Terry Daly Challenges Euro 2008 Commentators and Analysts to Change Their Game

June 18, 2008 - Press Dispensary - Following his recent coup in which the English FA published his exposure of a fundamental flaw in coaching, Terry Daly is now challenging the likes of Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson, Jonathan Pearce and other high profile media pundits over their analysis of Euro 2008 games.

According to Daly, the commentators and analysts covering Euro 2008 are, like coaches, wrongly defining 'weight' in the movement of the ball. Weight is the ball's vertical drop due to gravity, not, as the football pundits maintain, its horizontal pace. In his daily website articles at Dalyslaw.com, Daly is merciless in exposing examples of the media 'experts' mistaken usage of football terminology in their analysis of games. Article titles such as 'Why BBC Commentators and Analysts are Getting Euro 2008 Wrong' and 'Weight - it's vertical, stupid!' give a flavour of what readers can expect.

Daly himself is far from apologetic. “It's not just football coaches who need to change their understanding of the difference between horizontal pace and vertical weight in the movement and manipulation of a football,” he says. “Football commentators and analysts need to do exactly the same, if they are to provide their viewers, listeners and readers with an accurate account of what is actually going on during any particular pattern of play. My analysis of Euro 2008 coverage shows that this is not happening. It's now time for it to happen - for football's sake”.

Daly's Law of Creative, Attacking Football treats weight as a vertical force in the movement and manipulation of the ball and identifies this as the key element in producing top football performance because it counteracts the horizontal pace of the ball, allowing a player to set himself properly for instant top performance.

Daly's criticism of conventional football coaching and analysis, not just in Britain but across Europe and the rest of the world, is that both are based on the provable fallacy that weight is a horizontal force in the movement of the ball. “The earth is not flat”, he observes drily. “Neither is weight, yet conventional media pundits assume that it is when they treat it as a horizontal force while analysing games.”

Daly's Law Coaching and Analysis is targeted at getting off form professional players quickly back on form. This is accomplished through drawing a simple distinction between the horizontal and vertical movement of the ball and then getting the player or players to utilise both in their play, precisely and systematically. Video analysis of individual player and team performance focuses on the success players achieve in counteracting the horizontal movement of the ball with vertical weight while passing, shooting, heading et al. This principle applies to all player and ball interactions in all games.

Daly argues that the reason much of the shooting in Euro 2008 sees the ball rocketing over the bar and into the stands is because players are not coached to counteract the horizontal pace of their shooting with vertical weight. If players are coached to do this, he says, they would be able to manipulate the trajectory of the ball when striking it so that it rises over the goalkeeper and dips underneath the crossbar at the last moment. “You can't analyse and explain this common failing in Euro 2008,” he concludes, “if you think weight is the horizontal pace of the ball. Commentators and analysts need to change their game.”

Daly's own analysis of Euro 2008 focuses repeatedly on the accidental generation of many of the goals scored, from Zambrotta's headed back pass to set up Mutu's goal in the Italy v Romania game, to the hapless Peter Cech's dropped catch against Turkey that saw the Czech Republic exit the competition. He claims that such random happenings almost always create perfectly weighted balls in space, the prerequisite for scoring goals - and criticises other media pundits' failure to recognise that such perfectly weighted balls can be created deliberately and repeatedly reproduced in games – once players, coaches and managers accept that horizontal pace and vertical weight in the movement and manipulation of the ball are two different elements.

All is not gloomy, however. Daly points to the fact of his success in persuading elite coaches, including those at English FA headquarters in London, to agree to his redefinition of weight and looks forward to media commentators and analysts following suit sooner rather than later in the interests of football as a whole.

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Terry Daly is the owner and operator of http://www.dalyslaw.com, a football coaching and analysis website aimed at elite professional managers, coaches and players who need consistent maintenance of top football performance.

For further information, please contact:
Terry Daly, Daly's Law Coaching and Analysis
Tel: 02088882599 Email:
Site: www.dalyslaw.com