“Today was not so much about football,” remarked Joshua Kimmich following Bayern Munich’s 3-1 loss to Arsenal in a Champions League clash in November. In what featured the two most in-form teams in the world at the time, it was Jurrien Timber who opened the score off a set piece. And while Arsenal clinched the win with two goals in open play from Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli - and in a match with the likes of Harry Kane, Michael Olise, Declan Rice, and Bukayo Saka - it was Mikel Merino who threatened the most off three set pieces in the second half.
“They rely on set pieces. They love to play long balls. They love to fight for second balls,” continued Kimmich in explaining why Arsenal were not the best team Bayern had played in the past year. That honor went to PSG because of the “way they play,” implying that the French side were everything Arsenal were not: something free-flowing, technical, and aesthetically superior.
Regardless of style, the matchup between Arsenal and Bayern, which was defined by high pressing, direct play, and set pieces, represents the cutting edge of the sport in 2025. Kimmich’s observations were hardly remarkable as Mikel Arteta has not been shy about his focus on set pieces. At one point, Arsenal had scored 16 more goals off restarts than their closest rivals in the Premier League during a 15 month span. Over 21% of the team’s goals this season have come from a set piece or a throw in. For Arteta, it was a carefully conceived plan throughout the years.
“Ten years ago, I said ‘it is a massive thing to do that’ and I started to have a vision,” said Arteta about the emphasis on set pieces.
The focus on set pieces is both regressive and futuristic. On one hand, Stoke and Tony Pulis in the 2000s were widely rebuked for using set pieces as a strategy to stay in the Premier League on a smaller budget. It was seen as the most basic form of soccer as opposed to the free-flowing, cosmopolitan tiki-taka sequences of Barcelona. In 2010, Arsene Wenger compared Pulis’ set piece-driven strategy to “rugby” and added “you cannot say it is football anymore.”
Writing in a column last October, Pulis commented that maybe he and fellow set piece connoisseur Sam Allardyce “were trend-setters after all.”
But even if Pulis and Arteta reached similar conclusions, this current era feels different. The use of data and video analysis gives today’s approach the perception of control and elevation. It’s no longer rugby, it’s optimizing on the margins. It’s not just putting your tallest players into an area and smashing crosses, there’s a batch of strategies more akin to NFL playbooks where “you look at the opposition and see if they are zonal or man-marking.” It’s the complex variety of routines filled with accuracy of delivery and synchronized movement as opposed to route one football.
But still, it’s not a 20 pass sequence or an attacker fearlessly dribbling through multiple defenders with a combination of skill and speed, is it?
Italy was initially at the forefront of the set piece movement, creating legends in the days before data and video analysis software services. Purveyor of possession Maurizio Sarri was famous for his 33 set piece routines. Fellow banker turned coach Gianni Vio upped the stakes with 4,830 routines. The equation was clear for Vio, who titled his coaching thesis “Set pieces: the 15 goal striker” and wrote a book on how set pieces can increase a team’s goal-scoring total by 30 percent. Set pieces also never get injured, lose form, or demand high-profile transfer moves. They also represent a different way for sides to dictate a match.
“We decide the attacker, we decide how many players go in the box, we decide the space to attack, and we decide the timing,” according to Vio.
Set piece coaches would naturally become celebrities in their own right, from Arsenal’s Nicolas Jover to Brentford’s Bernardo Cueva. Each have their philosophies with regards to in-swinging or out-swinging crosses or attacking near or far post. How many players does one put inside the six-yard box - do you put a player in front of a keeper for distraction? The tactics are as personal and nuanced as debates between possession and pressing. Where we once mythologized managerial matchups, only in 2025 would we joyfully pit set piece coaches against each other.
Vio eventually made his way to Tottenham, but would not get his contract renewed under Ange Postecoglu. Postecoglu described his skepticism towards specialized set piece coaches as “my burden to carry.” But the debate is emphatically over. In fact, we’ve already moved on to analyzing the second phase of set pieces once the defense has cleared the initial danger. The layers are limitless.
“The goal is going to come on a second ball, so focus on that and attack it,” then-Manchester City set piece coach Carlos Vicens told his size-averse 2022 side during a Champions League knockout match against the taller Sporting CP (Bernardo Silva blasted a second ball for a goal).
But something did change in the past decade. Defending, counter attacking, and set pieces were once the bread and butter basics for winning, especially in tournament play. We all accepted it. Yet it was never optimized like this. There was still variation and randomness, room for excitement and failure in contrast to today’s planned efficiencies. If Guardiola’s style from last decade exposed the limits of what a team can do with the ball, it does feel like optimizing set pieces is some sort of end to soccer
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Are we enjoying the set piece era?
Introducing an entire playbook in soccer is the final boss of tactics. Critics accused positional play of eschewing individuality for a predictable, controlled system with 1-2 touches. Gegenpressing spread chance creation throughout the collective instead of overrelying on playmaker. But this time, they finally did it: they managed away player intuition completely.
And in a familiar pattern, what started as a way for smaller, analytically driven teams to survive is now deployed by the biggest brands in the world. Set pieces are the closest analog soccer has to the “three true outcomes” in baseball and three-point shooting era in basketball. Anything that can be measured will get optimized. What was once on the margins is now the table stakes for every team. Clubs are battling efficiency as much as their opponents.
But look at the size of the set piece playbooks. The hours of video analysis. The depth of the choreography on training grounds. The future of set piece construction is only more complex and infinite. Can something return to basics yet still be innovative? The effectiveness of Arsenal’s corner routines is stunning in a sport where chance creation is not supposed to be this routine. Even skeptics cannot deny the skill of its brutal efficiency. It may even be described as beautiful in its own way. Heading into 2026, the game has never been more in the eye of the beholder.