Specialist football coaching has become par for the course in the elite game and set pieces play as big a part now as they did when Graham Taylor educated his England squad about the importance of restarts.
Aston Villa have embraced specialist set piece coaching. The famous mane of Austin MacPhee can be seen at the corner of the technical area for every dead ball.
MacPhee has worked under the last three Villa managers and is considered an integral part of the improvement of a Premier League team that puts a lot of stock in set plays.
Aston Villa set to lose coach to Real Sociedad
MacPhee has also been working in the international game, counting Northern Ireland and Scotland among his former employers. He’s now Roberto Martinez’s assistant head coach with Portugal.
Jose Rodriguez Calvo, part of MacPhee’s team at Villa, is set to leave Villa Park to join the backroom staff at Real Sociedad, according to reports in Spain.
Rodriguez is a set piece analyst who’s been at Villa since 2021 and joined the Scotland set-up after MacPhee’s resignation last year.
Mundo Deportivo reports that new Real Sociedad head coach Sergio Francisco has appointed Rodriguez to his first-team staff in a newly created set piece coach role.
The Spaniard’s departure pauses a long association with MacPhee. Before moving to Villa, Rodriguez was a data and performance analyst with MacPhee at Midtjylland in Denmark’s Superliga.
He’s been serving as Scotland’s set piece coach since October and will pick up the top set piece job again when he officially joins La Real.
Set pieces have been a big focus at Villa under managers Dean Smith, Steven Gerrard and Unai Emery.
Only Nottingham Forest scored more goals from set pieces in the Premier League in 2024/25 and only Crystal Palace mustered more shots from dead-ball situations.
Villa conceded the third-fewest goals from set pieces last season and allowed a season expected goals value (xG) of 8.8 goals from set pieces across the entire season.
The work of set piece coaches can be easy to ridicule. The spectacle of MacPhee jumping up from the bench to exchange hand gestures with on-field spotter Emiliano Martinez when Villa have an attacking free kick can be difficult for some supporters to get used to.
But there’s data underpinning the strategies and Villa are saying goodbye to one of the key coaching analysts helping them to harness that information to be weaponised on the pitch.
