How Fabian Hurzler plans to deal with Manchester United's long balls
Fabian Hurzler speaking to Sky Sports:
“United played a lot of long balls in the last two or three games, they were quite efficient on that,” says Hurzeler. “They are really keen on winning the second ball. It’s a very effective way of being successful. They proved it can be very powerful.
“The main thing you need to understand is that it starts with the press, how you attack the goalkeeper, which centre-back you want to attack. And then make sure that you’re ready for the long ball.
“When the long ball is played, there are two things that are very important: that you try to win the second ball, and that, if you don’t win the second ball, you have good positioning for the third ball.
“Make sure that, with your last line, you always cover the inner line, so when they try to flick the ball, especially with [Benjamin] Sesko, you can defend against the deep runs from [Matheus] Cunha, from [Bryan] Mbuemo, from [Mason] Mount.
“They are very good at these things, so it’s a job for the whole team, not only of the defensive players. The main thing is to keep the compactness, make sure you have close distances, that you close the gaps, and that you’re really intense for the second ball.”
What Manchester United is doing with second balls is harder to execute than it looks.