maypaxvobiscum wrote:im confused. zonal marking, a player defends an area assigned to him. so whatever or whoever comes into the box the player should deal with it. however what if someone like adebayor, who is so tall, goes into the area alonso or mash is marking? how about zonal marking, with 2 or 3 of our players marking the ''dangermen''? that should work fine.
You put your best headers of the ball in the key danger areas, mate, and they pick up whoever goes into those zones. Other players are positioned in zones according to their height, physicality, ability to read the ball etc. In other words, your players least likely to contain someone like Adebayor are assigned zones that offer the least goal threat. If Adebayor wants to focus on their zone, he'll have to work a lot harder to score.
For the skeptics who wish we'd just man-mark, recall Torres' goal against Reading. He had Bikey man-marking him and all he did was run the big man into a wall of players, slip around the backside and meet the cross uncontested for a goal. Free headers happen all the time in man-marking because good players can lose their markers with clever movement. There's no fool proof system but I've every confidence in zonal marking because it's a system we've had in place for four years, with good results.
