Jon Mackenzie

Under Gasperini, Atalanta have become known for their fairly unique man-to-man press.

To be honest, Gasperini’s press is probably one of the earliest iterations of a hybrid press, but that perhaps gets overlooked because it arrived at hybridity from a man-oriented starting point where most other hybrid presses emerged from out of more zonal systems.

The reason why this is important is because what we see with Atalanta’s press is a jumping into man-to-man moments from more conservative starting points.

The general principle here is that you want to make sure you don’t overcommit in the man-to-man phases. If you do, you’ll not only end up with defenders exposed 1v1 in space, but you’ll also lose access to the opposition which means your press will eventually collapse.

Let me explain what I mean. Here’s the starting position of Atalanta’s press for Barca’s build up phase:

As you can see, this is broadly man-to-man but it is designed so that your players arrive in a man-to-man configuration depending on which side of the pitch the opponent build in.

So if the ball is progressed on Atalanta’s left, they jump to the man-to-man phase.

But there is often a countermovement on the other side to make sure that the whole team isn’t being pulled up the field.

As a result of this, you’re making sure you constantly have players dropping to avoid being dragged slowly up the pitch. Which means you don’t lose coverage of the pitch between man-to-man jumps and also means that your players are always ready to press ‘forwards’.

This means that Gasperini’s teams are always constantly in flux - jumping and retreating - to give themselves the best chance of maintaining structure despite their largely man-to-man approach.

For a more in-depth study, check out Albin’s study of Atalanta: https://x.com/albinsheqiri/sta...

But there are weaknesses here. As with all man-to-man approaches, despite the clear benefits of preventing opponents any time or space on the ball, the fact that you’re orientating yourself to an opposition player comes at a cost.

Inevitably, the man-marker will always be reactive to the player they’re tracking which means that teams playing against a team who use man-to-man principles can drag their markers around and find ways of generating separation between them as well.

On top of this, Atalanta’s fluxing - when they step up on one side and drop off on the other - means that they can be susceptible to switches in play if their press is caught in the ‘in-between’ phase between stepping up and dropping off.

Barcelona’s first goal is a good example of how these problems can be exploited.

The principles are: create space through movement, and find ways of generating separation from your markers to exploit this space.

The sequence begins with a switch of play along the Barca back line which starts with Kounde and sees the ball arrive at the feet of the other full back Balde.

This prompts the two way movement that we’ve talked about with the left side of the Atalanta press dropping and the right side being triggered.

Both Raphinha and Lewandowski drop in to support Balde and this pulls the Atalanta back line very high, creating space in behind.

It’s worth noting that one of the weaknesses that shows up in this in-between phase is the massive space that opens out between Hien, the Atalanta CB, and Kolasinac, the Atalanta LCB.

Because Zappacosta, the LWB, had to jump in the previous phase, Kolasinac has had to cover Yamal until Zappacosta returns to his deeper position. By that point, though, he’s lost connection with Hein at CCB, and the space is there to be exploited

In principle, open spaces aren’t necessarily an issue in a man-oriented system as long as players are being tracked but, as we said, the initiative is with the markee rather than the marker.

In the case of Yamal, because of the double role of Zappacosta and Kolasinac, he’s able to find himself in space on the far side of the pitch.

Over on the near side, with Lewandowski receiving the ball in the midfield, Raphinha can now attack the space that they’ve created and also use the momentum shift against Djimsiti to create some sort of separation from him.

At this point, it’s all over for Atalanta.

So this is the perfect example of how to cause problems for Atalanta's press: * work the ball from one side to another to create a weakness * pull their structure apart to create space * generate separation from your markers by attacking this space

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