Originally Posted by
Bremsstrahlung
The long ball is a useful tactic if the opposition is attempting to press or have a high line of defence. The tactic should be used to try and push the defense back and have a deeper line as they try to adapt to the long ball employed.
If the defence sits deeper, the long ball is seemingly ineffective or less effective. This creates space in the midfield to play. If the team continues to play long ball, potentially as that's the only skills they have, then they will be caught out and left impotent in attack. Then, commment a regarding the excessive use of long ball can be validated.
Should the defense choose to remain high, I'd have no problem with a team continually exploiting this and utilising fast attackers down the flanks or central.
The game is a head to head game of tactics and skill. As Why Blue says in his example, they were beaten and caught off guard. One could assume the Olympic coach had better tactics. The next time the charlestown? Coach would've changed and adapted his team's tactics to best counter Olympics and it was much more evenly matched. Without seeing the games, you could assume(and agree with why blue) that Olympic stuck to their original Gameplan. So the 3rd time, Ccb knew what extra tactics were needed and devised a plan to beat them. So while Olympic have kept their tactics/Gameplan the same (assumption) Ccb have adapted. In this situation you would say the Ccb coach is better, in this instance as he was able to adapt and counter opposition tactics while the other coach stuck to his original plan and was seemingly unwilling to adapt.
**this may not be the actual case but the analogy still stands**
On the other hand, if team A use the "long ball" tactic against team B. Team B did not react and continued to play the same way, then it could be said that although coach A is using the same tactic, it is effective and winning, while team B is not changing and losing out. This infers coach/team A > coach/team B.
I agree with an earlier point made that teams should learn a variety of different styles and tactics and then use whichever to be successful. But I disagree with the notion that Coach A is not a good Coach because he uses the same effective tactic each week. I think it says more about coaches b,c,d etc that can't organise their team to counter the tactic.
EDIT: this is just a general statement.
In Essence, this does highlight the lack of tactical abilities of our region if this tactic is getting the results it is. Maybe Olympic is doing the region a favour by forcing teams to actually adapt.