European Football Review - 9th-12th October 2026

For the first five weeks of the season, I had approached reviewing football played across Europe by reviewing selected games, with a focus on the Premier League, where I covered every game, and Serie A, where I covered a small number of games in depth due to the tactical intricacies involved. This is quite an intensive process, and after five weeks taking us up to the long international break, I believe I have enough of a feel for how the leagues are going that I can start projecting how certain tactical interactions hold up across different teams. I will still review selected games here and there but I am going to place more of a focus on writing up picks and analysing overall trends. I will be linking to more articles for light bedtime reading, and a lot of my articles will come from www.ultimouomo.com, an Italian language publications that goes into detail on the tactical side of football, especially in Serie A. Even though the articles are all in Italian, I would encourage you to read them anyway as machine translation is readily available. I will refer to other sites too, such as www.coachesvoice.com or sites specific to a particular club, like intothecalderon.com when referencing Atlético Madrid, for example.

So a few articles to consider for the past weekend:

Shifts and changes in Serie A

https://ultimouomo.com/5-statistiche-dimostrano-che-la-serie-a-2026-27-cambiata

This is an article reviewing the first five weeks of Serie A, in which it notes that the league has been more explosive and exciting compared to recent years. Whereas Serie A has traditionally been known as a very defensive, tactical league in which a lot of attention is placed on nullifying your opponent's advantages and responding to the changes they make, this season has retained the distinctly Italian tactical flavour while living with more goals volatile play. In a previous article it is mentioned that Serie A underwent some rule changes mirroring those that were active at this year's World Cup, designed to penalise timewasting. The result is more exciting games, at least so far and the article does note that we have a limited sample size.

A theme of some of the articles on the site is that Italian football may have a very clear and self confident sense of its own identity, but it also questions itself, looks at developments in other leagues and asks what Italian football will look like over the coming decade. Will it spurn the major trends in world football in favour of what has worked or will it adapt and potentially lose its identity in the process? There is a lot of space in between but so far it appears that Italian football is going in a new direction, one in which trying to extract cynical penalties is not quite as powerful a strategy as it used to be. I have posted before about how every league is different but Serie A deserves its own unique treatment to understand properly. I believe it will require careful attention to determine what methods will work best for it this season and so the linked article is a very useful reference point for how the season is developing.

Como 0-0 Roma

https://ultimouomo.com/como-roma-0-0-come-gasperini-ha-neutralizzato-fabregas-analisi-tattica

I have mentioned in previous posts that a couple of teams in Serie A have been particularly stubborn to bet against this past year. One of these is Como. Promoted two years ago, Como have undergone a significant rise under Cesc Fàbregas, finishing in the Champions League places ahead of Juventus and AC Milan. Although Como's big game record last year wasn't spectacular by the standards of a Champions League aspiring team, it was nonetheless far beyond what many expected that games involving them and the Italian giants would be referred to as big games in their own right. Como's style under Fàbregas is a positional orientated system based on manipulating the opponent's shape and then attacking the spaces that emerge. Roma are in their second season under Gian Piero Gasperini, who plays a man orientated positional game. Now there is a considerable degree of hybridisation in modern football, where generally zonal systems may go man orientated on certain vectors of opposition attack while generally man orientated systems may go zonal in certain circumstances. For the most part, Como vs Roma is a fixture in which one system is principally zonal and the other system principally man orientated.

The man vs zonal debate is not new. I remember when zonal marking became more common in the Premier League in the 2010s with Liverpool using it under Rafael Benitez. It allowed Liverpool's defence to cover space very efficiently for a squad that did not have the highest market cap at the time but it also left times when one of their zones would get overloaded and an opposing player would score from the resulting space. Man orientated systems at the time were insistent that someone had to be responsible for the would be goalscorer. In that era, players were trusted to work problems out on the pitch to a much greater degree, it was demanded of them even. The 2010s saw zonal systems become much more common as they allowed teams to make sets of players with lower transfer market valuations relatively very competitive and top teams were relying less on generational talents such as Paul Scholes or Andrea Pirlo. Nonetheless, there are tradeoffs between zonal and man orientated that influence where they are most effective. Man orientated systems give you more control over the action on the pitch as your players are able to judge where your opponent's weak points are and exploit them. Zonal systems on the other hand are useful for ensuring structural integrity, preventing your players from becoming isolated against those of your opponent in unfavourable matchups.

Roma and Como played each other twice last season, with each team winning once. Roma's man orientated system allows its players to purse opposition players further than they would in other systems. Whereas a defender may back off when an attacker retreats far enough back, a defender under Gasperini may pursue said attacker considerably further. Como were able to bait this last year, which opened up space for them. The game between these two at the weekend was a rematch of these tactical systems and this time Roma approached it slightly differently. They targetted the centre so Como didn't have a chance to conduct play easily through central midfield. This funnelled play out to the wings where they were able to more easily manage Como's attacks. Como's goalkeeper Jean Butez normally participates in Como's buildup play. Roma did not press quite so aggressively so as not to give him the chance to find space behind them. The result was that despite Como dominating possession, Roma had the better of the first half chances.

In the second half, Donyell Malen was sent of for Roma, and so they played a considerable section of the game with ten men. This is where a team like Como can become really dangerous because with that extra man, they can patiently probe and find the extra space until an opening emerges for a chance. Gasperini sacrificed the opportunity to press man to man up front to match Como's buildup in midfield. Fàbregas brought on Jesús Rodriguéz to provide width and find space on Roma's flanks. Gasperini dropped Nahuel Molina back to cover the space. Fàbregas switched from a four man defence to a three man defence before the end but it wasn't enough for Como to find a breakthrough.

To assess a team's overall strength and compare it to where the markets have them is in certain ways the easy part. The difficult work begins in assessing through what mechanisms they are strong and where they are more exposed to needling from other teams. A team like Como was able to find an edge against a team like Roma last year but this weekend showed that this time, Roma had a response. This will help us to better understand these teams and how they play as interactions between mechanisms is ultimately how these games are won and lost, or drawn. In this week's Champions League, Como are away to Feyenoord and Roma are at home to Real Madrid. Both will be very interesting fixtures.

Liverpool 0-3 Manchester City

The first game since Manchester City were found guilty of 114 out of 115 charges of breaching Premier League financial regulations, Liverpool were also looking for their first Premier League home win under Andoni Iraola. Liverpool did not start terribly and until Ryan Gravenberch's red card after the hour mark, they had generated the better of the chances. What followed was three goals in a quarter of an hour as Manchester City exploited the gap that emerged in Liverpool's midfield. When a team has a player receive a red card, it affects live game lines depending on the player, how far into the game it is and the balance of power between the teams. Generally it amounts to quite a noticeable blow, but on its own it does not decide the outcome. The resulting space that emerges from their absence is where it ultimately impacts the game. Some teams are very good at ensuring the rest of the team denies the space from being exploited by the other team while others find their players becoming increasingly stretched as the other team exploits their pressure points. Last month Manchester City were able to hold out and win against Manchester United after playing most of the match with ten men. Now it was City's turn to wield a man advantage during the most critical times of the contest.

Manchester City's playstyle is a positional orientated system where Enzo Marseca took over from Pep Guardiola in the summer. Maresca's team has as its base Enzo Fernández and Eliot Anderson, two very physical all round midfields signed in the summer. What is notable about them is they are well able to carry the ball and resist the opponent's press. Against Andoni Iraola, who plays a high intensity pressing system, City's midfield was well equipped not to be overwhelmed by Liverpool's. This does not mean that they had the upper hand as Liverpool were able to find some spaces around them and generate some chances, but they weren't especially vulnerable to Liverpool's approach. When Gravenberch was sent off, that was when Maresca's system of positional rotations designed to continuously make space from successive movements, Liverpool were no longer able to keep up. As they defended deeper they were able to protect the space behind them but were not able to as effectively contest the ball higher up the pitch.

Florian Wirtz is a recurring tension in Liverpool's system as he is a player who functioned very effectively in Xabi Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen system from several years ago but he has looked somewhat mismatched with the squad that Jurgen Klopp left behind that Arne Slot brought him into. Now under Iraola, he yet again looks like a player for the wrong system, capable of being a key player in a positional system but not in a high intensity pressing system where every bit of space matters. Liverpool may have been able to protect their flanks after a chaotic opening two games but their defeat at home to Manchester City has shown that the structure that holds up their system is fragile and that they are capable of spiralling if they receive a serious setback. Manchester City have won all eight of their competitive games under Enzo Maresca and now face Champions League holders PSG who have endured a rocky start to the season. A lot will depend on whether or not PSG have managed to correct course during the international break.