Southampton's Universal Soccer Truth
- Fred
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Manchester City's Ruben Dias was furious that Southampton didn't even try during their 0-0 tie this afternoon. What was Dias' problem? Manchester City is still fighting for a Top 5 spot in the Premier League. Southampton is already statistically relegated and was attempting to avoid (tying for) the worst record in Premier League history. All Southampton needed was a tie...
Back in the year 2022, Manchester City edged out Liverpool for the Premier League Championship and made it to the Champions League Semi-Finals. They were a great team, but not a historic bulldozer.
When Manchester City played Atletico Madrid in the Champions League in 2022, Manager Diego Simeone inexplicably played the 5-5-0 formation. We were fuming. None of the top teams in Europe should ever roll out of bed and start NO forwards.
Then I used this analogy: "Even though the MLS's Columbus Crew is a North American team, let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that they could qualify for the Champions League.
If you said, "hey Fred Hunt, in a 2-legged playoff, if you can lead the Crew to victory over Manchester City, we'll give you 10 BILLION DOLLARS!"
I would say "you've got to be kidding. The Crew are the #207th rated team in the world, that would be impossible" If you reiterated 10 BILLION DOLLARS, this is what I'd do. I wouldn't even try to win the first game at Manchester City. I would grind that game to a halt and play for a 0-0 tie. I might not even try to take a shot on goal, I'd play 11 men in behind the City Attack the whole game.
Then, for the second game, I would slog that game into an unwatchable mess also, but at home I would focus all of my opportunities on the counter attack. I would play for penalty kicks, because in that scenario, my team would have a 50/50 chance of winning instead of the zero percent chance of winning that I would have if I had my team play City straight up.
I would have my team antagonize City so bad that they'd be ready to fight in the tunnel after playing the Crew. In soccer, if you have the prohibitively WORSE team, the best way to frustrate your opposition is to play stifling defense with numbers and play hard to (through) the whistle.
Manchester City, even though they beat Atletico, ended up losing to Real Madrid in the very next round, 6-5 on aggregate. Real didn't grind those games into boring slogs, they attacked City. A lot.
Today, Southampton interim manager Simon Rusk employed that same exact strategy to tie Manchester City that I would have used. All Rusk needed was a tie to avoid being the worst of the worst in the annals of Premier League History.
Manchester City took over 20 shots. Manchester City completed almost 400 passes more than Southampton. Southampton had over 60 clearances in the game. City notched an almost 75% possession. Southampton took ZERO shots on goal.
Basically, every time Southampton touched the ball, they just kicked it back into the City end.
And it reiterated a universal soccer truth. It's hard to win in soccer, but, in theory, it's easy to tie, if you're desperate and don't mind turning the beautiful game into ugly-style soccer.
When I asked AI who was the most egregious perpetrator of "winning ugly?" Coincidentally...."Atletico Madrid, under the management of Diego Simeone, has often been criticized for their "ugly" style."
The Saints already suffered the indignity of "becoming the earliest team to suffer relegation in Premier League history," they didn't want to make history, in a bad way, twice.
When The Athletic evaluated the 3 soon-to-be relegated teams by which one would be most likely to return to the Premier League next year, their evaluation came up with.... Ipswich Town.
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