Football Formations - 4-4-2

To keep this blog more alive and active, I have decided to include weekly articles by coaches around the world on football formations. Feel free to leave your comments as you see fit. Since this is the first article, we should explore the most popular formation: 4-4-2

The 4-4-2 is probably the most popular and commonly used of all the soccer formations in the modern game.

So the defence therefore consists of a left back, a right back and two centre backs. The midfield then is made up of a left midfielder (or winger), a right midfielder (or winger) and two central midfielders- one of whom will probably be more defensive than the other.

Four defenders: you are well covered at the back without detracting from the numbers you need in attack. If you had five defenders then you may not have as many attackers as you'd like, but with this there is a good balance.

As for the midfield, in soccer it is crucial to dominate your opponents in the middle of the park because then you can direct the game. Four in midfield gives you sufficient numbers in midfield and should cover both wide positions and central ones. Perfect! As for up front, two strikers should normally be fine. You'll often get one out and out goal scorer and another to just play off the main striker.

With a diamond formation, one of the central midfielders drops back to become a defensive midfielder sitting just in front of the defence. The other pushes on to support the strikers and sits just behind them as a sort of play maker. The two wide midifielders are then brought more inside to close up the gaps and the full backs might then be the ones expected to attack down the wings.

Team Analysis:

Personally in a 4-4-2, the problem we will have is who to start in the center two? Although Max is currently doing the defensive mid's job, it is Jason that provides more variety, i.e. he can attack from deep as well as defend, as opposed to Max's one track-minded batter-them-down approach. And then who do we put at the head of the diamond? Would it be Siang or Poay or Derek? Not to mention we still have Benni! Each individual brings something different to the game. Poay has a lot of flair but lacks the stamina... Siang has great vision and his passess are first class, yet he's not as pacy... Derek's an intelligent player in the mould of Scholes (simple short passess) with amazing fitness, but our playing style prefers fast-paced-pumping-the-ball-to-Wes Brown tactic - so would that be suitable? Then there's Benni who's like David Ginola... a footballing genius when his mood permits him to be so. But the formation favors Heng and Brown as Heng holds up the ball for Brown to get into space, thus reducing him being off-side (mostly). It's kind of like Heskey and Owen for England... a big target man to compliment the 'lil guy.. err.. except Brown's not really tiny. Plus, it's great for Keon and Ming to capitalize on the gaps made by Brown's running. However, for it to work... Heng needs to get the ball and the midfielder's need to pass him the ball. Sometimes, all we do is pump the ball over the defence for Brown to sprint.. bypassing Heng! Which makes Heng disoriented.