Set piece corner kick

Meet Nicolas Jover: The King of Set Piece Coaching

General / January 15, 2025

As the last notes of Auld Lang Syne rang out, and as celebratory balloons starting to sag and shrivel in the corner of the room, Arsenal saw in 2025 in much the same way as they had spent the previous year: winning games of football courtesy of goals scored via set pieces.

Okay, so Mikel Merino’s scrambled strike wasn’t the first action from Ethan Nwaneri’s corner, but the pinpoint delivery – and the expert positioning of Arsenal’s tallest and most aggressive players – was enough to spook Brentford goalkeeper, Mark Flekken, who missed his punch and allowed the Spaniard to net the Gunners’ second in a 3-1 victory.

The travelling Arsenal fans, sent into raptures, chanted ‘Set Piece FC’ in unison; a nod to just how proficient their team has become at finding the net from corners and free kicks. At the halfway stage of the 2024/25 Premier League campaign, Mikel Arteta’s side had scored ten goals from set pieces: two more than Crystal Palace and at least three more than any other EPL side.

In a sport often determined by small margins, in which one goal can be the difference between success and failure across an entire campaign – let alone a single game, it’s no wonder that Arsenal have been so keen to ensure their set piece routines are elite.

But how has their proficiency come about? Skill, practice, or luck? Maybe it’s a pinch of all three, but there’s no doubt that some of the credit must also go to Nicolas Jover, who was one of the Premier League’s first-ever specialist set piece coaches when employed by Brentford and then Manchester City back in 2019. Here’s everything you need to know about the mercurial Frenchman with a penchant for set piece superiority.

Who Is Nicolas Jover?

Once upon a time, if you told your careers adviser at school that you wanted to be an astronaut or a movie stuntman, they would have laughed. They might have even let out a giggle had you said you wanted to be a football set piece coach. But the role is very much in fashion in the modern game, with the successes of Nicolas Jover partly to thank.

Background & Interests

The German-born Frenchman studied sports science in Quebec, where American football is once of the most popular sports. Jover became obsessed with the NFL, where every attacking play – from the movement of the offensive players to the passing of the quarterback – is codified and choreographed.

In a way, Jover’s thinking is informed as much by the NFL as it is the English Premier League, with his emphasis on set pieces that a) maximise his team’s strengths, while b) leaning into the weaknesses of the opposition. After graduating from the University of Sherbrooke, Jover worked locally in Canada for a while, before returning to France in the role of video analyst at Ligue 1 club Montpellier.

Experience

Although his brief was wide ranging, Jover did use his time to explore potential vulnerabilities in how opposition teams defended set pieces. Montpellier, surprisingly, won their first-ever Ligue 1 title in 2011/12, with 14 of their 68 goals scored – a healthy 20% – coming from dead ball situations.

Key pieces of that Montpellier success were picked off by bigger clubs around the continent, while Jover was poached by the forward-thinking Brentford, who impressed the Frenchman with their data-led approach to the game.

Jover was vital as the Bees climbed the divisions, helping them to find news ways to exploit set pieces, and so instrumental was he that the Frenchman became the subject of transfer speculation in much the same way as a player – in the end, the chance to work with Pep Guardiola at Manchester City proved unmissable.

With Jover in the backroom team, the Cityzens won the Premier League title (ranking first in the table for goals scored from set pieces) and reached the final of the Champions League, but it was his next move that would prove most eye-catching. Mikel Arteta was Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City, and when he left to take up the head coach’s position at Arsenal, he took Jover with him. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Unstoppable Force


For many years, set pieces – and corners in particular – were hardly a sweet science; simply lump into the penalty area in the vague direction of your tallest players and hope that they won the aerial battle. But Jover, and those of their ilk, have become mad scientists and alchemists, with video packages and data tools their test tubes and Bunsen burners.

During the 2023/24 season, Arsenal scored 20 goals from set pieces in the Premier League – again, a very respectable 22% of their overall tally. Often, those goals came at vital times in games too… giving the Gunners a different way to score beyond their endeavours in open play.

16 Corner Goals in 2024

Interestingly, Arsenal scored 16 goals from corners in 2024 – a Premier League record for the most in a calendar year, and it’s here that Jover really earns his corn.

Arsenal aren’t the tallest team in the Premier League by a long stretch, but the movement of their players – again, orchestrated by Jover taking his cues from the NFL – is the determining factor that enables one or two of their players to seemingly have a free header at goal every time they win a corner.

It’s not just attacking set pieces at which Jover is so prized. He works on Arsenal’s defensive positioning and strategy too; so much so, he’s as visible on the touchline as Arteta in such situations, marshalling and cajoling his troops.

Thomas Frank, the Brentford head coach who worked alongside Jover during his time at the club, described Arsenal as the ‘best set piece team in the world’ prior to their meeting on New Year’s Day, 2025. And the stats certainly confirm as much.