Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard, center, celebrates with teammates after scoring his side’s third goal during the English Premier League soccer match between West Ham and Arsenal at the London Stadium in London. (AP)
Two events foreshadow an Arsenal corner kick. The moment the referee decrees one, Gabriel, the strapping centre-back, ambles to the vicinity of the far post. On the touchline, manager Mikel Arteta, perennially on an emotional edge, slouches onto his seat in the dug-out; set-piece coach Nicolas Jover, with a twinkle in his eyes, veers onto the touchline.
Two events often follow an Arsenal corner kick too. The soaring giant of a man, Gabriel leaping above his markers, sliding and stretching his neck as though it were made of rubber and heading the ball into the net. Jover would leap and swipe the air. Since the start of last season, Arsenal have converted more set-pieces than any other club (25 excluding penalties) in the Premier League. Gabriel, unsurprisingly, has netted more goals than any other centre-back since his arrival in the 2021-22 season (15, the next best Virgil van Dijk has scored nine times). It’s so frequent that their supporters buzz as though they have earned a penalty.
The action — from the time the ball goes out and the corner is swung — barely takes half a minute. In this time, the players move to their designated positions, which vary from match to match. But the most common pattern features one of Arsenal’s players rubbing shoulders with the goalkeeper inside the six-yard box, giving a false impression that he is the intended target. He is rather the decoy, his only intention being to distract the goalkeeper, manufacturing space for the intended target (often Gabriel, but not always him, as it could become too predictable).
4 Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka celebrates scoring their fifth goal with Arsenal’s Jurrien Timber and Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard. (Reuters)
Gabriel lurks on the edge of the six-yard box, on the left. Three of them usually hover behind him, inside the 18-yard box. They are the dummy runners, trying to clear out the far post area. When the ball swings in, they often move towards the ball, dragging markers to the near post. One or two might linger just outside the box and the rest stand behind them, to thwart any counter-attack.
So far, it’s straightforward. The deliveries, Bukayo Saka from the right and Declan Rice from the left, are largely in-swingers fired either on the goalkeeper or to the back post. Some bend late into the goal; some don’t. It’s then the intricate patterns set in a fury of limbs moving this way or that. The runners from deep in the box charge in, the shield dishevels the goalkeeper or the nearest defender (sometimes controversially, and a reason perhaps the more stringent referees of Champions League award a foul against them). Gabriel’s opening goal against West Ham United this weekend was a classic instance, when Jurren Timber bumped into the back of Lucas Paquetá at the front post, denying him the space to jump and clear the ball. It swirled into the path of Gabriel, who hit the target. West Ham players rebelled for a lost cause. As have several other teams the last two seasons. Ben White tried to undo the gloves of Tottenham goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario before one of the corner-kick goals.
Keeping opponents guessing
Whereas Gabriel’s movements have been similar – a shimmy to the right (when delivered from the right), an explosive leap as he scuds the ball goalward – the rest of their movements are unpredictable. Sometimes, they drift into the box like a swarm of bees. Sometimes, they scatter like a regiment after a drill. It’s synchronised chaos, so second-guessing their patterns becomes difficult.
These are movements chiselled to perfection on the training ground under Jover’s watch. The coach, who joined Arteta from Manchester City after he thought he was not getting enough time to work on set-pieces with the champions, more reliant on open play than set-pieces for goals, polished their set-pieces with intense, opponent-specific drills. The onus is on specific runs to sharpen their movements. Players are given just two seconds to run into a specific point to receive the ball, with Jover insisting on repeating and re-repeating the action until it becomes second nature.
Arsenal’s Gabriel Magalhaes, Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice ahead of a West Ham United free kick. (Reuters)
The season before Jover took over, Arsenal had scored just six goals from set-pieces in the entire season. Arteta can’t stop praising him. “Him and the rest of the staff have injected the belief into the players that there are many ways to win football matches. This is a really powerful one and he has given us a lot,” he once said.
Jover is not the pioneer in set-piece coaching, but its most efficient exponent. The 43-year-old Frenchman has never played competitive football, but after completing his sports degree in Canada, joined the French club Montpellier as video analyst, before camping with the Croatian national team as match analyst.
It was at Brentford in 2016 that he assumed the role of free-kick specialist. This was around the time teams were starting to focus more on set-pieces than ever before rather than decrying its lack of aesthetics, even though 28 percent of all goals every season arrive in this fashion. Earlier, it was seen as the refuge of teams in the relegation zone (as Brentford was when Jover joined the Bees). But no team has mastered the set-piece art like Arsenal. At the heart of it is Jover.
I’m Manas Ranjan Sahoo: Founder of “Webtirety Software”. I’m a Full-time Software Professional and an aspiring entrepreneur, dedicated to growing this platform as large as possible. I love to Write Blogs on Software, Mobile applications, Web Technology, eCommerce, SEO, and about My experience with Life.
