Long ball

The long-ball game is also advocated in such books The Winning Formula: The Football Association Soccer Skills and Tactics, by Charles Hughes, which demonstrates with statistics that a majority of goals are scored within 5 passes of the ball.

[citation needed] It is however used by teams desperate to score a goal before the end of a match, though this is probably as much due to the lack of time for a gradual build-up as it is for its perceived effectiveness.

Analysis of its implementation at world-class levels however, shows that effective use of long-ball techniques can be found in numerous competitive World Cup or championship club teams.

Dutch defender Frank de Boer initiated the move from near the middle of the field, with a long pass that curled over 7 opposing players.

Contemporary teams like Norway and Sweden have also demonstrated the viability of the long-ball approach when executed with skill, precision and creativity by top players.

The left back would often hit long crosses to Jostein Flo, who in turn would head the ball to either one of the central midfielders or to the striker.

Similar to the Bergkamp goal, but played to an advanced man on the wing, it began with an extremely long pass from Stig Inge Bjørnebye.

He ran on and cut inside to beat his defending opponent, then slotted the ball past the goalkeeper Cláudio Taffarel.

Accurate passes aimed at a specific player are examples of individual long balls, but do not represent the spirit of a team playing a long-ball game.

In that situation, the team would be pumping long-balls up repeatedly into an area, rather than a specific player, hoping the striker would get some of them and the percentages would pay off in the long-run.

Chelsea's rehearsed gameplan for this scenario was to go direct from anywhere in the field, and PSG's defensive line fell very deep and very compressed.