be added to the mix but nothing radical, we need to dictate the game that suit us, and that’s how their home turn to become our home.

The defense:

The question of the day, who will be there? Which options do you favorite more:

More tested: Alves-pique-Marquez-Puyol? Keeping in mind that this is a game for Veterans
More promising: Alves - Puyol-Pique- Caceres? Taking in consideration Marquez Shaky moments and Caceres promising performance against Sporting.

Mine is the first option, specially if it is confirmed that Abidal need a surgery if his current treatment program didn’t click, then a back up on the Left back is needed to release some of the pressure off Puyol shoulders and to make sure we don’t torture uncle Sylvinho putting him in an unfair challenging situations – By the way I say it with love and respect for a player and a man I extremely admire.

No matter what you choose, you are wrong, Guardiola will come up with something special that we will sit staring for an hour before we figure out we are still alive! That’s how Pep hit us with surprise all the time.

Midfield:

Yaya – a must play for me, Xavi (yea I am smart I figured that out), I will be fair and leave the third midfielder option for you!
Ok my choice is Kieta, at the moment he is the most balanced choice, good helping in defense and he score goals, beside he is fit for it after benching him against Sporting.

Offense:

Messi, Eto’o and Henry.

Messi need to choose when to cut inside and when to go on the right in this game, I can see Navarro holding position on the left back of Sevilla defense, so the first mission is to drag Sevilla left wing to entertain Navarro and give him a hand in defense, or else, don’t curse pique after the game. But staying too long on the right (Messi) will also cause lot of predictable traffic and block the flank offensively, besides keeping Eto’o isolated in the box. So he needs to choose when to go right, and when to cut inside.

On the left, I don’t want lot of wide moves to be honest with you, because I can’t see us capable to implement that without Iniesta, so the best move is a Henry-Keita trick, one go to the post and the other patrol on the right corner of Sevilla box.

Eto’O is the guy to create the space, scoring must not be his priority in this game but if Sevella played an open game, he will have a better chance, he can no doubt exhausts Sevilla defense and create the chaos needed there to cause damage. I wonder if he will intentionally earn a yellow card in this game to be suspended against Villareal and guarantee playing the Classico, that’s one of the hidden details I will be wondering about during the game.

Talking about cards, I am sorry to tell you we are going to do another favor to Madrid, suspending Navarro in his following game.

In the other hand lets hope its easy for Alves to get ride of his old favorite habits, or else he may cross the ball on Kanoute head, we all know with Barcelona, he miss having the tall guy in the box to show up how good he is crossing assists. But in any way Sevilla will play without two key members of their winning team, keita and Alves, and we will have them both against Sevilla so it’s like hitting two birds with one stone.

The mini league finally started, and I posted below the table of points for this Mini league so we know who will win it, no matter if we think December will be a decider or not, and I recommend that you follow Stigsby Amazing Statistical analysis about the mini league impact on defining the league Champion as a part of our attempt to turn December to a football event we follow, it will be a very exciting month to live and enjoy, with its up and down, did I just mentioned the option “Downs”?

Ramzi Tanani