How do I watch football ?

How great is it to kick off my journey on the Limited Football by such an egocentric article. I have divided this article into multiple sections.

1) How do I choose a game?

2) How do I analyze a game?

3) How do I analyze a result?

Firstly why do I watch a game? This is important to answer before we go through the three other points. The answer is of course neither black nor white. What I mean by that is that before watching simply for the pleasure of watching a good game of football, I want to know what I am talking about when debating. Once I have enough knowledge over what is happening (tactics/performances-wise) on planet football. I will go on and find games I will most certainly enjoy (J-League, MLS, Championship, Ligue 2, …).

1) So, how do I choose a game? As said before I will first find a game that will be interesting to cover afterwards. Often it will be either relegation battle/top half battle, it is all a question of context. As for February 2021, I won’t often watch Atletico Madrid or Manchester City, unless they face a dark horse, but then again, a team that is extremely dominant isn’t particularly interesting to watch as there isn’t much to say week in week out. Teams worth watching this season are, PL-wise: Tottenham, Arsenal, Sheffield, Liverpool or even Chelsea. Of course people will tell me about Leicester or Wolves but what is new with them? Nothing, really. All those mentions above are interesting to watch for various reasons, not only from the sporting perspective. Lastly it’s up to recent forms: a team that is on a good streak which is going to face a low-placed team isn’t a great pick. An underperforming giant, like this Liverpool, will be a great pick if facing a well performing team regardless of its placement in the table. Momentum is key in football. Dark horses are my personal favorites, a dark horse is either a team that could potentially challenge for the title (this season Tottenham) or a team that exceeds crazily the expectations such as West Ham.

2) Now how do I analyze a game? It’s quite straight forward and relatively simple. First, do not check the starting formation of both teams on Internet. As soon as the game start, try and figure out by yourself because there is often a world between the two formations. The first 20 to 30 minutes will usually show the intentions of both coaches: who has the ball? The easiest thing to figure out is focusing on the team without the ball and how they play without it. Press, counter-press, passive, placement, try to see what they are doing. You may watch teams that play quite similarly so if you want to see how different things can be, check Wolves, Manchester City and Tottenham. Those three are drastically different. Now analyzing with the ball isn’t much difficult but it will be harder to find the formation as in recent times, while having the ball, the formation is quite flexible and is often stretched a lot. Now you can’t assume because they are playing x-formation without the ball so they are playing the same with. But one thing that could help is analyzing the quality of a player and where he is good at. The manager will most likely utilize the player as best as he can so you can figure out what formation they are using with the ball based on the quality of the players. Analyzing Internazionale (Intermilan) is relatively easy for that reason. Players like Hakimi, Sanchez, Lukaku or Lautaro are each really good at what they’re doing and need to be played in a certain way in order for them to perform. Lautaro and Sanchez create with a pure finisher which is Lukaku, Lukaku need someone to assist him upfront. Hakimi, while being better defensively than he used to be, is an attacking fullback that often plays as a winger with the ball. By doing that with each players, you can figure out the formations. Note that a formation isn’t symmetrical unlike what many thinks. Analyzing both tactics is key to find which manager won the tactical battle. Sometimes the final result won’t represent well enough the tactical battle, you can lose a close game if one player pulls out an extraordinary feat. Now, lastly it’s all about the players. Analyzing a performance isn’t very difficult but often a player is dragged out of his usual position, this can result in very awkward, sometimes poor, performances: Fabinho as a CB is awkward, poor decision making but good defending abilities/Lukaku playing from deeper against Barcelona in the 19/20 UCL Group Stage at the Meazza against Barcelona, which was arguably one of the worst performance in the history of the UCL. It can also works well but it’s less common.

3) And finally how to analyze a result: before the game even start I analyze all the possible outcomes, or most of them, and try to think about their impact. This is something you do before the game even start. And of course after analyzing the tactics and the performances of the players you can figure out the current form of the team you wanted to analyze, how has the manager evolved from the previous game, … Giving players ratings can help you organizing your thoughts and making up your mind over the physiognomy of the game. Lastly, plenty of accounts on Twitter will give you interesting stats over the game you watched such as xG which is the most well known.

I hope this will help you to analyze game if you struggled to or if you just wanted to see another way of watching football. Thank you for reading, if you liked this content make sure to check out my others content on Instagram at @football.viewer!