Germany's Innovative Attacking Corner Tactics Under Julian Nagelsmann & Mads Buttgereit

Karim El-Shesheiny - Total Football Analyst

NOTE: Substack paid subscribers also get full access to our 12,000+ tactical analysis archive on TotalFootballAnalysis.com. Just email us for access.

After losing against Spain in the quarter-final of UEFA Euro 2024, Germany won four and drew one in five matches to top their group in the UEFA Nations League.

Offensively, Julian Nagelsmann's side has been superb, scoring 17 goals in five matches at the time of writing.

This is the highest score in the competition, with a four-goal difference over Italy, who scored 13 goals with one more match played.

Defensively, they have achieved reasonable stats, conceding three in five matches, the second-strongest defensive line after Spain, who conceded three goals in six matches.

We have noticed that they are excellent at set pieces and have the potential to improve even more in the future, knowing that Mads Buttgereit is Germany's assistant coach for set pieces.

In this tactical analysis, we will discuss their tactics in attacking corners and how they deal with different kinds of defensive systems.

Germany's Tactics Against Man-marking Systems

We will begin by discussing how Germany behaves against man-marking defending systems under Julian Nagelsmann's tactics and then proceed to discuss their corners against Hungary in detail.

Flat Passing Lane

The first idea Julian Nagelsmann implemented is the "Flat Passing Lane," which sends a direct pass, grounded cross, to the area shown in the photo below.

As shown below, Hungary defends with a man-marking system, with only two zonal defenders (green) and two short-option defenders (blue), to prepare for the 2v2 situation for which Germany is famous, as we will discuss later.