Read Part 2 here.
Read Part 3 here.
Intro1
With Xabi Alonso ruling himself out of the managerial transfer market for this summer, Sporting CP’s Ruben Amorim will be one of the highest names on the list for many clubs looking for a new coach. Yet this will not be the first time Amorim has found himself hyped up as one of the hottest young coaching prospects in the world.
Before he moved to Sporting CP, his only previous coaching experience was a short stint at then 3rd division side Casa Pia before spending three months and 13 matches in charge of Braga. Astonishingly, this threadbare coaching CV prompted Sporting to pay €10 million for his services in March 2020. To place this into context, Sporting had only ever spent more than €10 million on two players in their history, and the fee was also the third-highest transfer fee ever for a manager at the time.2
Nevertheless, someone must have seen something in Amorim and the risk seems to have paid off. Sporting won their first title in 19 years in Amorim’s first full season in charge, going 32 games unbeaten (losing only after sealing the title) and conceding just 20 goals in 34 games. The next two seasons saw Amorim oversee rapid evolutions of the squad as Sporting sold players to balance the books, and now in his fourth full season, Amorim is well placed to deliver a second title to the Estadio Jose Alvalade.
The rest of Europe seems to have taken notice and Amorim finds himself once again in the spotlight as teams like Liverpool seek to appoint a new manager in the coming months. Having followed his Sporting side reasonably closely for the last four years, this article will assess Amorim’s game model and evaluate how it might translate should he make the jump to the very elite of world football.
This first part will look at his tactical style more generally and some of the broad issues that arise from it. The remaining parts will then dive into the root cause of these issues based on Amorim’s game model, with Part 2 looking at his adaptations in playing out from the back, Part 3 assessing his approach in settled possession and chance creation, and Part 4 evaluating how he looks to control games without the ball with his mid-block and high press.
Core Tactical Approach
Unless anyone has footage from his Casa Pia third division games which proves otherwise, Amorim has always used a 3-4-3 base system for all his teams. This naturally has some variations in different phases of play – and indeed it’s these variations that mark him as an interesting coach tactically (which will be discussed in detail in Part 2 and Part 3) – but his core idea has always been built on a clear positional 3-4-3 foundation with inside forwards3 in the half spaces, wing backs providing width and 3 CBs to recycle possession and provide security at the back, enjoying the strong positional coverage that the formation naturally brings.
Amorim’s tactical approach is founded upon a solid defence. Having gone almost two decades without a title, Amorim’s prioritised solidity without the ball as the way to bridge the gap to FC Porto and Benfica, with Sporting conceding the lowest xGA in the league in both of his first two full seasons, and again currently lead the way this season.4
Unlike other 3-4-3 teams who might defend in a low 5-4-1, Amorim always tries to keep his defensive line high with a 5-2-3 compact mid-block that seeks to step up wherever possible. Even without pressure on the ball, the defensive line tries not to drop, often stepping up to play for offside and maintaining minimal distances between the lines vertically.
Creating access to press the ball can be a problem and Sporting are generally quite passive – i.e. not actively seeking to regain the ball, but rather simply protecting dangerous spaces – for a lot of the game. They sometimes will press high but often without committing completely, and when the opponent finds the free man they quickly retreat back into their mid-block where they’re most comfortable. This means that they don’t generate as many high turnovers as FC Porto or Benfica, and this season they are even behind Braga as well for PPDA, demonstrating Amorim’s comfort with operating for longer periods without the ball.
Direct Approach in Possession
In possession, Amorim’s teams are generally quite vertical and direct, despite often starting build-ups with short passes from the back. They usually do so not with the intention of playing through the press, but rather attracting pressure to exploit the space in behind. Domestically, given the imbalanced nature of the Portuguese league, Sporting naturally end up with lots of possession against weaker teams who don’t press and simply sit back in a low block. But generally, and especially against better teams who try to engage, Sporting have never been a heavily possession-oriented team.
They have always had less possession on average over the season than either Benfica or FC Porto (usually both), and it’s noticeable that Amorim’s lowest season possession average (57.2%) came in his title-winning season in 2020/21 (this season is currently his second lowest at 58.6%). At their best, a lot of Sporting’s chances come from situations where they create space to attack in behind quickly, and Amorim’s ability to coach consistent, coordinated attacking runs between his forward players is one of his standout qualities.
The graph above from the 2021/22 season illustrates this well. Sporting’s pitch map shows that in their defensive third, they are slower than the league average in moving the ball forwards into the middle third (indicated by the red zone on the right of their pitch). They start by playing short, often patiently going back to the GK to recycle, slowly baiting the opposition forward to press. However, once they bypass the press and progress into the middle third, they move the ball forward much quicker compared to the league average (indicated by the blue zone in the middle) This is made possible by their deep build-up creating large spaces for their forwards to rapidly attack.5
However, an unfortunate by-product of this direct approach based on lots of individual duels is that Sporting usually end up with <50% possession in games against stronger teams. Each build-up becomes more of a coin flip for whether they keep possession, depending on if the forwards can retain the ball or not, leading to difficulties in controlling long periods of the game with the ball.
Lack of Control in Big Games
This isn’t necessarily a problem in itself as they are excellent in controlling spaces without the ball and potential suitors like Liverpool are not necessarily possession-heavy teams themselves, but Sporting in big games are often unable to consistently sustain pressure on their opponents, meaning they can drift through matches without creating much at all.
For example, in their decisive Europa League 2nd leg defeat against Atalanta this season, they took the lead with their second shot of the game on minute 33’, and then didn’t manage another shot until minute 70’, and even then that was a long range effort from 30 yards. Despite having fallen 2-1 behind on the hour, you have to go to minute 86’ to find their next shot from inside the box. Although they did create a few more opportunities to equalise in the final few minutes, Sporting had essentially wasted 50 minutes where they didn’t threaten Atalanta and couldn’t sustain territory and pressure, ultimately costing them their place in the competition.
The passmap from that game depicts these issues in sustain possession nicely – they were able to circulate the ball safely in deeper areas, but couldn’t consistently find routes into their attackers. Most successful passing links into the front 3 come from the WBs, suggesting they were largely forced to play around Atalanta’s block in unthreatening areas, and when the ball did reach the front 3, they couldn’t find secure the ball for long enough to bring their team mates into the game and up the pitch.
This is not at all an isolated picture and big games throughout Amorim’s tenure have demonstrated similar themes. In the two games vs Borussia Dortmund in the 2021/22 Champions League group stage, they managed just 41% and 35% possession, generating just 3 shots between minutes 40’-80’ in the latter game. They did end up winning that second, winner-takes-all game with their counter attacking approach, sending Sporting through to the knockout stage for the first time in 13 years, and their lack of shots was obviously influenced by the game state of being 2-0 up, so no one is denying that Amorim can excel with his transition-based game plans against stronger teams. Indeed, his success last season (2022/23) against English teams, knocking Arsenal out of the Europa League and securing a win and a draw against Antonio Conte’s Spurs in the Champions League is further testament to that.
However, the lack of control Amorim is able to establish over the momentum, tempo and territory of these games, largely due to his passive approach out of possession and direct approach in possession, makes Sporting very hit-and-miss in these occasions as the remaining European games from last season show. Despite winning 4 points against Tottenham, Sporting failed to make it out of the group stage. The deciding final game against Eintracht Frankfurt at home saw Sporting take the lead in the 39th minute after a cagey start with lots of turnovers from both teams. Despite the goal giving them complete control of the group, they then failed to muster another shot until the 94th minute, in which time Frankfurt had turned the game around to be leading 2-1 to knock Sporting out; an almost exact replica of the Atalanta loss this year.67
Of course, the quality of Sporting’s squad naturally plays into some of these issues and it might well be that Amorim may be able to dominate more matches with better players. Domestically, his record against Porto and Benfica (P25 W9 D6 L10) is very commendable given that he always has the weaker team.8 Therefore, it’s important to remember that the fact that Amorim is almost always able to set Sporting up to be intense and competitive in big games is already punching above his weight with game plans to nullify stronger opponents.
Scaling Up
However, different managers have different skillsets and being good at one thing with one team does not mean they will be good at doing another thing with another team. There have been countless managers who were excellent tactically with smaller teams, tried to make the jump to the top level and failed miserably – because the things they need to succeed with a team like Liverpool is different to what they need to be successful with a team like Sporting.
With regards to tactics, there are arguably two main factors which determine if a manager can scale up to the elite level (there are others factors like managing bigger egos, managing bigger expectations, working within a larger organisation and so on, but we will focus on the two main tactical outputs).
The first is how they manage big games with a better team who might not be suited to an underdog approach. It’s all good and well being able to counter specific threats in individual games with smaller teams but top players will also expect their coach to help them dominate the game in a proactive manner. The second is if they can create a playing style which can consistently beat teams who will inevitably be more defensive against their side, attacking small spaces rather than bigger ones. This requires a clear, consistent strategy and tactical set-up that consistently creates and sustains pressure, and also doesn’t jump too much from game to game so that the players can build familiarity and patterns.9
So with these points in mind, it’s important to find out exactly why Sporting currently go through long periods of big games either without the ball or without getting shots off or both. Is it simply down to player quality that stops Amorim from being more proactive in these games, or is there a deeper flaw somewhere within his game model? And in games where they do naturally have lots of the ball, how good are they at sustaining pressure and creating chances? That is what we will explore in the next three parts by looking in depth at the principles of Amorim’s game model in and out of possession.
To be continued…
Part 2
Footnotes:
- I will use footnotes throughout the piece for digressions or clarifications. Press the number to be taken down to this section. ↩︎
- Even more incredibly, Sporting were in financial and administrative chaos, with not two years passing since 50 fans attacked players and staff at the training ground in protest at how the club was being run. I have no idea how a fee like that for a manager got signed off to go ahead. ↩︎
- The two players behind the striker will be referred to as ‘#10s’ or ‘inside forwards’ throughout. ↩︎
- The third season was his most difficult at the club partly due to reasons out of his control, losing both his starting CMs (Matheus Nunes and Joao Palhinha) in the summer without much in the way of replacement, and then losing RWB Pedro Porro to Tottenham in January. ↩︎
- I can’t find similar data for this season but the eye test suggests this is even more prevalent this season as they now have a striker in Gyokeres who is a powerful runner and loves attacking spaces in the channels. ↩︎
- There are numerous more examples of this. This season against Benfica, they played well in a balanced first half, going toe-to-toe. Took the lead just before half-time with Gyokeres. Then only took one shot in the second half from just 36% possession and ended up losing 2-1. ↩︎
- Despite this, it’s important to remember context here to avoid losing perspective. Sporting have only ever made it into the knockouts of the Champions League twice in their history, and one of those occasions was under Amorim the previous season. Based on where Sporting were when he took over, just being in contention for the latter stages of the CL is a huge achievement when looking at Amorim’s reign as a whole. ↩︎
- For comparison, Sporting had failed to win a Classico against either team in the league for almost 4 years before Amorim took over. ↩︎
- Unai Emery illustrates both these points pretty well. Emery’s Valencia did very well in big games with excellent set-ups that nullified stronger opponents. However, in the biggest games at PSG, this underdog approach wasn’t enough. It did help them to take a 4-0 first leg lead against Barcelona, but then his team’s underdog mentality, inability to establish control or dominance over a game, ultimately led to the 6-1 second leg remontada. Then at Arsenal, he jumped too much from game to game with regards to a clear strategy and playing style, and could never build a system that was proactive enough to consistently break teams down. ↩︎
Third Man Runs 