Tottenham has made seven new signings on the pitch this summer. But it is one new signing brought into Antonio Conte’s backroom staff that is arguably having the biggest impact.
Newsonline report that Richarlison has twice come off the bench and looked sharp, while Ivan Perisic impressed on his home debut against Wolves, with Yves Bissouma and Clement Lenglet used sparingly so far.
Fraser Forster and Djed Spence are yet to make their debuts, while Destiny Udogie went back on loan to Udinese after joining the club this week. But off the pitch a new singing is definitely earning his corn.
Antonio Conte brought Gianni Vio to N17 during the summer to join his backroom staff. The fellow Italian is a dedicated set-piece coach, an area Conte felt was lacking for Spurs during his first season last year.
Vio worked with the Italian national team as well as having had spells at AC Milan, Leeds United, Brentford and Fiorentina before joining Spurs this summer. He is credited with making Italy a force from set-pieces as they won Euro 2020 and has reportedly designed 4,830 different routines which Roberto Mancini’s team were able to utilise from free-kicks and corners.
Tottenham supporters have been disappointed with the set-pieces the club have produced in recent seasons and Vio was brought in to change matters. Vio adapts his set-pieces to the strengths of the individual players available at each club and he explained his ideas in an interview with La Nuova di Venezia newspaper
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“You need to analyse the players you have and find solutions tailor-made to their skillset,” he is quoted as saying by the Guardian. “There are players whose reading of the game is special. At the highest level, Sergio Ramos comes to mind. Wherever you put the ball, you can bet he’ll find a way to get on the end of it. Timing is the most important thing when it comes to finishing off a set-piece.”
And his arrival at Spurs is already paying off. Tottenham have scored seven goals this season, with two of those efforts coming directly from set-piece routines, with a third soon after a set-piece took place.
Those two goals were responsible for Spurs winning four of their seven points already this season, showing the impact Vio is having and is likely to continue to have at Tottenham.
Tottenham’s last-ditch equaliser away at Chelsea was a fine corner from Ivan Perisic, nodded home by Harry Kane. That does not tell you everything though, with three other Spurs players right in the heart of the box attacking the ball as it came in and ready to head it home, with the Chelsea defence nowhere to be seen.
Then, Spurs grabbed all three points at home to Wolves on Saturday thanks to another header from Kane. And from another corner.
This time it was Son Heung-min with it, but replays clearly showed Perisic giving him the eyes and he darted to the near post to flick the ball on over the Wolves defence. Kane’s movement at the back post was exquisite, shrugging off the attentions of Nathan Collins and nodding in the simplest of headers.
Vio admitted that “timing is the most important thing when it comes to finishing off a set-piece” and that he finds “solutions tailor-made to each player’s skillset”. With Kane at his disposal he has one of the best goalscorers in the business to work with and a player whose reading of the game is most definitely “special”
