KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum man to man vs zonal marking

Can you please explain why they look like idiots?

have a look at the ajax -city goals again...

or chelsea's goals which knocked us out of a CL QF. stupidity in motion..or motionless in zonal's case

how can it not be stupid?

right lets say someone throws something at you and i wanna stop u getting it..would i have more chance of stopping u if i am right beside u and pushing u out of the way or if i am standing around hoping that the thrown object comes into my zone......zonal is for idiots

So by picking out a few examples, of which there are many similar examples of man marking gone wrong, you have proven what exactly?

well if you're employing a 1 man zonal system then probably man marking is better. However if you have several players all defending compact zones then if I run for the ball I might get past one player but come into the zone of another while the defenders all maintain a defensive structure where they can't be easily blocked off

I dont think its that simplistic , and its certainly not 'stupid' for corners, i dunno about the rest.


The last match there was terry manhugging his own player impossible to man mark the two clutching each other. All teams do that liverpool do it as well.


If you have a long corner pinged in you have time to ascertain where it should land.

If you have one defender taking terry waiting for him to break then terry or the other cfc player can grab onto anohter chelsea players. Impossible to find a sure way to stop that.

It depends how u define 'zonal'

I imagine its more linear. ie once the ball passes 20 yards if its in the air defender 1 is assigned to head it . He knows that if he doesnt get it he is to blame . He knows if the ball goes 25 yards the player behind is responsible, and so on. No system is fail safe, but man to man marking is great when you have sensible referrees and sensible implementation of rules. At the moment if a defender puts his leg out and the forward chooses to fall over it, its a definate penalty. It never used to be like that you used to have to hack someones leg off to get the ref to blow his whistle. The attacker knows whos gonna be picking him up and can do the theatrical dive more easily than if it were 'zonal' where who eveer picks him up is the person in the corresponding zone.

The other thing about zonal is it helps the keeper, there is less crowding , because man to man marking doesnt help much if 5 chelsea players rush the goalie at same time. In effect you have 5 markers and so ten players running at the goalie. The goalie ends up in a panic because he can't even see the ball. Of course anti 'zonal' fans would say that 5 chelsea players can rush the goalie whether you have zonal or not. This is true but if the zonal defender is good header like coates for example he 'should' get to the ball first, if he is doing his job. Only one person is needed to clear the danger from a corner. And better to watchthe ball for a corner than watch the man in my opinion

I thought it worked really wellunder rafa I wouldnt trust someone like KD or BR however.

it helped get rafa the sack..hiddink saying the system rafa used was a joke and
helped them beat us . scolari also sacked using it at chelsea, mancini is out the door
pretty soon. the only manager who got away with it was pep and thats just cause his team was
so good.

There's a counter argument to that......why would you mark someone if they aren't anywhere near the ball? At least with Zonal marking you don't lose your position and your position won't lose you. There are pors & cons to both systems - to say that either is for idiots is.....idiotic.

no its not ..the counter arguement is idiotic. it doesn't work and that has been proved time and time again,especially in england..scolari,rafa and now mancini all found out over it..there is a good way and there is a wrong way.zonal is wrong and thus if employed - idiotic.

Scolari, rafa and mancini? if that's you attempting to prove a point, you've shot yourself right in the fanny! Do I need to bother listing the things that they have won with this 'idiotic' zonal marking system, or shall I not bother?