00:04 Twelve years ago the average defensive line in the top five leagues sat 31 metres from goal. Last season it was 41. That ten-metre shift is the single biggest change in how European football is played, and almost none of it is about defending.<\/p>\n\n
00:41 What you are looking at here is not a high line. It is a compressed pitch. The distance between the last defender and the striker is 28 metres \u2014 that is the number the coaching staff actually track.<\/p>\n\n
02:14 So here is the window. From the moment the ball is played backwards, the press has roughly six seconds before the shape has to reset. Watch the far-side full-back, not the ball.<\/p>\n\n
03:20 He is not sprinting. He is arriving. There is a difference, and the difference is about four metres of recovery position that you cannot get back once you have committed.<\/p>\n\n
05:38 This is the drill. Nobody is chasing anyone. They are rehearsing the run back, from the position the press leaves them in, which is the part most teams skip.<\/p>\n\n
07:12 Notice the goalkeeper. He starts on the edge of his box and he never stops moving. Twenty years ago that would have been a mistake; now it is the eleventh outfield player.<\/p>\n\n
09:02 And here it breaks. One player steps two metres early, the line is no longer a line, and the pass behind is on. Six seconds, one decision.<\/p>\n\n
12:10 So this weekend: watch the moment the ball goes back, count to six, and look at where the full-backs are standing when you get there. That will tell you more than the scoreline.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freeze-frame by freeze-frame, our analyst walks through the six seconds that decide whether a high line is brave or broken \u2014 and why three of the biggest teams in Europe now train the recovery run before the press itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_spx_person_id":0,"_spx_fixture_id":0,"_spx_pick_id":0,"_spx_eg_facts_label":"","_spx_eg_facts":"","_spx_figure_caption":"","_spx_news_feat":"","_spx_video_url":"","_spx_duration":"14:22","_spx_views":"214,806 views","_spx_presenter":"","_spx_media_state":"","_spx_start_at":"","_spx_media_status":"","_spx_episode":"211","_spx_subject":"","_spx_subject_role":"","_spx_story_year":"","_spx_duration_seconds":862,"_spx_view_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[140,202,235],"spx_comp":[],"spx_fixture_ref":[],"spx_series":[],"spx_format":[351],"spx_video_kind":[270],"spx_show":[341],"spx_sport":[],"spx_flag":[],"class_list":["post-18291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-long-reads","tag-film-room","tag-pressing","tag-tactics","spx_format-video","spx_show-the-film-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_comp","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_comp?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_fixture_ref","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_fixture_ref?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_series?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_format?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_video_kind","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_video_kind?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_show","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_show?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_sport","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_sport?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"spx_flag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_flag?post=18291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}