Brazil using NFL quarterback-style playbook wristbands at World Cup to practice set pieces

In the stands at the Emirates for Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final second leg was Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay.

One of the advantages of working for a franchise owned by Kroenke Sports and Entertainment is the opportunities for cross-pollination between teams in different sports.

In addition to Arsenal, the Kroenkes own the Rams, the Denver Nuggets in the NBA and the Colorado Avalanches in the NHL. McVay presumably wanted to see if he could glean something from the way Arsenal play just as Mikel Arteta had from his visits to the U.S.

Upon ending a 22-year drought for the Premier League title, Josh Kroenke revealed what it had been like to sit alongside Arteta while watching the Rams and the Avalanche.

“I remember a conversation a few years ago,” Kroenke said. “We already had our staff in place and they were working very hard but Mikel was looking at an NFL game and he just broke it down in a way I had never heard before. He said: ‘Every play is a set-piece. Every play is choreographed’. You could see him going into this mode. ‘How can we apply this (to what we do)?’”

Arsenal scored 41 per cent of their goals from set-pieces this season. Nicolas Jover, the specialist in charge of them on Arteta’s coaching staff, even had a mural dedicated to him. Unsurprisingly the edge Arsenal found in this aspect of the game has led more and more teams to place greater and greater emphasis on dead-ball situations.

In Morristown, New Jersey, Brazil’s players were pictured practicing their own corner routines before Saturday’s World Cup opener against Morocco at MetLife.

Some of them wore wristbands that will be familiar to NFL fans. They were the same wearable playbooks you see quarterbacks consulting in the huddle.

ASÍ USAN LAS MUÑEQUERAS EN BRASIL.

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Checking one before a cross came in was Gabriel Magalhaes, the Arsenal centre-back and Brazil international, who has become one of the most feared players from these situations in the Premier League. The 28-year-old scored three goals from set-pieces this season; two from corners and another from an indirect free-kick.

In a World Cup when the sapping heat is expected to diminish teams ability to play and train at intensity, an effective playbook of set-pieces could be the difference between winning the tournament and not.

“Dead balls are an important strategy,” Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti said on the eve of the Morocco game. “Statistically 30 per cent of goals come from penalties or set-pieces. We’ve got great set-piece takers and great headers of the ball.

“It’s a big opportunity for us. We’ve been training hard on it the last few days and the team is very focused on it. We hope we can make something happen on it.”

Brazil’s players will not be able to wear the wristbands during the game. They must commit the playbook drawn up by Ancelotti’s son, Davide, and Francesco Mauri, the son of one of Ancelotti’s former assistants, to memory.

As if the water breaks at this World Cup didn’t already make the game feel like an American sport broken down into quarters rather than halves, the attention given to carefully choreographed ‘plays’ from a standing-start only adds to it.

The crossover only seems to be intensifying. Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla has spoken about how much he has learned about spacing and defensive transitions from watching Manchester City.

“I study Pep (Guardiola) a lot. I think he’s the best coach at any level, in any sport,” Mazzulla said. “It’s had a huge influence (on me).”

In the documentary You Have No F***ing Idea, Luis Enrique, the coach of back-to-back Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain, expressed his desire to be mic’d up to his players during a game just like a head coach or a coordinator in the NFL.

Coaches like Ancelotti continue to leave a lot of freedom to their players. Principles act as guidelines. They want their flair players like Vinicius Junior to be able to express themselves and improvise in the final third.

Not everything in the imagination can be drawn up. But the few situations coaches are able to control have to be exploited by set-pieces specialists on staff.