Why Girona are the most surprising team in world football

At the start of every season there are some

team

s that come out and surprise us, for example I'm not sure many of us thought David Moyes' West Ham would be a challenge for European places nor Eric ten Hog's Manchester United ​I would do it. As bad as they are, but in this video what I'm going to suggest is that the

most

surprising

team

of all the

surprising

teams in the

world

right now is Jona in Spain. Now Jona is in second place in La Liga, just behind Real. Madrid are just ahead of Barcelona, ​​which in itself is quite surprising, but what's even more surprising is that Jerona's success came after a summer in which they lost many players, so in the board that I have in front of me, here is what I have.

It is the starting 11 that Jona had against Osasuna in the last game of last season. Now, if we fast forward to the first game of this season, there were several players who weren't in that starting 11, so I'll just highlight these plays. Here we can see five players who were starters at the end of last season and were not in the starting 11. Now a couple of these players are still at the club, so Bernardo and Martín just didn't start, but there are several players here who actually ended up leaving the club, so we have tatti castaños and Rodrigo Rael, they were both on loan, they left now chestnuts he is now in Lazio Rael is back at Atlético de Madrid Oriel Romeo, as you remember, ended up in Barcelona and another player who was not a starter in this match, but who was a big star throughout the season on the line The central defender was Santi Bueno and he was also sold to Wolves, so we have four players here who were fundamental to Girona's success last season.

They are simply not in this starting 11 and if we go back to that starting 11 from the end of last season, Arno Martínez has spent

most

of this season on the bench, then what we are left with are only five players who are regularly playing this season for jerona, but it's not just that jerona has lost a lot of players, it's also lost a lot of key players, so on the board in front of me I have a graph showing the top 11 players. by minutes played from last season versus this season Now the players whose names are in yellow are the players that appear on both lists, so if we look at the top of last season's list we can see that none of those top four players is in yellow which O means they are gone or they are not playing as much as they did last season, so well Romeo, they are all gone, as is Rodrigo Ralei, so those are the four key players that are They were, but we also have Aro Martínez. here who doesn't play as much this time, which means that when we get to this season's roster there are a lot of players who now have to take responsibility for playing more minutes and giving you an idea of ​​how important those key players are. where I have a quote here from Jona's coach, Michelle, who talks about how Oriel Romeo is a very important influence on the field, then Michelle talks about how difficult it is to influence games as a coach on the bench and talks about how important it is afterwards The breaks are used to bring together four or five key players to transmit messages to them and those are the players who are going to modify the behavior of the team players and Romeo stands out in particular because he says with a gesture, I can tell you that the pressure of the rivals has changed, that's not what we expected, so what he's doing is communicating with Romeo on the field, he can let him know very quickly when things need to change and then Romeo can tell him. to the rest of the team, but even though they have lost many key players, Girona's performances this season have actually seen a bit of a difference compared to last season, so here we have the basic underlying numbers, so that the goals are slightly expected. increases the expected goals against a slight decrease from what you want, but the important thing to note here is that the expected goal difference has not only improved but has gone from a negative figure to a positive figure and that is what does a good coach now, it pays to have a One caveat here is that Jerona has only played against two of the teams competing for the Champions League places this season, which are Real Madrid and Real Sadad, and in fact They lost points to both teams and also the only other team they played at the top.

Mid-table is bottom Palmas, which may mean their underlying numbers are slightly inflated, but there's still a big jump from this to that - it's almost half the expected goal difference - all of which suggests that Jerona is on the rise, but there's another surprising thing here. and that is that Jerona is a relatively recently promoted team, their manager Michelle raised them in the 2122 season and it is surprising that they are now challenging the top of La Liga and that fact is even more surprising when we take a look at Michelle's CV. As you can see he is a professional

football

er who spends a lot of time at Ryo Viano over two spells, he has almost 400 appearances for them and when his playing career is over he transitions nicely into a coaching career so he has a place at Ryo Viano. working in their youth system, he then becomes the full head coach of the senior team in 2017 with Ry Viano still in the Segunda division, but in that first season he takes them to La Liga and the following season he is actually fired to mid-season. and R end up getting demoted from R Viano, goes to Hesa, which is also in Aunda's division, and guess what the exact same thing happens.

He puts them in the League, fires them mid-season and Wesker is relegated, so when he arrives in Ajona next season. In the Second Division there are a lot of people waiting for him to promote them, maybe there are not so many people waiting for him to keep them, so the big question is why Michelle was fighting for her promoted teams to stay in the first division. I have a quote from the man himself that offers some sort of solution to why this might be the case. He says that my idea as a coach has always been the same, which is to be a protagonist and what he means by that is that he wants to impact. matches having possession of the ball, but as he goes on to say, this does not always work because sometimes at the top level this costs you more, so in the Saunda division he can be the protagonist, but as soon as his teams are promoted to the next level he becomes a bit more difficult now this is a quote from last season when Jerona is actually mid table in La Liga so clearly something has changed there and Michelle goes on to explain what that change might be and says what I think What we've been doing is adapting situations so that our players don't find themselves in difficult situations and that's the big word in adaptation, so what's happening with Michelle in Jona this time is she's finding those adaptations to help her team remain in the league to achieve their surprising success this season, Jona has had to overcome two aspects: the first is the loss of many key players and the second is the tactical adaptation that allows them to challenge at the top of La Liga, so Let's see both. of them in turn, so how do you overcome the problem of losing many key players?

Well, obviously, you go and buy more, so what I have here is a list of the most notable Jira signings in this window and the first thing you should notice is The little money they have spent amounts to around 22 million euros of spending for a group of players who, as we will see later, have been very important for them. Now the first on this list is Artam Dock, which was one of the best. Premier Lia's top scorers in Ukraine last season scored 24 goals in 30 games, which is obviously an incredible rate of return for a number nine.

He still only cost around 8 million euros now his low Fe is partly because he had moved to Midgeland in Denmark and didn't really have a successful time there, but he actually made it to Jon and became an incredible number nine for them. Now there are several players here who were solo signings last season and then turned into full contracts, so we have Yangel. Herrera brought Ian Martin from Viale and Pao Ganiga from Fulham from Manchester City and all of them have also become fundamental players for them, so again you can see solid and pleasant signings that they know will translate this season into not a great amount of money, we also have Daley Blind here, brought from Bayern Munich on a free transfer.

We all know that Dy Blind has played at the highest level of the game and has that flexibility to play as a centre-back or a full-back that he really has. good passing range too and has become absolutely fundamental to everything Jona does this season and then a couple of crazy ones also come Eric Garcia from Barcelona is basically a daily mix, he can do that on the other side he can play outside centre. full-back or full-back, depending on what you need, and then the most interesting name on this list, Savio, arrived on loan from Tua and has become one of the most electric players in La Liga this season, why is Savio so exciting?

He is an exceptional two-way dribbler who can cause problems for the team at any level of the game this season. He has scored 4.1 per 90 minutes, which puts him third in La Liga in that metric. Now I have called it two- Bargaining way, what do I mean by that? Well, if we look at this graph showing his progressive carries this season, we can see that it is very clear that he has the ability to go down the line, hit the line, cross the ball back with his strong left. foot, but he also likes to enter and in fact he has proven to be a very dangerous player in front of goal and when you have a player like Savio it is very important to prepare your team to get the most out of him.

Do you make the most of a really good dribbler? Well, you isolate him 1 V one against his defense. If he is a two-way dribbler, you will be able to get around them in any direction and the important thing then is to hit him. space for him to move down the line or as we said come in as well and this is what a lot of Jonas' possession game is based on, now one of the ways Jira likes to do this is by overloading on the opposite side. because that will obviously drag the opponent towards you and create space around your winger, so against the striker, Jona likes to use his central forwards to occupy the opponent's two central defenders and then what they end up doing is just dragging everyone to this side.

Sanov plays nominally as a wide player, but he loves to be between the full-back line and the centre-back here and that opens up space for Yano to advance as well now the rest of the midfield is going to advance, but in fact, surprisingly Iván Martín is going to advance towards this type of area that is opposite to the side where you might see him in a defensive transition. This has created a lot of space around Savio, but there are still things his teammates can do in order. to help him exploit that space and this is where the daily blind role, for example, goes to the four because what you can do with the daily blind is actually open channels for Savio to move because there is likely to be a central midfielder in this type. of the area that prevents Savio from entering, so on a daily basis Bloon can do several things to try to help him, one of those things is to push towards this lane, here he drags the central midfielder with him, which will open up space in the inside area. so Savio has the ball and can dribble in this type of area now with the central midfielder away and with Savio coming in often what you will see is a daily movement to adopt that wide area that Savio was in previously. that means you can still have the same type of structure with the option of playing the ball out and blinding, then you can play the ball towards the middle and now we have Savio almost playing like a second striker that I have.

A very good example of this happened in the game against Meker, so Jona attacks this goal here, here is Daily blint and as you can see, he is right in front of that central midfielder who pushes him a little bit deeper, which opens up the access to Savio, who is somewhere around here. You can already see how they are using the structure to create a lot of space around Savio. Here is the defender and then all this space to play. Here is Savio with the ball. He now he's in front of the back of him, but what we can see here. is that the central midfielder will approach and try to bend him, so to move him away, what we have now is daily BL, he will encounter this scene between the full-back and the centre-back to try to destabilize this player here now, this has actually opened a lot of space in the opponent's defensive structure.

The first thing you notice is the gap between the two centre-backs. If you're a centre-forward, you look at that gap and I think yes, this is going to cause problems, but the other space that has opened up is this space here on the edge of the penalty area and Savio is going to see that space and aim for it. , especially because, as you can see, the address ofthe defending players are actually pushing them this way so he can come back inside and become much more dangerous in this spot. Here you can see Savio in that space that he opened up and you can see that he has drawn a lot of defenders around him and Actually, what happened is that now we have Daily Blind isolated against the fullback here.

Now what is going to happen is that Savio is going to play the ball to Sankov, he is going to pass the ball back to Daily Blind and they are going to be in this good situation again, so once again they managed to isolate a player open.against the fullback, daily blend is going to play the ball inside the area, the goalkeeper will try to try to move it away and the ball will fall into this space here and behold, we have Savio here, who has moved inside, who Now I can play as a dangerous attacking player in front of goal and this doesn't actually end in a goal, but it is a very good example of how Jona is using Savio to great attacking effect, but if we go back and replicate that situation in On the tactics board we can see that this is actually a very aggressive way of playing and Daily blind is nominally an outside centre-back in a back three, but he is actually playing as a functional fullback here trying to get the ball in and everyone is overloaded on this side.

What that does is it opens up a huge amount of space for the opposition to attack and that brings us to the second obstacle that Jona has had to overcome this season in order to compete at the top of La Liga and that is tactical adaptability. because it is very good to play this way against muor, a team that jerona would hope to beat because it is generating huge offensive advantages for Jona, but if you play like this against better teams, you will very quickly find your defensive structure. committed and I have another quote from Michelle again, this time talking about that adaptability again, this is from last season and she says we changed little details last season to stay in La Liga, she talks about how she started playing with three defenders and started trying to dominate the Penalty Box more, so we must be a little more defensive around the goal, now the result of that is that you are going to make certain concessions, so it says that we were less strong in the defensive transition because Now we lack an inside player, obviously, when you start playing with a back three you have to get that extra player from somewhere else to take it from further up the pitch, what that means is that you are a little bit more open, especially in the defensive transition, but Michelle said that it doesn't matter because the good thing is that we became stronger defending the penalty spot and here is the key phrase without losing offensive power and that is the key to being able to compete at the highest level in modern

football

because the most elite Coaches are those coaches who make it feel like they are attacking with the most players but also defending with the most players now, obviously Michelle was thinking about those ideas last season, but this season she has taken Jona to a completely new level. new and this This is shown very well if we go back to that interaction between Daily Blint and Savio that we saw against Meor because against Yorker you can afford to push one of your defensive players into this type of support role to cause these problems and give him space for Savio, but against better teams you might not want to do that and that's exactly what we saw when Jona played against Real Madrid, so the question is how to have a support player around Savio but without compromising that defensive solidity pushing Dy Blint up and the solution.

What Michelle found for that against Real Madrid was to bring a different player to the field, so we don't have Iván Martín, we actually have Miguel Gutiérrez. Now Gutiérrez is Nally, a left back. He spent much of last season playing as a left back. and he comes in and that's exactly what he does in this game, so he starts in defensive moments as a left back here, but he can come in and help in midfield, but he can also do that support play that we saw blindly do on a daily basis with savosa. pushing right against the opponent's back line if they have four defenders, what this does is it causes problems between the full back and the central defender, does the central defender step forward, does the full back move away, does the central midfielder come to help you? it creates those problems that result in space for Savio to attack, but it also allows the daily combination to play this more defensive and conservative role and this shows up very well in the data, so here we have a passing map of that new game where You can see the interaction between Savio and Daily Blint.

You can see that everyone else is overloaded on the other side creating a lot of space behind them, but when we jump forward to watch the Real Madrid game, we now have Miguel Gutiérrez here just offering. a little more support, there's a lot less overload on that side, obviously Jiron is a little more defensively minded here as well, but it gives you a much stronger foundation to defend those moments as well, so what this achieves is precisely what we want. I would talk before about the ability to feel like you still have your offensive advantage, you're still creating the same kind of problems for the opponent in an attacking sense, but you can also fall back into those defensive moments without being compromised because what's going to happen? is that if Real Madrid recovers the ball, then this line may fall.

Gutierrez can drop back into his left back slot. Yan Cuto can drop back into the right back slot here and then what will Jona end up with here? It is almost a de facto defense, but in reality there is also flexibility to do other things because one of the things we saw in the game against Real Madrid is that these two midfielders can go down, but also David López can step forward to offer a little more. solidity in the middle and the rest of the players can get in, you have four defenders here, you have a really solid midfield of three in the central area and then you have your three players up front as well and that is where we see an overlap between the two obstacles that Jona has had to overcome for their success this season because some of the players they brought in in the transfer window have allowed them to be more tactically flexible this season, most importantly by adding D blend and Eric Garcia to their team.

Jon Now has a couple of players who can play as centre-backs or full-backs on either side and that gives them great tactical flexibility, so we have already seen the system in which Gueras can intervene as a left-back in those defensive positions. moments once you have the ball, his preparation can be quite flexible now so that Gueras can come in, we can move daily blindly and López to the other side and have Gániga move towards that first line as well, but then once Jona has established possession, what can happen is That Gazena will return to the goal, this becomes a line of three, now we play blindly as an external central defender and Gutiérrez can also play the support game that we saw him do with Savio and also We see that other system in which Gutiérrez is not. on the field daily, he is now effectively playing as a winger once again, in those first phases of preparation, we can have the goalkeeper come out forming a back four, but in defensive transitions what will happen now is that García will position himself inside as a defender central.

You'll see Yan Cuto come in here or you could even play with Aro Martínez as well now that Martínez has also been playing as one of those inverted wingers, so now you could have a situation where you're inverting from the other side and you're done. We face the same type of situation in those deep preparation phases and this tactical flexibility has the impact that Jona can feel like they have an extra player in the deep phases when they are building, but also an extra player when they are building. They are attacking because they have the ability to move these players to more advanced positions when the ball moves up the pitch, so for me Jerona is the most surprising team in the

world

right now as this time they are in their second season in La Liga.

There is obviously still a long way to go and their schedule will become more difficult, but I wouldn't be surprised if they remain a challenge for the European Spaces come the end of the season. If you like this video, please consider it. By subscribing to the channel, The Athletic is home to some of the best sports journalists in the world, including journalists dedicated to every Premier League team, so every fan gets the coverage they deserve, not just the big clubs, and you can prove it. free now for 30 days. link in description