The Slovenian Prva Liga is a growing football stage. Even though their market remains largely under the radar and criminally untapped, the talent at hand is quite remarkable. However, six months in, Riera is taking Ljubljana to new heights, placing a firm stranglehold on the league table and leaving the second-place NK Koper 14 points behind them.
On top of that, their figures in key passes, shots, goals, expected goals, chances created and corners have all increased while their counter-attacks are among the very few that have seen a slight decrease. This includes overloads, dragging, asymmetrical shapes and most importantly, adaptation.
I repeat, just once! Players get a lot of information and process it successfully. They adapt well to rivals. Olimpija are very difficult to read. Much like the footballing greats such as Pep Guardiola , he loves to dominate and control.
I like to feel superior to my opponent. However, football is not played in just one way. In fact, you can see shades of both coaches in the way Olimpija Ljubljana play. However, certain patterns and mechanisms remain despite the formation changes. For instance, looking at the first image, we can see positional play first-hand. Olimpija are excellent at creating and exploiting superiorities across the pitch. Riera demands this in every phase of the attack.
This guarantees Olimpija have a relatively easy progression path and a direct way to access their primary targets. The first line is generally easily broken and one of the midfielders will often drop deeper into his respective half-space to receive directly from the defenders. Note that the pivot is generally found either forming a triangle with the centre-backs or slotting between them to establish numerical superiority or provide parity.
