Generally, football matches are won by the team with the better players. It’s not a game that upon first glance seems to lend itself to a great deal of tactics, a team just tries to send the ball to it’s most talented goal scorer by any legal means. Yet people like Jose Mourinho have taken sides like FC Porto to the top of Europe by using strategies that squeeze every ounce of potential from their players.
Something that can put a team over the top is the formation that it comes out with, for example lower ranked teams often crowd the midfield with five players when playing a top side, trying to congest the middle of the park and stop the opponent finding space to get into the final third. The midfielders are also in a good position to get back behind the ball if necessary. New Zealand went into the World Cup with a 4-3-3, a strongly aggressive formation that to many would just seem to invite thrashings for such a low ranked country. However, such positivity paid off and they finished with their highest ever point total.
In that same World Cup, England played a much maligned 4-4-2, criticized by almost everybody as a formation that cannot be used today, with the players having completely different skill sets than those of yesteryear. It is often pointed out that no other top sides play a 4-4-2.
Watching the Liverpool-Manchester City game, it’s easy to see why in this day and age the 4-4-2 simply cannot work. One need to look only as far as Spain, and how narrow they played, to see which way the game is going. The formation is built to beat teams that
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