Sitting down one-to-one with Andree Jeglertz is an enchanting expertise. For a coach with over 20 years of expertise within the girls’s sport, it is putting how open he’s. No pretence or entrance simply an trustworthy evaluation of how he sees issues.
“This group, in the beginning, was maybe waiting a little bit for me to tell them what to do,” he says about his first few weeks in publish at Manchester Metropolis. “I don’t think you develop that way. Most things the players need to be able to solve during a match themselves.”
Jeglertz believes strongly in empowerment. He likes gamers to be free in a construction that permits every particular person and their strengths to thrive. There’s a subtlety to the modifications he has made to this point at Metropolis – tweaks that time in direction of evolution however do not detract from a method firmly ingrained within the cloth of the membership.
Metropolis’s 2-1 win over Brighton final Friday summed up the technique completely.
The primary aim, scored by the inevitable Khadija Shaw, is textbook. Straight from the Man Metropolis handbook.
Alex Greenwood performs a move via the traces, Leila Ouahabi is excessive and vast, prepared to hold up a deep cross to the again publish the place Shaw is arriving to energy a header residence. Nothing new, nevertheless spectacular the precision. Metropolis have been scoring that approach for millennia.
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Bunny Shaw converts a header on the again publish to lastly put Man Metropolis on the scoresheet after a continuing bout of stress initially of the second-half.
Final season they netted 15 cross-assisted targets, a minimum of six greater than any WSL aspect. They scored 13 headed targets, a minimum of 4 greater than another. The maths is sensible given they’ve usually had a monopoly on the very best wingers within the division. And Shaw is a compelling goal to purpose at.
Their second aim – Yui Hasegawa’s winner – nevertheless, is the place curiosity peaks. A transfer that little question earned the Jeglertz stamp of approval, cooked up in pre-season in a bid to extend Hasegawa’s affect in a specialist function.
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Aoba Fujino slots in Yui Hasegawa down the left-hand aspect of the field and he or she finds the far nook.
“Yui is one step ahead all of the time,” Jeglertz instructed me on the eve of the brand new marketing campaign. “We have put more attention on her not being stuck in one position, we would like to get her more fluent. She has qualities to play higher up the field because she spots space so well. We have to use her smartness.”
Think about the Danish coach’s delight when, simply two video games into the season, Hasegawa is rounding off a slick one-touch transfer between the width of the posts, involving Lauren Hemp, Aoba Fujino and Kerolin. Knife via butter stuff.
4 passes, all intentional and complicated, had Hasegawa one-v-one with the opposition goalkeeper and he or she tucked the possibility away like every good striker would. Hemp’s resolution to invade inside moderately than head for the byline was equally deliberate. Evolution unfolding.
Jeglertz needs Metropolis to develop into much less predictable, with a number of technique of scoring targets, past the menace from vast they’ve been so enduringly aligned with. Metropolis, in spite of everything, have among the finest central technicians within the league, Hasegawa one in all them.
“A lot of things in football is relationships, how are the players working together? Do they know when to expect certain movements and runs? Do they know when to cross, when to shoot – it’s all about building connections,” he says.
Beneath Gareth Taylor, Metropolis had a inflexible sport mannequin with lesser-seen tactical flexibility. Usually that took the type of a 4-3-3. Hasegawa was a set No 6, Hemp an out-and-out winger, Shaw a purveyor of the field solely.
This new system isn’t a radical change, however moderately a proposal of larger freedom inside a versatile framework. And meaning taking part in larger and extra aggressively too. In a break with Taylor’s affected person type of build-up, Metropolis below Jeglertz are a urgent drive.
“The small details really matter. It’s everyone’s project.” Jeglertz is huge on possession.
“The best thing about being a professional footballer is the feeling of it, take a step back and enjoy it. And then we can play forwards, win turnovers high, create energy to press. It’s my job to put the players in roles to optimise the way we want to play football.”
It should take time to knit collectively utterly however gamers have rapidly purchased into the method. Design is already evident. “I am proud of the players’ patience,” Jeglertz mirrored after beating Brighton. “There was no stress”. And Hasegawa, so central to Metropolis’s adoption of their new head coach’s concepts, was the best of the lot, second solely to Shaw in xG worth whereas posting a passing accuracy of 91 per cent.
Metropolis’s rivals will little question be alert to the truth that the final time the membership weren’t juggling home duties with the rigours of European soccer again in 2023-24, they had been crushed to the title solely on aim distinction. The absence of Champions League calls for will enable the time wanted to good the finer particulars of a sport plan that already reveals promise.
And with Hasegawa on the coronary heart of it, the chances are countless.
