Football Formations
Using a particular football formation involves a lot of strategic and technical considerations. Since the manager cannot orchestrate minute-after-minute the things that is happening in the field, he calls for a particular formation to get certain the plays he wants. The formation directs the players to their positions and the type of attack or defensive strategy to take. Understanding football formations, therefore, is understanding the behavior of the team.
4-4-2
The four-four-two is the most basic and widely used type of football formation simply because it distributes the players equally across the field. The four defensive players and four midfielders that can effectively support the goalkeeper from any offensive attach, whereas the two attackers up the pitch can create scoring opportunities with the support of the midfielders. The notable weakness of this type of formation, however, is that it puts a lot of pressure to the midfielders as they are hugely burdened to take care of both the defense and offence.
4-5-1
The four-five-one is used as a defensive formation with four guys on the defense and five midfielders protecting the center of the field. However, this has gained a lot of popularity as it can also be used to create attacking opportunity, especially in counter attacks. All five midfielders can become attackers, with wingers being the key support of the lone striker. That said, the formation is very effective if the team has great passing midfielders and excellent wingers.
4-3-1-2
The four-three-one-two or more popularly known as the diamond formation employs four defenders, three holding midfielders (with two winger), one attacking midfielder and two forwards. This is used as an attacking formation where the wingers move up-field to support the strikers and the attacking midfield. One of the more notable teams that used the 4-3-1-2 is the 1966 World Cup-winning English national team.
4-3-3
The four-three-three is made as an attack formation, which is basically 4-5-1 but with wingers acting as true forwards. This type of formation is used by Barcelona to accommodate strikers such as Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto’o, and other midfielders like AndrTs Iniesta, Thiago Motta and Xavi.
5-3-2
The five-three-two is purely defensive with five defenders to support the goalkeeper, leaving three in the midfield and two players up-field. Since, most of the players are placed in-field, there is not much options to attack. As a result, this type of formation is rarely used.
There are other varieties of formation which is used by different football club. Often, the use of a particular formation depends on the type of lineup the team has to utilize the players’ skills.
Tags: attack formation, defensive strategy, football formation, understanding football