Tactical analysis of Paulo Fonseca

Posted on June 17, 2024

Paulo Fonseca was announced as AC Milan’s new manager on Thursday, replacing Stefano Pioli, and the fans are eager to see what he can do with the team. However, what should they expect? Let’s take a look at the tactical aspects. 

Our feature writer Rihot Rajeev has done a full analysis of Fonseca on his Twitter, @keralista, first looking at Fonseca’s spells at Roma and Shakhtar. Then, he goes on to look at Fonseca 2.0 and the changes made during his tenures.

Fonseca at Roma and Shakhtar Donetsk

Like how every person has a value system and principle he believes in, coaches have a core philosophy they rarely deviate from. It is something they might have developed via various influences during playing days or it could be a very popular playstyle (successful one) rubbing off on their way of thinking.

Either way, Fonseca is a coach who believes in the ‘positionalist’ way of playing, where players adopt certain positions or exchange them in due course of the game. However, the base formation of Fonseca has always stayed as 4-2-3-1.

Out-of-possession tactics

One thing that helped Milan win the Scudetto in 2021-22 was how they played when they didn’t have the ball. Milan’s high and rather aggressive press aimed to suffocate the opposition and win the ball back as quickly as possible.

Fonseca, meanwhile, isn’t someone who presses as high as Pioli did but usually his players start their press a little further away from goal, while often pushing up to wait for certain pressing triggers. Out of possession, Fonseca teams play in a compact 4-4-2 or a 4-2-3-1 setup.

The idea is to be centrally compact and force the opposition into wide areas. Roma also engaged in fierce counter-pressing whenever they lost the ball in areas higher up the pitch.

Whether they have or do not have the ball, Fonseca’s teams always maintained a double pivot to protect the centre of the pitch and give vertical cover.

Fonseca’s teams always try to reduce playing area by making it compact vertically and horizontally. Unlike Pioli’s system, Fonseca’s press was more zonal during his time at Roma and Shakhtar.

One of the actions that elicits Fonseca teams to press is passing to the wide areas. Once this is done, one of the wingers or the attacking midfielder will block the passing lane for the full-back back to the centre-back. Once this is done the winger on the nearside or the attacking midfield (depending on who blocked the passing lane) will press the full-back and try to win the ball back.

In-possession tactics

When Roma do have possession, they move into a 3-4-2-1. The 3-4-2-1 has various iterations which I will show now.

Usually when Roma build up from the back the 2 centre-backs split and move into wide positions allowing the full-backs to push up. One of the midfielders from the pivot will slot back into the back 3 and the attacking midfielder will move into the double pivot.

However, there are also circumstances where the full-back has sat back into the back 3 (in this case Santon) and Veretout moved wide to take his spot. Or Pellegrini who is the attacking midfielder takes the spot of the full-back out wide while Veretout stays with Cristante in the double pivot. This shows the fluidity in the build-up phase within the positions defined by Fonseca.

While the full-backs stay wide and maintain width, the wingers (mostly inverted) tuck inside and play in the half-space. Fonseca allows the full-backs to overlap the wingers.

The positionalist approach of Roma meant that the player on the ball always had multiple passing options whenever he was on the ball. Their movements meant that the defensive midfielder, full-back and centre-back could form passing triangles in the wide areas.

In case the opposition pressed Roma towards the wide areas, they would either switch wings or form passing diamonds to move out of trouble.

Third-man midfield moves were made to move the ball quickly out of the defensive third.

Roma’s build-up play starts off very slowly but once it moves from the first line of defence, the tempo of passing changes and Roma move the ball quickly from defence to attack.

Chance creation

Once the ball crosses to the middle third, Roma move forward in a 3-2-5 system with 5 attackers.

When he was the manager of Roma, Fonseca allowed Dzeko to move out from his position and drop into midfield to be a passing option, allowing the wingers to make runs behind him while he flicked the ball on or made passes.

The wide position of the centre-backs meant that they could angle in passes to the players in the half spaces which Fonseca emphasized a lot. Half spaces are extremely difficult to defend as it poses defender a lot of questions and you can see how Mkhitaryan received the ball in between two defenders in the half-space from Dzeko before he scored the goal.

Fonseca relies on his players to dismark (remove their marker) while they are in possession and make runs.

Main weakness

One of the weaknesses of Roma during Fonseca’s time was their vulnerability to counterattacks. Roma counter-pressed as soon as they won the ball but if they did not win the ball back this would mean that they were extremely vulnerable to counter like Inter’s goal below.

Fonseca 2.0 at Roma and Lille

Roma 2.0

In a video interview with Coaches Voice Fonseca explained how in Italian football, contrary to his experience in Ukraine and the Champions League, teams attacked with five players up the pitch and with a back-four defence, which created a numerical advantage for the opposition.

To lend more balance in the centre and to provide more security at the back during counters, Fonseca shifted to a 3-4-2-1 or a 3-4-3. His attacking principles stayed the same but when his teams lost the ball they moved to a 5-3-2 or a 5-4-1 depending on the pressing patterns they wanted to use.

Hybrid pressing at Lille

Fonseca touched upon how his experience in Roma gave him a profound experience of man-oriented pressing (given how Pioli, Gasperini, Juric, Inzaghi all played that way) and being someone who is a constant evolutionary he inculcated it in his style of play.

At Lille, he would press higher up the pitch using a man-marking scheme where the double pivot would mark the opposition midfielders and the wingers would mark the full-backs.

Once the opposition bypassed Lille’s first line of the press then they would fall back into a mid-block and use zonal press and be a compact block like how his Roma and Shakhtar teams used to play.

Goalkeeper acting as a third centre-back

Milan fans are used to seeing it with Maigna, but Fonseca who never had a ball-playing keeper in his previous clubs and then got a proper ball-playing keeper in Chevalier. This meant that Lille were able to play an extra man in midfield.

Like in this sequence of play, Chevalier starts play and passes it to the right and instead of the usual three at the back, Chevalier acts as the third centre-back and this meant that Andre was able to suck the Lyon press to the right which freed Andre Gomis to receive and beat the press.

Baiting the press

One of the main ideas of Fonseca to create space is to suck opponents into pressing them. It can be done while playing out from the back, or it can be done to get a team out of their mid/low block or even to play out of a high press where they suck the press to one side and then quickly pass out of the press.

Fluidity and the role of Jonathan David

One of the successes of Guardiola in his positional plays is the fluidity of his teams owing to the high-quality individuals he has. Position play only needed positions to be covered at all times as long as Pep’s rules were respected

Fonseca at Roma was quite rigid with how his players played but with a mobile striker like Jonathan David, who could drop into midfield or play out wide, it meant that Fonseca’s Lille would have players take different positions but as long as those positions were occupied.

Now you can see wingers staying wide up the pitch and full-backs cutting inside or wingers playing inside and the attacking midfielder playing wide. Players had more freedom to play in the positions they wanted.

Stats for Lille

So what do the stats look like for Lille? Using xGA (expected goals against) which means the amount of xG opponents accumulate against you (basically means the quality of chances teams create against you), Lille had the lowest xGA for the 2022/23 season (which means teams found it difficult to create chances against Lille).

This meant that using the metric of xP Lille had the highest expected points for the 2022/23 season (higher than eventual league winners PSG) but missing chances and wastage of chances in front of goal meant that Lille could not capitalise on their air-tight defence.

In 2023/24, Lille averaged a total of 84.3% pass completion rate. An interesting stat is that in terms of crosses into the box, Lille rank second last in terms of number of crosses. Lille averaged 0.11 per 90 (2nd in the league) for quality of shots in the league without counting penalties.

In terms of goalkeeping, Chevalier’s G-psxG is +5.5 which means that he has conceded fewer goals than the quality of shots he has faced.

His use of data

Data analysis has taken over football. When Lille owner Gerard Lopez could not pay back his debt to Merill Group (Elliot’s friends), they took over the club. They appointed Sylvain Armand, an ex-player of Lille and PSG. To financially reconstruct the club, Armand had the task of keeping the club competitive while raising funds at the same time.

This is where Paulo Fonseca comes in. Somebody who believes in data to support the eye test. Below is an interview with him on the matter.

Conclusion

Fonseca (alongside Conceicao) was my preferred choice for his ability to continue what Milan have built over the years with Pioli and Maldini. Ibrahimovic emphasised the importance of youth and the U23 team, while the recently concluded U17 tournament showed fans the level of talent Milan have with Camarda, Liberali, Zeroli and Sia. It is important for Milan not only to nurture their talent but to add value to them.

Fonseca may not be a popular choice but he seems to tick many boxes. Then again, this is the first big job in his career and never has he managed a star-studded team like Milan. It is to be seen whether he will sink or swim.

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