It looks so easy to play as a number six. You are supposed to have far more space than a striker, you just receive an easy ball from the defenders, and you pass it on, right? Wrong!
Details, details, details.
One of the things that fascinated me the most when reading “Pep Confidential” is how much detail Guardiola puts into teaching his players the correct body position when they receive the ball.
Xabi Alonso must know something about the subject, given that he set a new Bundesliga record with 204 touches in the match against Cologne. After all you can’t receive the ball more than twice per minute on average if your body position is all wrong.
I used some footage from the 2-0 Bayern victory against AS Roma to see how Xabi Alonso positions himself in different kinds of situations.
This is the start of a longer term research project. I am going to put up one video per day, each about a different situation with Alonso in it. I am going to compare his choices to those of Daley Blind and Daniele De Rossi down the road as I learn more. Please leave a comment with your take on the situations. Sharing and debating the ideas of each other is the fastest way to progress.
AbelLorincz.com | Discovering football one day at a time 
Red text on the green pitch ain’t the best, but otherwise good stuff
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Thank you Matt! I will make sure to use a different color after the second video!
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I don’t see a video there, just white space. Am I the only one?
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Hi Tery,
Are you using Chrome? There should be an icon of a shield next to the favorites image. Click on that and you can enable the video. Chrome finds dailymotion suspicious for some reason.
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No, I am using Firefox. Never happened to me, maybe it’s the update.
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It might be any of three problems according to this page. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/dailymotion-videos-not-play-firefox-81548.html
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Works now, and I don’t know why. Didn’t change a thing.
Nice series!
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Thank you!
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