Good morning!

Kyle Boas Author of the Tactics Journal

In today’s email:

• Inter forward Marcus Thuram’s share of the team’s box touches rose from 11% to 27% after Lautaro’s injury
• Older kids get picked for elite youth teams, but they don’t end up as the world’s best young players
• Nottingham Forest are taking blood twice a week from 25 second-team players to predict muscle injuries
• Why aren’t we using exoskeletons more

TACTICALLY INTERESTING

Teams and games I am following.

• The Independent: Man Utd eyeing former Chelsea and Spurs boss to replace Michael Carrick
  Swipe for next article
• The Guardian: Cerebral Josh King plots unusual route into Tuchel’s England plans
  Armed with an impressive academic record and experience as a rugby fly-half, the teenager is anything but typical

Inter forward Marcus Thuram’s share of the team’s box touches rose from 11% to 27% after Lautaro’s injury

Francesco Lisanti for UltimoUomo translated from Italian:

A graphic produced by Sky Sport after the match showed Thuram’s “usage rate” percentages, a metric used far more in the NBA than in football in general, before and after Lautaro’s injury. Before, 11% of all of Inter’s touches in the box and 14% of all their shots on goal went through his feet; now he is responsible for 27% of touches in the box and 25% of shots on goal.

In purely numerical terms, this difference in centrality was natural (Lautaro is the most important player in the squad in every respect), but in terms of responsibility it was not a given.

[…] When Inter manage to build from the back without a single fixed playmaker, relying on the fluid rotation of the back four, in which even Çalhanoglu can often end up playing right back, as we saw yesterday, they automatically defuse the opponent’s aggression and create space vertically.

With a body feint Bastoni gets past Douvikas and opens up the pitch, while Akanji finds himself as the playmaker, forcing Perrone to switch markers, Barella plays centre-back and Calhanoglu full-back. When Inter play with this lightness and fluidity, it is difficult for any opponent to break shape and re-form without leaving space.

I think this plays a lot into how modern football is moving with rotations from midfielders moving back into the back line more often. Look at Frankie de Jong at Barcelona, Declan Rice at Arsenal, or Andrey Santos at Manchester United. Hold up play central becomes more important and more frequent when you lose a player in the midfield.

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POLL

Older kids get picked for elite youth teams, but they don’t end up as the world’s best young players

Defying the odds: the relative age effect’s absence among the best teenage football players in the world by Arve Vorland Pedersen:

The relative age effect (RAE) is the advantage of being born earlier in the selection period, thus being more experienced and more developed.

[…] In the 2025 U20WC, 287 players (57%) were born in the first constituent year whereas 217 (43%) were born in others, and in the 2023 U20WC, the corresponding distribution was 292 and 212 (58%-42%).

Among the CIES’s 200, 59 players (30%) were born in the first constituent year (i.e. 2005), whereas 100 players (50%) were born in 2006, 36 (18%) in 2007, and five (3%) in 2008.

[…] The selected ones are not necessarily the best prospects but ones who perform best among their often less physically developed peers.

[…] Club scouts, as well as scouts selecting players for regional and national teams, should be aware that many of the players that they select may be selected largely due to their physical development, not their skill.

As a kid, I was always jealous of the kids of my similar age who were put in the age group below because of that physical development advantage. You are just stuck on the bench in the lower rung of the club when you are small and scrawny.

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Nottingham Forest are taking blood twice a week from 25 second-team players to predict muscle injuries

Rivista Undici translated from Italian:

The English club is experimenting with a new technology able to identify the biological signals that come before injuries. It is a 12-week project, developed with the Scottish biotech company Entourage, that could change the way teams manage their players’ health and extend their careers. The study will initially involve the 25 players of Forest’s men’s second team, who will give two blood samples every week. The samples will be analysed to monitor thousands of proteins and build a detailed picture of each player’s biological response to training, matches, injuries and the recovery that follows.

The results will then be compared with data the club has already collected on workloads, physical preparation and the players’ clinical condition. The aim is to understand whether certain biological changes can anticipate the risk of non-traumatic muscle injuries, the ones that happen without direct contact with an opponent.

Entourage chief executive Patrick Gunning:

If we know a player’s individual biology, we can start to understand what works for him and what does not.

If, after a match, one player’s inflammation levels stay much higher than a teammate’s, that information can help the medical staff judge whether a different approach to recovery is needed.

More technology, more, more, more.

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Why aren’t we using exoskeletons more

Empirical study on how lower limb exoskeleton robots improve older adults’ physical performance through psychological mechanisms by Changjian Wang and Tianyou Zhang:

Participants in the intervention group wore lower limb exoskeleton robots, while those in the control group did not, so participants could clearly perceive their group assignment, posing a risk of bias due to expectation effects.

[…] The control group performs self-directed exercise training of the same duration and intensity without wearing the exoskeleton. The intervention lasts 8 weeks, with physical performance tests and psychological assessments conducted before and after the intervention.

[…] In the control group, there were no obvious changes in psychological indicators before and after the intervention; in the intervention group, the RPE perceived exertion score decreased significantly, while the exercise self-efficacy and ABC balance confidence scores increased significantly.

[…] three sessions per week, each lasting 40 min, including a 10-min warm-up, 25 min of exoskeleton-assisted walking and stepping training, and a 5-min cool-down.

[…] After the intervention, the intervention group showed increases in walking speed, step length, and 6-min walking distance, while gait variability coefficient and balance sway value decreased; the control group showed no significant changes in any exercise indicators before and after the intervention.

[…] Exoskeleton assistance is set to a low level (10–15 N·m) to provide light support and help participants adapt to the robot’s power rhythm while fostering a sense of safe exercise.

[…] The main training is optimized with alternating steady walking and short-distance stepping, walking speed increased to 0.8–0.95 m/s, and exoskeleton assistance set to a medium level (15–22 N·m).

[…] Assistance is dynamically adjusted based on the participant’s real-time condition, ensuring reduced physical strain while retaining some self-generated effort to avoid full mechanical compensation.

[…] Exoskeleton assistance is kept at a medium-high level (20–28 N·m), emphasizing gait stability and endurance training while reducing perceived exertion. Towards the end of this phase, the proportion of assistance is gradually decreased, encouraging participants to exert more effort themselves, avoiding device dependency, and reinforcing their confidence and capability to exercise independently.

I think there is a future where every player is wearing one of these exoskeletons off the pitch, between games, to help with recovery. Maybe even in certain types of training.

cc: Mikel Arteta and his weird and interesting alternative methods.

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NEWS

• The Athletic: Everton, 10 questions after 10 matches: Dewsbury-Hall delivers, Grealish concerns, is form sustainable?
  Everton fans are feeling as positive as they have done in a while as the Premier League pauses for the international break
• The Independent: Mauricio Pochettino becomes major candidate to replace Michael Carrick as Man United manager
• The Guardian: Manchester United weighing up Michael Carrick sacking as Wilcox leads review
  Director of football in discussions with Omar Berrada
• The Athletic: Manchester United expected to sack Michael Carrick as head coach
  United are in the Premier League's relegation zone after winning just one of their first 10 games this season.
• The Guardian: Manchester’s soulless content machine football clubs sum up post-imperial Britain
  United and City dominate the news cycle with stories so strange and vast they threaten to consume the rest of the league
• The Athletic: Harry Kane, men’s Ballon d’Or winner, not included in FIFPro’s 2026 World XI
  FIFPro instead voted for Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal for the forward positions.

RECOMMENDED READING

Everything published yesterday by the writers I follow

• Real Madrid’s Arda Guler starts on the right wing and moves inside to find Kylian Mbappe’s diagonal runs
  Guler’s role on the right wing perhaps best explains Mourinho’s determination to keep him in the team.
• Barcelona’s Frenkie de Jong played right-back against Atletico but moved into midfield in possession
• Daring Fireball: Bloomberg Was Onto Megaspeed’s Game a Year Ago
  In an industry run by titans, a Singapore AI firm called Megaspeed International Pte.
• Referee Bas Nijhuis says a player landing on his elbow can still have a support arm
  Danny says a support arm has to be stretched straight out beneath you.
• Netherlands record cap holder Wesley Sneijder says some Oranje substitutes faked injuries to skip squads
  I always said to everyone: it doesn't matter where or when I have to play for Oranje, I will play.
• Maracanã’s new pitch is grown on plastic so its roots can reach 15 to 20 centimetres deep
  At the Maracanã, we are bringing in a new technology, the first in South America, called Play On Time, which grows the grass on plastic.
• KNVB referee Bas Nijhuis thinks a VAR shouting ‘stop’ in a referee’s ear forces an early whistle
  A VAR checks the situation, as happened here with Wout Weghorst.
• Fantasy Premier League users watch staff accounts to spot injuries before clubs announce them
• The Jabulani’s drag crisis fell between 79 and 97 km/h, the speed of a free kick
  Every ball has a speed above which air resistance suddenly drops sharply, the so-called drag crisis.
• Fortuna Sittard coach Danny Buijs leaves the bench before half-time to plan the video he shows his players
  Those last two, three minutes I don't have that much influence anymore.
• Daring Fireball: Short-Seller Culper Research Published Information on Jensen Huang’s Affair Back in May
  Culper Research is a short-seller that published a report (PDF and in a thread on X) in May alleging that Nvidia “had a China problem”.
• Daring Fireball: Tesla Brain Drain
  Tesla painted a very different picture just two years ago.
• Chelsea staff revealed João Pedro’s injury by dropping him from their Fantasy Premier League teams
  Chelsea has sent its players and other staff an email with an urgent request to be more careful about sharing secret information in computer games.
• An Arsenal coach went through Declan Rice’s two free-kick goals against Real Madrid with him a week later
  The Englishman beat Thibaut Courtois twice directly from free kicks, and Arsenal won 3-0.
• Daring Fireball: Rubio Warned Officials About Nvidia Chief’s Entanglement With Chinese Spy - the New York Times
  Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Julian E.
• A substituted player who takes over 10 seconds to leave puts his team a man down for a minute
  Under the regulation, a player being replaced must leave the pitch within 10 seconds of the substitution board being shown.
• Orlando Pirates coach Abdeslam Ouaddou wants tricks only once his team leads by four goals
  I was relieved, yes, because I made a mistake.
• Serbia coach Veljko Paunović leaves young players out of the senior squad until they agree to play for the U21s
  I think he needs to play for the U21 national team, but he is not on the list because we have not seen his willingness to play for the youth national team.
• Traditional Chinese exercise helped knee osteoarthritis and osteoporosis most at 150 minutes or more a week
  Traditional Chinese exercises (TCEs), such as Tai Chi, Baduanjin, Qigong, Yijinjing and Wuqinxi, combine slow, controlled movement with breathing and focused attention.
• Mikel Arteta bars Arsenal players and staff from picking Arsenal players in Fantasy Premier League
  Mikel Arteta wants to avoid, at all costs, sensitive information about his Arsenal line-up leaking out early.
• Elite sport systems differ in when and at which athletes they aim their investment
  Built for the games or built to last?
• Changing how players read a faster opponent takes far longer than changing their positions
  But what impressed me even more was how quickly they pressed back after their pressing had been beaten.
• Barcelona will assess Sfera FC youngsters at La Masia before rival European clubs take an interest
  The partnership differs in an important way from traditional signings.
• Lazio playmaker Reda Belahyane waits for the ball to move away from a bigger opponent before he tackles
  Belahyane's talent is mainly defensive.
• Grêmio coach Renato Gaúcho replaced a playmaker with a back three, wing-backs and a physical midfield
  The improvement began when Renato found a formation better suited to the squad's characteristics.
• Staff can discuss return from tendon surgery as several separate milestones rather than one return date
  Among 27 of 28 returners with separable season statistics, minutes per game were 30.22 before vs.
• Istra 1961 kept first-team teenager Nik Škafar Žužić at the club instead of releasing him for the U-17 World Cup
  I spoke with him, he wanted to play for the national team, like every player.
• FC Utrecht forward Nordin Amrabat plays without a contract and wants to be paid by playing time
  “I don’t receive absolutely anything else,” he said.
• Referee Danny Makkelie lay on the mixed-zone floor to act out a disputed penalty decision
  Makkelie suddenly turned up there.
• Barcelona coach Hansi Flick planned to move Frenkie de Jong from right-back into midfield once Marc Bernal tired
  Before the previous match, we already talked with Frenkie about whether he could play at right-back.