It was a formation used by many teams in 1950 World Cup, although not by the winning team Uruguay.
The innovator was the great football theoretician Herbert Chapman during his time as manager for Arsenal in the early 1930s. One of the first side steps from the well-established 2-3-5 was the "W-M" (the attacking cluster is W-formated and the defending cluster is M-formated), or 3-2-2-3. The introduction of the offside rule in 1925 started a development of other formation more adapted to the offside. With the popularity of the set-up, a standardization followed with numbers linked to the position on the field: Other formations, such as 2-2-6 and 1-2-7, had been taken into practice in between. The transition from 1-1-8 to 2-3-5 did not happen over a day, though. It would become standard for a long time and was used by all the British teams. In the 1890s, 2-3-5 ("the pyramid") became popular as a more balanced tactical formation. Until 1925, the rules prescribed that a player was not allowed to be ahead of the ball (in some respects more similar to ice hockey than modern football), and as a result had to dribble it forwards.Īnother early formation connected with the dribbling game was 2-1-7, among other teams associated with Old Etonians. The reason for all that dribbling was not just because football in these days lacked sophistication, but more due to the fact that the offside rule was completely different from what it is today.
Tactical soccer definition full#
To use only one defense player and one midfielder and put the rest on attack seems crazy today, but the matches looked different at the current time with minimal passing in sideways and instead full attack with much dribbling going on. It was a while ago, though, more exactly in the 19th century in the pre-modern era of football. You probably never guess the existence of this formation in serious circumstances. Just how far behind the main striker does the second striker have to play for 4–4–2 to become 4–4–1–1? And how advanced do the wide midfielders have to be for that to become a 4–2–3–1?" 1-1-8 As Jonathan Wilson writes in Inverting the Pyramid: "designations of formations can at times seem a little arbitrary. Here is a historical overview of the most utilized formations in football.įormations are simplified ways to describe a team’s positional tactic schematically. In football (soccer) the formations are classified in names consisting of numbers that represent defenders, midfielders and attackers (the goalkeeper is unnecessary to involve in this tactical aspect). When this happens the short term looks good, there are trophies and wins, but the detrimental affect this has on a player is not seen until they are a lot older where the players physiological advantage is no longer prevalent, and the technical actions and skills needed to perform within a performance game model are not developed.The core of football tactics is the formation of the team. When we purely focus on the tactics, and reflect the adults game on to the youth player, we take from them the necessary age appropriate steps to long term player development in favor of a short term focus on game results. Players should not be focused on tactics until later ages, where performance is the final learning stage of a player. Game insight and decision making are the key components of a tactically good player, where the application of the game model through understanding of time and space on the field determine the efficiency of the tactics. Tactical – tactics are a set of predetermined concepts and objectives within a game model to perform as a team, working towards a common goal. With that in mind, and the need for a solid technical foundation in reference to the player elements to perform within a clubs game model, the priority of the player should be technical and skill acquisition learning up until the age of 15.
Chronological age brackets and recommendations are general, as each individual has a separate biological age. Technical development is crucial in early player development, where the ages of 7 to 12 years old optimize their soccer actions. Technical development is the foundation of an athletes ability to play soccer. A technical action becomes skill acquisition once a situation is created where a decision needs to be made, therefore the kick now becomes the pass. An example of a technical action is the kick. Technical – this is the application of a soccer action, the performance of an action which follows a mechanical breakdown of a sequence of movements. Pillar of Development – Technical/Tactical