FIFA World Cup 2022: How England’s competent press contained Senegal to progress to the quarters – tactical analysis

After beating Iran and Wales, and drawing to the USA, England managed to qualify for FIFA World Cup 2022 Last 16 as they faced a tough African side, Senegal. Despite facing some obstacles as Senegal resisted, England, with better quality, managed to win the game by 3-0. This tactical analysis will take the important elements of the game to explain how Gareth Southgate’s side got another victory.

Lineups

Southgate made two changes after some players impressed in the game against Wales, but also because Arsenal defender Ben White and Chelsea attacker Raheem Sterling had to leave Qatar due to family issues. Hence, Jordan Henderson and Phil Foden came in for the side. They had Jordan Pickford in goal; Kyle Walker, Harry Maguire, John Stones, and Luke Shaw in the defence; Henderson, Delcan Rice, and Jude Bellingham formed the midfield, while Foden, Harry Kane, and Bukayo Saka were the front three.

Senegal played with a 4-2-3-1 on paper and they also had good players, with Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy in goal, his teammate, Kalidou Koulibaly, was one of the defenders in the back four alongside Abdou Diallo, Youssouf Sabaly, and Ismail Jakobs. In midfield, they have Nampalys Mendy and Pathé Ciss. Offensively, the four players were Isamaïla Sarr, Boulaye Dia, Iliman Ndiaye, and Krépin Diatta.

England press good and cleverly

Since the group stage, England has shown good pressing and adaptability of its defence according to how the opposition played. This game is also the same as the players were so clear about what they have to do without the ball, and take appropriate actions based on each other, not only the opponents.

In the start, England pushed with the right-winger from the outside as Bukayo Saka could curve his run when closing the central defender as shown in the picture above, and then the outside lane to left-back is blocked. In this case, as Bellingham was also closing the Senegal defensive midfielder, Diallo was unable to recognise a passing option and got caught for thinking too long with the ball, as Saka did not stop in front of the ball holder but pushed him all the way.

But England could press differently. Here, another example was against a goal-kick of Senegal and they had a two-man first line with Saka joining Kane. In this central position, Saka was more aware of the defensive midfielder (N. Mendy) behind instead of doing the same thing as we have put in the previous example, here we saw he checked N. Mendy’s position and E. Mendy started the play to Diallo.

Since Saka saw N. Mendy’s position before the play started, he was able to adjust himself a bit to the inside, so he put the opposition defensive midfielder under his shadow. Then, as the play began, Saka jumped to the Diallo from inside with good speed to confront the target, it disrupted the Senegal rhythm as the passing sequence must be done in a shorter time to decide.

Saka was leading the press and that was also a signal for his teammates to commit. Knowing that N. Mendy was under the shadow of the press leader, Henderson had no hesitation in jumping out to close the wide space, as the winger was inside, someone should be responsible for the opposition full-back on the outside.

Here, as a result, Senegal were in trouble there. As Diallo had to pass to Jakobs because of confronting Saka’s pressure, everything was read and anticipated by England. Although Jakobs was allowed to receive, when he turned, Henderson was already very close to the ball and the next play. It happened quite often that when Senegal players could not realize short options within thre seconds on the ball, they kicked the ball long and the battles over the top were simply too easy for Stones and Maguire. It was just gifting England the ball again to reorganize the attack, or Bellingham demonstrated his exceptional ability in winning the second ball to trigger some counter-attacks in open spaces.

Another detail to observe in this image was England’s good discipline and compactness as they moved as a team – Bellingham, the far side 8, came to the same side to get closer to both Henderson and N. Mendy, so he was not only covering his partner but also being able to control the opposition defensive midfielder in case the ball went centrally.

But as we have suggested, England were so capable of defending in different ways so the scenarios could be different in this example. This time, although we saw Henderson jump to press Jakobs on his back foot, he did not have Bellingham in a close position to support, but Saka was there to cover him centrally as he was not with Diallo. This shows the same principle in England’s game plan, the objective is not to let N. Mendy or Senegal to develop plays in the centre, and try to close them on outside to recover possession.

England were defending similarly with a different way on the left flank, as Foden was noticeably holding a lower position instead of leading the press like Saka. The reason was he had to control Sabaly to a larger extent as the Real Betis defender was good on the ball. Then, they committed Henderson to push N. Mendy in case the Leicester City midfielder came close on the same side. Again, making sure the Senegal players receiving centrally was the most important in England’s defending.

But England also had the mindset to defend as a group as their players were not jumping out blindly to expose themselves in an isolated situation. In this above image, the England midfield three maintained in a close group to cover each other, even N. Mendy was so deep, Henderson was uninterested as he knew the central protection was most important. In the middle third, England tended to track the Senegal midfielders tightly as they could match a 3v3, so Rice’s role was both trying to cover and if Nidaye was close, mark him as we have shown above.

Also, Foden should not be too attracted by the central defender as he kept dropping off to control Sabaly, and in this case, England did it so well as they closed every option near Koulibaly, and the Chelsea defender just kicked the ball away with no continuity in the attack.

Attacking the flanks

With the ball, England did not create a lot but they knew what they were doing clearly.

In the construction phases, the objective is to achieve stability and nullify the opposition’s press. They had a numerical advantage in the build-up to make sure Senegal’s press could not confront the ball holder in the first line, and in addition, they also had Pickford in the centre always as a depth option for circulation.

Senegal roughly defended between a 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2 as Nidaye would man-mark Rice, but he almost never create any trouble as England counter-acted by using Rice to manipulate his marker, then England could open up the surface for others in the build-up.

For example, here, England initially played passes through Stones and Walker, then Rice also came close, so the striker and 10 of Senegal were attracted to that side, then Walker could just set Maguire in play with one pass to the left side.

But England were not only playing with a 3-1, it was also about roughly five players around the ball in the construction. Pickford was counted as one in the build-up but in the second phase, they required Henderson’s help sometimes to drop off and attract pressure. Although the Liverpool captain dropped with a closed body, the intention was never hoping him to turn (or else Southgate would try another player in that position).

As shown above, with Walker’s central position and Henderson’s support, Senegal’s left-winger and defensive midfielder were both drawn high, which means the left-back was left isolated alone against Saka.

In those cases, England would be a bit direct to spaces behind than playing to the feet of wingers. Walker hit some long balls behind and Saka’s quality killed the left-back individually. In this particular action, he fooled Jakobs by letting the ball drop and bounce, then he was all the way behind the Senegal left-back into crossing positions.

England were more aggressive in attacking the sides and they did not develop plays in the centre. The first goal of the game also came from that tactic, on the left side they also tried to pull Sabaly out of position and attack spaces behind the right-back.

In the beginning, England circulated the ball to the left without confronting any opposition pressure because of the good setup as we have explained. They had Shaw in deep to support.

Then, Foden dropped off a bit to support Shaw, which was different from what Saka did in the previous example but the intention was also to open the last line and attack spaces behind. Note Bellingham here and see how he’s ready to go behind.

In the next action, Bellingham was already on the move to attack spaces behind as the Senegal backline was totally broken. Foden’s individual brilliance bypassed Sabaly and Koulibaly stepped out to close the wide space, then he got himself too far from his partner, which was the gap exploited by Bellingham in the goal.

But despite all that, there were situations where England were not careful enough when executing their game plan, leaving Maguire or Stones out of options or being easily predicted by the opponents. In the next game, conceding transitions to PSG star Kylian Mbappé cheaply could be a disaster.

Conclusion

Southgate’s England had good tactics to handle different types of opponents. The analysis last time suggested they contained Wales to a large extent and this time they also played generally well in the game, although they were a bit too passive and lost the rhythm in some periods, and could feel lucky that some mistakes were not punished. In the next game against France, the margin of error will be even smaller, it would be interesting to see how they deal with the likes of Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann.