Borussia Mönchengladbach is the leader of the German championship in goals from corners

This season, the Gladbach team deserves a little more attention than usual: on the eve of the start of the current German championship, the board of directors announced that the team was going to return to a strategy that had already been forgotten in past seasons – the development of young football players. For this purpose, Guido Streichsbier, who for many years led German youth teams of different ages, was invited to assist coach Gerardo Seoana.

But the experience of watching the Mönchengladbach club play brought an interesting trend beyond this area. Borussia is distinguished by the fact that it not only often leads to corner kicks, but is generally very effective in standard situations.

Firstly, it can be noted that the team earns a lot of corners, losing in terms of their number only to Bayern Munich. And at the same time, their efficiency is much greater than that of the Munich club.

And in general, the fact that Borussia scored more goals against its opponents using corner kicks than anyone else in the German Championship speaks volumes. Among the top five European championships, the German club shares leadership in this indicator with London’s Arsenal; the first line in both real and predicted goals indicates rather the logic of what happened. As an argument for the obvious increase in quality, the club from Mönchengladbach scored eight goals from corner kicks in just the previous season, and seven in just 11 rounds of the current season.

Like any productive performance, there is a leader and tactical intensity. The first should include the footballer, right wing Franck Honor, who joined the club from Brest for 8 million euros in mid-2023. The French player plays as a winger in a 4-2-3-1 formation or a wingback in a 3-5-2 formation.

Honora unexpectedly managed to compensate for the creativity that Borussia lost after Hofmann’s departure – according to most metrics analyzing creativity from passes, he is among the top 15 players in the Bundesliga, and in terms of deliveries from set pieces he was completely surprised – entering the top five leaders.

Considering the fact that during this period of this campaign Frank has taken 54 corners out of 69 in the team, we can safely say that Honora is one of the leading players if you pay attention to the standard positions of the stallions and their productivity.

Regarding the tactical content, we can definitely note several patterns that work consistently from game to game.

If you subdivide the target service zone four times – outside the penalty area, the zone closest to the service bar or the bar farthest from him and the goal line – then two extreme sections are marked according to the number of crosses. Everything is obvious, because the greater the distance, the stronger and lame the accuracy.

At the same time, in terms of productivity, if it can be counted as a serve that ends in a hit, among the two zones, the option with a canopy to the near post is in the lead.

The conversion of 58% of serves into shots can hardly be considered unique; in general, Freiburg, Bochum, and Cologne have similar percentages of all corner kicks. However, it is unique because Borussia constantly and dangerously manages to threaten the opponent’s goal in every meeting. Two main scenarios stand out. If you like to bet on the German Bundesliga, we recommend going to the Aviator Mostbet website.

Use of free space, disorientation of the opponent

The first thing that needs to be noted during the analysis: in the majority of similar standard positions, the players do not enter the goalkeeper’s area – the point where they receive the ball is close to its border, so all attention to the ball comes from the outside.

Discount at the far post, where a partner stands behind the defending opponents

Historically, shots after set pieces are quite low-performing for a large number of different factors, of which a decent concentration of defenders, as well as the fight on the “second floor”, this greatly affects the xG assessment.

Borussia does not feel such a problem at all, having made 4 chances with an xG of more than 0.3 during the playing period of the current season, and according to approximately the same scenario. One of them was used in the confrontation with Bochum.

These structured plays have some potential. This is evidenced by the expected goals, since they are primarily made in order to show what can be expected in the future. Currently, Borussia Mönchengladbach is undoubtedly showing overperformance in the corners, and yet, even if we imagine that, due to regression to the mean, the team will spend their entire “reserve” of goals over xG, by the end of the current season they may “collect” 14-15 goals scored after corner kicks. Over the last two editions, the maximum number of such goals for clubs from the first Bundesliga in one season reached 11 – last season for Union Berlin.

At the moment, Borussia Gladbach has problems with good results, this was evident in the initial five rounds, where the opponents of the “stallions” were such strong rivals as Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, and Red Bull Leipzig”, so that seven goals from corner kicks against the entire backdrop of performances at the level of the average team remained practically unmarked.

It is unlikely that Gladbach will have the strength to compete for a position in European competition based on the results of the national championship, but high-quality corner kicks are the very factor that can help the team eliminate some of the shortcomings that arise from the game.

So far, in the German Bundesliga standings, Borussia is practically at the equator, occupying the tenth step, but the team still has a chance to qualify for European competition. The Mönchengladbach team is four points clear of the UEFA Conference League zone (Hoffenheim currently occupy sixth place).