Many fans will notice that almost all teams in this tournament will have a lot of crosses in the game.

Whether it is England, which has always been highly regarded as a high-spirited player, Belgium, which focuses on overall attack, or Ireland, which uses counter-attacks as the main means of attack, they have averaged more than 20 cross attempts per game.

Portugal even make an average of 30 crosses per game, while possession-loving Germany and Spain also averaged 28 and 22 crosses per game in the group stage.

However, the number of goals actually achieved through crosses is pitiful, and is the tactic of holding high and hitting high really outdated? Those willing to take risks love to see wingers hoist the ball into the box, but is that an effective tactic?

A columnist for 442 magazine, John Davis, has found that the effectiveness of the cross-ball tactic is actually very debatable.

In the world of football, not everything is understandable to ordinary people.

Take the tension between Crystal Palace and Brighton, the FIFA accounts, and Steve McLaren's hairstyle.

But the most puzzling thing is why everyone thinks the easiest way to score a goal is to smash the ball over the striker's head from 50 yards away?

You have to know that in order to turn a cross into a shot, the strikers need to work hard and adjust the direction of the cross, and they will probably not touch the ball at all. Uh, guys, headers are really a technical job, don't underestimate it.

However, crosses are to football what a drug scandal is to cycling.

Every team in the world uses the cross, even if they're not good at it, but they still enjoy it. Even if you're OUT enough, you've probably heard the saying, "Pass the ball to the goal!" ”

In the Premier League, an average of one goal is scored every 92 crosses.

In other words, all four levels of the professional league in England have one cross per team, and only one team will score (it is likely that Aston Villa will concede, hehe, don't cry in summer). And 73 of those 92 crosses that went straight into the box couldn't find their team-mates accurately, meaning that four out of five crosses meant giving possession to someone else.

So, the question is, why do almost all teams stick to this kind of offensive style that resembles hitting the big luck? How did the cross-ball tactic become a staple of attack at home? Even if the proportion of crosses in modern football has decreased, should this simple and crude tactic be eliminated by history?

Just like art, it's hard to say exactly when it appeared in the Qing biography. What is certain, however, is that the most widely used tactics in the field of football were not invented by someone in the early days of the sport, but have a deeper historical background.

Originally, football rules dictated that players could only play back or crosses – like Tom Cleverley, but in the 19th century, dribbling became the mainstream, with individual players even bringing the ball directly into the goal.

When a defender pounces on the ball carrier, the ball carrier finds that a pass across the pitch gives the receiving player plenty of time to handle the ball so they can pace and continue dribbling.

Now we call this a wide shift, and in the ancient 2-3-5 formation, the team had a winger on each wing, so that the team's attack would not lack width.

It's like playing a fetch game with a dog that annoys you – you fight to kick the ball far, far away, and then watch the opposing defender pant after the ball.

Andrew Wilson, a Scotland international who played as a left-sided midfielder at the beginning of the 20th century and who holds the record for appearances and goals for Sheffield Wednesday, said: "If you give me the ball with a big foot, the opposing defenders will be at a loss because they are good at restricting attacking players with the ball, but they are often at a loss when faced with these passes that come down from the sky. ”

Crossing is one of the necessary manifestations of this tactic. In the 1888 FA Cup final, West Bromwich Albion won the favourite Preston North End in a way that they relied on this 'long ball tactic'. Winger Ian Bassett played well.

It is worth mentioning that Bassett's contemporaries were accustomed to dribbling the ball to corners and delivering crosses, but Bassett has a more unique view, believing that wingers should cut in quickly and deliver accurate and fast crosses before defenders are in position.

Nowadays, it is common for wingers to cut forward at high speed and deliver crosses when defenders are chasing back in the face of their own goal.

Not everyone agrees with the style of crossing. In the Victorian era, some even wanted headers to be banned, and when Sheffield fed the ball with a full striker in 1875, it was not so much a tactic that was funny.

Fifty years later, Herbert Chapman, a pioneer of tactical reform in football, has had success at both Hussfield and Arsenal, with a significant drop in the proportion of crosses on his tactical board, but only if he has the first great number 10 in football history like Alex James (this is Scottish striker James, not the rock 'n' roll).

But England fell in love with the cross, and even as the tactical landscape of football outside the British Isles was constantly evolving, these persistent islanders still remembered their roots.

In the 40s and 50s of the last century, traditional wingers were popular in England, and wingers such as Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney emerged, but the blind pursuit of wingers also caused a wrong direction in the selection of players.

England did not play well at the 1950 World Cup, and in 1953 they lost at home to Hungary, a series of defeats, Matthews said: "I think the strength of the team should be attributed to the manager's poor pre-match tactics...... [As a coach], you can't tell a star how to play. ”

See, losing the game is not my problem.

PS: There may be book friends in this part who say that it is more watery, and the author Jun said that he hopes to use this book to popularize some interesting knowledge of football to some football lovers (mainly newcomers) during the European Cup. It's not for nothing when these are interspersed, it's all combined with the game. Please be patient. (To be continued.) )