Cocu's Tactical Philosophy

[Srg]

Worth noting this was written whilst still relatively early in his reign at PSV, however...

Background

As a player, Phillip Cocu was a midfield general who also had an eye for a goal or two. During his professional career he was famously known for his spell with Barcelona which saw him become the most capped foreign player in the club’s history until Lionel Messi came along. Over the 6 years he featured 291 times scoring 31 times in all competitions. Towards the end of his Barcelona spell he couldn’t agree contract terms with them and decided to return to his beloved PSV Eindhoven who he has now come to manage.

He began his managerial career with PSV in 2012 when he took over as caretaker manager, despite winning the KBVN cup the board went against him for the manager’s job although results were promising. Dick Advocaat took over the reigns as first team manager after the board opted for more experience in the 2012-13 season, whilst Cocu became manager of the Under-19s to get more managerial experience. At the end of the season it proved vital as Cocu was handed the top job on a four year contract after Dick Advocaat quit the post.

 

Won't post the rest because this will be daft too long... but here's the full article that goes through his attacking set up etc whilst at PSV:

http://outsideoftheboot.com/2015/07/30/tactical-philosophy-philip-cocu/

 

[Anon]

I can't believe someone was able to compile this without spying on Cocu or doing something equally ethical, like rifling through his bins. I've been reliably informed by dirty Leeds fans and idiotic football hipsters that only Marcelo Bielsa has ever thought to fully analyse another manager's style and the way he sets his team up.

[RadioactiveWaste]

He's not going to try to teach Keogh zonal marking is he?

[duncanjwitham]

That basically sounds like McClaren 1 to me - zonal defending with structured pressing, and then attacking by using the midfielders to create space for the wingers to break into.

[Alph]

Have a think about how much time, energy and communication go into making all this work on a pitch being played at pace.

Hard to actually implement, yeah? 

But if everyone sticks to their tasks and does their job then it comes down to individual quality which is fine.

So why the feck do people talk garbage about a Plan B? 

There's slight tweaks that you'd make to your philosophy to suit opponents but if you have two or more in depth systems then how can you expect to get near perfection in any of them.

I frickin' hate plan B talk

[cheron85]

4 minutes ago, Alpha said:

So why the feck do people talk garbage about a Plan B? 

It's just a bar in Amsterdam - So the backup plan is probably "have some beers"

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g188590-d2256667-Reviews-Plan_B-Amsterdam_North_Holland_Province.html

[Andicis]

1 hour ago, Alpha said:

Have a think about how much time, energy and communication go into making all this work on a pitch being played at pace.

Hard to actually implement, yeah? 

But if everyone sticks to their tasks and does their job then it comes down to individual quality which is fine.

So why the feck do people talk garbage about a Plan B? 

There's slight tweaks that you'd make to your philosophy to suit opponents but if you have two or more in depth systems then how can you expect to get near perfection in any of them.

I frickin' hate plan B talk

The plan B poo came in so people could use it as an excuse to attack Mac, if plan A works there is no need for a plan B. Pep, Klopp etc don't have plan B's.

[Srg]

Just now, Andicis said:

The plan B poo came in so people could use it as an excuse to attack Mac, if plan A works there is no need for a plan B. Pep, Klopp etc don't have plan B's.

Agreed. Personnel or slight tweaks is all you should need - you can't prepare two completely different styles and have any success, and you'll find very few coaches in the world willing to completely change their tactical philosophy from game to game. Sure, they might be a little bit more conservative or attacking depending on the opponent, but you won't get much further than that.

The Mac plan B nonsense was born out of having too many important injuries hindering the side.

[Andicis]

3 minutes ago, Srg said:

Agreed. Personnel or slight tweaks is all you should need - you can't prepare two completely different styles and have any success, and you'll find very few coaches in the world willing to completely change their tactical philosophy from game to game. Sure, they might be a little bit more conservative or attacking depending on the opponent, but you won't get much further than that.

The Mac plan B nonsense was born out of having too many important injuries hindering the side.

Exactly, it's just not feasible to expect a team to change so much on a game by game basis, it's too confusing, they won't remember how to do it, whereas if you work hard on one style, you can perform on that better, then just tweak based on injuries/form/opponent, but with the same base. 

[B4ev6is]

It sounds like it could sort our strilers quite well.

[Sexydadbod]

4 hours ago, Alpha said:

Have a think about how much time, energy and communication go into making all this work on a pitch being played at pace.

Hard to actually implement, yeah? 

But if everyone sticks to their tasks and does their job then it comes down to individual quality which is fine.

So why the feck do people talk garbage about a Plan B? 

There's slight tweaks that you'd make to your philosophy to suit opponents but if you have two or more in depth systems then how can you expect to get near perfection in any of them.

I frickin' hate plan B talk

Plan B doesn’t have to mean resorting to hoof ball though. The argument for having a plan b is the unpredictability element so it makes it harder for opponents to plan for what you’re going to do. It’s very hard to perfect a plan A. Take the play offs for example, we were absolutely toothless in the first leg against Leeds in the 4-3-3, in the second leg lampard switched to the diamond formation,that we had never used under him before,  in order to get two players in more central positions pressing the Leeds backline and it worked wonders, it certainly took Bielsa by surprise. 

 

2 hours ago, Andicis said:

The plan B poo came in so people could use it as an excuse to attack Mac, if plan A works there is no need for a plan B. Pep, Klopp etc don't have plan B's.

I agree with your first point but disagree on your last point. Pep and Klopp definitely use multiple tactics for different situations. For example there was a point in the season when Liverpool’s performances were stagnating so Klopp moved Salah into a more central striker role, which meant Firmino had to move into a midfield no 10 role and meant other players had to adapt their positions. Meanwhile in certain games, Pep made the full backs attack to provide width, whilst in other games he had them stay back so City could build possession from the back, which meant they could play Sane and Sterling as ‘natural wingers’ with no defensive responsibility. Then against ‘better’ opponents he played two cdms (Fernandinho and Gundogan) and moved Bernardo Silva as a right winger to retain possession higher up the pitch. However, the football intelligence of said players will be higher so they’d be comfortable playing in different ways unlike perhaps championship players.

[Carnero]

3 minutes ago, McLovin said:

The argument for having a plan b is the unpredictability element

 

[Carnero]

So it's pronounced "Coe-Coo" then, rather than "Cok-oo"... well whadda y'know!

[Alph]

Nobody said anything about hoofball. 

Mac was accused of not having a Plan B when we lost games. 

The truth is Derby did change things up during games. They were subtle changes within the formation. 

If Plan B means tweaking then we had one

If Plan B means a completely different approach then no top manager seems to have one

[Ambitious]

Without going into too much detail, I did a brief check on their 'whoscored' page during Cocu's time at PSV. A few things stood out:
1) he likes his set pieces and often had the highest goals in the league from such situations.
2) he likes his players to run at defenders, another pointer was that PSV would often have the highest dribbles per game - possibly linking into why he is such a fan of throwing money in the direction of attacking midfielders in South America.
3) he likes crossing situations, but not necessarily to a 'big man' in the box. De Jong would be their first choice, but he liked to play Lozano upfront at times. I think he's definitely someone who would see the benefit in both Waghorn and Marriott's movement in the box, as opposed to someone like Matt Smith.  
4) PSV were often in the bottom three on the proportion of shots they took from outside the box.
5) not really known for their tackling - they're very positionally aware unlike many other Dutch teams. 

[Sexydadbod]

2 minutes ago, Alpha said:

Nobody said anything about hoofball. 

Mac was accused of not having a Plan B when we lost games. 

The truth is Derby did change things up during games. They were subtle changes within the formation. 

If Plan B means tweaking then we had one

If Plan B means a completely different approach then no top manager seems to have one

Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with it now,  I was one of those at the time who criticised McClaren for a lack of plan b.  Excuse me if my memory is a bit hazy. I think my reasoning was because we relied heavily on the defensive mid like a Thorne or mascarell and Martin(every man and his dog knew that Martin was arguably the key player in the side so sought out to stop him) and when they weren’t fit, our results declined a lot so we should have had a ready made system as a contingency plan in such an injury crisis.

There probably wasn’t a contingency plan in place as we were chopping and changing the system and players at times after our dms got injured, my point at the time was that this should have already been in place instead of trying to find the solution within games, which was at the expense of our results. I think the last game v reading we even resorted to a three at the back with Lingard as the wing back and Warnock in midfield because Mac was looking for a solution but scrapped that after half an hour. The main problem up front was that we relied a lot on Martin’s link up play and getting valuable free kicks , when he got injured, we were a bit screwed as Bent was the complete opposite to Martin, he ran in behind a lot but provided nothing in general play. I guess this points more to a player recruitment problem than a lack of plan b. In reality we should have bought someone similar to Martin as a back up so the team’s style wouldn’t be affected much if Martin was unavailable, rather than someone totally different like Bent. 

[Andicis]

43 minutes ago, McLovin said:

Pep and Klopp definitely use multiple tactics for different situations

In my mind, and most of the arguments I saw from Derby fans centred on Mac, was a plan B was almost an entirely different way of playing, Mac made tweaks to the system as Pep and Klopp do, but ultimately they don't change the style of play completely. Obviously there is a bit more nuance to it than they play the exact same way every time.

[dcfcfan1]

When was the last time a dutch manager did ok in england? Excited but my only concern

[Andicis]

6 minutes ago, dcfcfan1 said:

When was the last time a dutch manager did ok in england? Excited but my only concern

Completely irrelevant. It's the same kind of thinking of last summer where people said ex players always failed as managers so Frank was going to be rubbish, only switched to Dutch managers. What's been before has no bearing on this.

[Turk Thrust]

11 minutes ago, dcfcfan1 said:

When was the last time a dutch manager did ok in england? Excited but my only concern

Well there's been lots of Dutch managers but only two had some form of success - Gus Hiddink and Ronald Koeman