An art once viewed as the reserve of lower-ranked clubs, a great leveller where ostensibly less talented sides could exert their superior physicality to flatten the playing field against more expensively assembled opponents, set-pieces have now become a clear point of focus even for the game’s elite.lead the Premier League in total set-piece goals this season with 22. Their 16 goals from corner kicks equals a record set – much more predictably – by Tony Pulis’ West Brom.
“I think the importance grew together with football becoming a bit more data-driven,” he says. “It allows teams to go into detail much more and identify weaknesses in defensive the set-up of the opposition. “We have a couple of set principles that we use,” Euvrard adds. “These are used as a base layer, let’s say a go-to. During the weak, we finetune that based off the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses.”
And Euvrard believes how quickly improvements in set-piece play can be seen is often a matter of how readily players embrace the idea of mastering the craft.