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Dr Death wasting tax payers money on the Caf all day
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: "As relaxed and natural on the park as a dog chasing a piece of silver paper in the wind"
Posts: 15,370
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Couldn't find the exact article about formations I was talking about but here is something fairly similar...
Quote:
Roaming Roma find follower in Sir Alex Ferguson
Gabriele Marcotti
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” – T. S. Eliot
When AS Roma take on Manchester United tomorrow, it will be the fifth time in less than a year that the teams have squared off. And while their encounters have made headlines for a variety of reasons, perhaps this one should be remembered as something of a passing of the torch.
Because the “strikerless formation” pioneered by Luciano Spalletti, the Roma manager, has been taken, tweaked, readjusted and raised to the highest level by Sir Alex Ferguson.
Manchester United in their present incarnation – with Carlos Tévez, Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs moving seamlessly across the line of attack, befuddling opponents by continually switching positions and leaving no points of reference – appear to have evolved directly out of Spalletti’s “4-6-0” experiment three seasons ago. Although there are differences, their movement and use of space is based on the same principles.
Steve McClaren, the former England head coach, talked about it on TheGame Podcast a few weeks back and it is worth remembering his words. “Roma introduced this system and it’s very difficult to play against,” he said. “I watched them against Real Madrid and it was total football – everybody defends, everybody attacks. United have been developing it and, I believe, they can improve on it.”
By now, you are probably familiar with how the system works. There is no centre forward. Francesco Totti is nominally the farthest player up the pitch, but he has licence to roam and, in fact, often doubles back to hit passes out to the wings. This leaves the opposition central defenders with a dilemma. If they track Totti, an injury doubt for tomorrow’s match, they leave a gap that a runner from the midfield can exploit; if they stay where they are, Roma have a man advantage in midfield and “in the hole”.
Roma’s front four is completed by two pacy wingers, such as Rodrigo Taddei and Mancini, both of whom can play on either flank and enjoy cutting inside, and Simone Perrotta, whose late runs into the penalty area, Frank Lampard-style, turn him into an adjunct striker. Throw in two attacking full backs and a deeplying, playmaker such as David Pizarro (a role interpreted by Paul Scholes in the United version) and Spalletti’s attacking machinery is complete.
As McClaren points out, it works because most teams defend deep, denying space behind the defenders. But, given that space is finite, if you deny it behind the back four, you have to concede it in front. And if your opponents have a quartet of talented and creative attacking players in that area, you are in for a bumpy ride.
Of course, the system is not fool-proof. It works with Tévez, Giggs, Ronaldo and Rooney, but it probably would not work with Nicolas Anelka, Didier Drogba, Lampard and Joe Cole. Not because the Chelsea quartet are any worse, but because they have different characteristics.
Spalletti’s genius lay in realising the qualities of the players at his disposal, developing a system that exploited them and having the courage to introduce it. That said, as with many great inventions, necessity played a big part in its birth. It was prompted when an injury crisis among his strikers left Totti as the only able-bodied front man. Rather than forcing him to play up front on his own, thereby negating some of his most obvious skills, Spalletti conjured up the “strikerless system”.
It has allowed Roma to thrive in fairly remarkable circumstances. The club’s finances are a mess after the excesses of the past (when they thought nothing of spending £25 million on a 31-year-old Gabriel Batistuta), which meant that Spalletti has had to operate on a shoestring budget, selling players off to finance acquisitions (the most recent being Christian Chivu, the Romanian, who was sold to Inter Milan for £9 million).
Yet under Spalletti, Roma finished second in Serie A last season, while winning the Italian Cup and reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. This year, they are again among Europe’s elite eight, while sitting second in Serie A behind Inter.
Whether other clubs will choose to emulate Spalletti’s model and build on it in the way United have, remains to be seen. For now, expect to see two teams mirroring each other tomorrow evening, at least as far as tactics are concerned. In terms of personnel, it is a different story. United are far stronger, which will probably only serve as a reminder that systems are only as good as the players who make them work.
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And another piece by the same journo...
Quote:
4-4-2 exits through the evolving door
Gabriele Marcotti
As footballing creeds go, it is entrenched. It is what most play when they first engage in organised football. It is the first option in most video-games. And there is even a football magazine by that name. But the 4-4-2 formation is in serious danger of going the way of telephone booths, VCRs and shops that repair electric kettles. Obsolescence beckons.
Of the eight quarter-finalists in the Champions League, two employ a 4-4-2 formation: Schalke 04 and Arsenal. I am being generous in the case of the North London team: it is the formation that they would have used all season if Robin van Persie had been fit. In fact, with Van Persie out they have often used Emmanuel Adebayor on his own up front.
Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, once told me that it was the most “rational” scheme because “it is the most efficient way of covering the greatest percentage of the pitch”. Most of his counterparts evidently do not see it that way. At Barcelona, Frank Rijkaard uses three up front. Chelsea and Liverpool employ a lone striker with two wide men. Zico, the Fenerbahçe coach, uses a variation of the one-striker system, with the support men being more central. AS Roma and Manchester United (even when Carlos Tévez and Wayne Rooney play together down the middle) effectively have no fixed front men, relying on constant movement to attack from different areas of the pitch.
However you want to define the varying systems, one thing is clear: the old footballing bread-and-butter of two fully-fledged strikers (usually one big and strong, the other quick and agile) down the middle is getting more difficult to find at the highest level.
Obviously, there is no “right” formation in football. It all depends on the players at your disposal, their characteristics and how well they execute and understand the manager’s system. And so it would appear to make sense that part of the reason we no longer see many teams attacking with two strikers is that forwards have changed.
Exhibit A seems to be the gradual disappearance of the traditional target man: tall, strong, good in the air and a fixture in the opposition’s penalty area. The “gold standard” today are players such as Didier Drogba, Ruud van Nistelrooy, David Trezeguet and Luca Toni. All of them are 30 or older. With a few exceptions, such as Mario Gomez, of VfB Stuttgart, who is 22, there are no heirs apparent.
True, there are still tall, strong strikers, but they are more in the mould of Adebayor or Fernando Torres, players who are also mobile and quick. Because they provide pace and power, they are comfortable playing up front on their own, unlike the players cited above, most of whom (with the exception of Drogba and perhaps Van Nistelrooy) are more productive with a teammate nearby.
The genetic development of players is probably what has done most to eradicate the two-striker scheme. As players become bigger and quicker, they fill more of the pitch. Teams defend higher up and as a result the space in which to play shrinks. A side-effect is that it is easier for midfield players to get into the penalty area as pace and stamina improve.
It is not a coincidence that players such as Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Cristiano Ronaldo are so prolific; they have the physical tools to get into the area far more than their counterparts a generation ago.
And so, if your midfield players can effectively double as strikers when you have possession, many managers reckon that there is no point playing two up front. Better to have an extra man in the middle of the park, where games are won and lost. This is especially true when it comes to strikers who are one-dimensional and do not offer much in terms of workrate, movement or creativity (which is, largely, the case of the frontmen cited above). Best to hand a slot to an attacking midfield player instead.
All of this heralds a new frontier and, taken to its logical conclusion, it raises the question of why have strikers at all. Why not, rather than three banks of players, employ only two: defence and midfield? Carlos Alberto Parreira, the former Brazil coach, foreshadowed this in a memorable speech some years ago. You could argue that United and Roma are leading the way in that direction. Two strikers are (nearly) dead as a concept. Some are turning their back on even the lone striker. Football continues to evolve. Until the next big idea surfaces.
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