[As I've pointed out before: "W-M" variants were still utilised in Britain and the RoI well into the late Sixties. The "penguin" that Sir Alf Ramsey used w/England at WC '66 was almost certainky designed and thought of as a "W-M" variant IMO...]
Yes, the books I quoted (with the schemes) obviously end at 1955 but over here that was thought too. Both the 1964 Cup of Nations and 1966WC campaigns were viewed as a WM-formation (in essence). The Pelé piece I translated in the other thread state in a byline that England still played with "WM-templates" at the 1964 Cup of Nations. Wilson writes in his 'anatomy of England' and 'inverting the pyramid' however that Ramsey played with a 4-2-4 in 1964 and in 1966 a 4-3-3 and 4-1-3-2
[AKA the "penguin formation": one wing-half as the "deep-lyer" in central defence. The "1" between defence and midfield was the other wing-half in the "orthodox" role. The "2" up-front were the inside-forwards and Sir Geoff Hurst wore the No.10 because Sir Bobby Charlton wore the No.9 as Ramsey's version of the so-called "deep-lying centre-forward"...]
In the public archives there is a good series of articles called "from Andrade to Rivelino". It was written in 1978. The 1966 England team is described as "4-3-3 although it looked in reality more like 4-4-2". Is is indeed seen as a direct descendent of the old WM-system (hence, Ramsey did not really solve the innate problems, is the message). The problem with the WM-system vs Hungary, Austria etc. in the 50s was not because it was a wrong system, the author writes, but because in England they were not sufficiently accustomed to sides who played another system as the WM (or orthodox system). Because in no other country was the WM as prevalent, ingrained and dominant as in England, is the observation (of all 'major powers', Germany came the closest in pervasiveness and prevalence of the WM, is the statement). A situation had arisen where the continental teams knew more about the WM, as the English knew about continental flavours. And if they knew it, they did not face those other systems at the national level (at a frequent basis). Like I said, the 1948 book is over here seen as a classic. That is why it is put online. The whole purpose of the book (underlying theme) is to connect 'freedom' with 'schematic thinking' (see section I quoted earlier as reply to msioux75). To connect 'system' with 'creativity'. Therefore, it has also some thoughts about how one can apply the WM system in various ways, and not "make a caricature" of it. One option, for example, that is mentioned in detail is how the defence can remain flexible; e.g. not marking your man in a rigid way or stay tuned at a fixed area just because the system tells it. Like I said: the idea was to show system without rigidity and that is why it became seen as a classic book. In a similar way, the (now deceased) writer of the "Andrade to Rivelino" series (had 29 parts) did not reject the WM beforehand but thought that they just knew too little of other styles. The Ramsey style is seen as descendent of the WM.
[In some ways it's quite odd to have witnessed at least one "leg" of something that has caused so many misconceptions over the years: the England v. Hungary match at Wembley in '53. England's biggest problem in that game was "Sir Walt" wasn't even close to being a great tactical mind and he mucked-up England's marking assignments v. Hungary IMHO. If the likes of Stan Cullis or Major Frank Buckley had been the England boss at the time the result(s) v. Hungary might have been quite different...]
Just for completeness, I found the original pieces I was talking about: http://kranten.kb.nl/view/article/id/ddd:010376444:mpeg21:p007:a0131 Here is is recalled how not every team & nation took over the "Chapman" version of the WM. It also says what I said earlier: in the Netherlands it was widely rejected until 1948. http://kranten.kb.nl/view/article/id/ddd:010376451:mpeg21:p009:a0168 This is titled: "the end of the 'stopper-spine'". Or the end of the classic defensive center half. At least it agrees with you that WM was not a 'wrong system' but just wrongly executed, with some very poor choices made. http://kranten.kb.nl/view/article/id/ddd:010376468:mpeg21:p007:a0098 And this is the that had Ramsey his England in 1966, which is described as a 4-4-2 in practice with Stiles effectively located between the midfield and defence. A descendent of the old WM. Either way, in 1978 it was seen that the WM was not immediately completely 'dead'. Btw, there is also an old book around that discusses the meetings between Meisl his Hungary and England in the 1930s. That is interesting material as well.
Maybe you'll appreciate/recognize this. It is from the same 1948 book: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/emme006bete01_01/emme006bete01_01_0014.php#14 page 273 It goes on for a while but it shows (it tries at least) how the WM was more than just a (distorted) caricature of Chapman his Arsenal.
I'm now reading the entire chapter (and other chapters). Just want to say that exactly this is said on page 274. It says: "In countries like Austria and Czechoslovakia, even in Hungary, the wing-halves are [sometimes] assigned a more restrictive defensive task, with the 'pivot' being regarded as the man who should support the attackers. In essence this can lead to a three-backs or even four-backs game." The idea is the same. The Swiss Verrou is put down (also on page 274) as 1-4-3-3 or 1-2-2-3-3, in terms of lines.
On the other page some posts by a member of XT are mentioned so I thought, I'll come up with an original source from that era (that is reasonably credible/accurate; the 1948 one and 1955 encyclopaedia)....
Like I said, I sometimes confuse things and that is not the least caused because often tactics were not as straight-forward and simple as often thought. Today it is commonly thought that the WM was very simplistic and rigid and although it probably tends to rigidity and soberness, it doesn't need to be. Also Andy Gray makes this 'error', maybe, because he says that in WM everyone had a strict man for man duty (and ofc, the Hungarians exposed this). Perhaps he meant that the system tended to simplicity and sclerosis but it doesn't have to be, I think. I'll highlight some sections of the same 1948 book, about the WM system, that points at more positive (modern?) interpretations, played by English club teams at that time. There is also a section that deals with 'roving' inside-forwards and center-forwards. I'll put that in a follow-up post (that is a fair bit longer). About wing-halves: Something else (page 295): RoyOfTheRovers Does this make sense? Either way, this is what I mean with that 'classic' systems are not as rigid and one-dimensional as they appear on paper/textbooks.
A while back I found this article by 1954 World Cup winning captain Fritz Walter in a vintage "Kicker" issue and thought it quite interesting. It was part of a series Fritz Walter wrote on various topics for "Kicker" magazine in the aftermath of the 1962 World Cup. This one is about "systems". The WM is not dead Kicker Nr. 41, 08 October 1962, pages 21 & 22 This chapter is likely to stir some controversy. Not among players and maybe not even among coaches. Yet the so-called football scholars will come and chalk up to me that I may have been a good player but that I am not very well versed in the higher mathematics of football. Even so, let’s still talk about systems. Most countries play the WM system, in which the stopper replaced the center half, the half backs moved from the outside to the inside and the full backs marked the wingers. At the same time the formation of the forwards formed a "W", the side half backs (side halves) and the inside forwards formed a square, a "magic square", as it was coined by Kicker editor Dr. Friedebert Becker to my knowledge. Of course the Swiss Verrou is also a system, and even the "double stopper" might take credit for being an "arrangement of powers". After the World Cup victory of the Brazilians in Sweden in 1958 the 4-2-4 became the fashion. If examined accurately however, the 4-2-4 is a formation that existed already in all kinds of shades and alternatives, hence definitely not a "wonder system". Well, the Brazilian 4-2-4 was copied by many national teams after the 1958 World Cup, partly successful, partly less successful. In Chile ’62 almost no team operated with the classic WM, which was the most intrigueing aspect of that tournament. The 4-2-4 was the trump, but even with this system alternatives surfaced, just thinking of the Czechoslovakians, who had turned the 4-2-4 into a 4-3-3. The purest 4-2-4 was played by Chile, and they did play it so well because they had the right players for it. And this is the great folly of many nations (and clubs), that they are expecting salvation only from the system. However not the system is decisive, but the players. Using the word "fashion" for the 4-2-4, this is not meant to be deprecatory. Rather a kind of reservation. I read on various occasions that Chile ’62 brought the end of the WM and the death of the stopper. I am not so sure about that, because the showdown did not even take place in Chile. The WM has survived a variety of different systems before. Let’s wait and see. Nevertheless the 4-2-4 impressed me. Already because it led football to a more playful style again, because linked to the 4-2-4 is the concept of zonal marking. Brazil especially demonstrated this in a wonderful way: --------------------------------------------------------Didi ----------Kadraba ---------------------Scherer---------------Molnar------------------Scherer -------------------------------Zito --------N.Santos--------Zozimo --------------------------------------------------Mauro--------------D.Santos This picture from the "Kicker special World Cup issue" I liked a lot, because it neatly shows the 4-2-4 as well as zonal marking which it is linked to. You can see the defense chain of the Brazilians, the back four, which is accompanied by half back Zito, who actually forms the middle 2 of the 4-2-4 together with Didi. In attack, the front 4 of the Czechoslovakians. None of them "man-marked", but for none of them a gap to break through the Brazil defense. At the same time it became clear that zonal marking comes not at the expense of security. Generally, the defense of the World Champion is unfairly overshadowed by its attack. One further and important consequence of the 4-2-4 is the call for the "all-round" player: the full back that attacks, the forward that defends. In this respect, who impressed me most were the defenders of Chile. While they never forgot their basic task, they joined the attack as soon as the opposing offense was stopped. They did not only move up but crossed the midline together with the forwards. This did the beauty of the game very good. One thing seems to be obvious: The times in which a defender followed "his man" everywhere, even to the toilet, should now be over. There are other means to avoid goals. This was proved by Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Chile, Yugoslavia and also by us. But I can’t help myself: In my opinion systems are overrated. They are being overrated because people believe that football is an arithmetic problem. The system becomes a diagram, a pure fetish, without one allegedly cannot get along. As if games could be calculated afore on the drawing board or the black board. I can say of myself that I was an alert pupil of Sepp Herberger, but on the board we at most discussed certain moves and got demonstrated our positions. However, winning or losing the games we did on the pitch and only thus because we did the right or the wrong thing in the decisive moment. Therewith theory does not become dispensable, nor less the tactic devised to face the respective opponent. A system that does not have to care of the opponent still needs to be invented. But we are approaching the territory of tactics, which is a different story, as Kipling would say. Players determine the system The best system isn’t worth a penny if the players needed for it are lacking. Most systems actually developed because certain qualitities of certain players provoked a certain system. For 1. FC Kaiserslautern the inside forward Fritz Walter played more in midfield than the inside forward Werner Basler. But that was no system, it conformed to the characteristics of these two players. During our best days we occasionally played without outside forwards. Why? Because the inside trio of Fritz Walter-Otmar Walter-Werner Basler was so attuned to each others that these three virtually forgot their wings. Some people called that a system. But whoever wanted to copy it needed to have the respective inside trio. I for one in any case believe that the basic formation – let’s call it WM – that our national team has been adopting for many years is the best one, provided it is played rightly. That this system is meeting the demands of the beauty of the game is arguably uncontested. People claim that with the offensive center half of old days the game had been more beautiful. This is answered back by the fact that these days the two half backs (outside halves) engage in the offensive, thus leading to at times seven players attacking, while back then it was six players at the most. Adjustment decisive Our WM system does not exclude alternatives. Before the 1958 World Cup in Sweden for example, it was planned to use me as a withdrawn center forward. The rehearsals took place in Frankfurt vs. Spain and in Prague vs. Czechoslovakia. But then Uwe Seeler impressed so much in the weeks before Sweden that the plan was abandoned. The deeper meaning of the planned new role for me was caused by the narrow Swedish pitches, which measured 62 – 64 meters compared to our pitches which measured 70 meters. On narrow pitches, according to experience, one operates generally with a withdrawn center forward. Fitting example was the team of Viktoria Cologne where Heinz Lorenz played that role in the narrow cycle race stadium. The best system is that one which best adjusts to the strengths and weaknesses of the players and to leave enough leeway to allow coping with special circumstances without problems. A system that circumvents that adjustment is always wrong!
Another point I forgot to make: While perhaps not fully developed or used successfully on the very highest levels, the (prototype) idea of zonal marking already existed by the early 50s. The 1955 encyclopaedia I referred to mentions this. Too bad that I don't have a scanner but it is on page 188 (Leo Pagano). "The more modern conception is, that one marks the position of an opponent, that means: one reckons with a certain strip of land, where one marks the opponent who is on that moment at that particular strip of land." The 1948 book also makes an allusion to it. The difference between a "third-back" and "stopper-back" [stopper-spine] in a WM is related to this conception: "He can consider the task in two ways. He can namely mark the center forward on a consequent basis - then he can be fully considered as a stopper - or he can recognize the vertical strip in between both full-backs as his area of labour, in that case he is a third back." http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/emme006bete01_01/emme006bete01_01_0014.php?q= Page 284, at the bottom. It does not refer to a mere 'theory' but to a tactic that was used in actual matches in England.
[It's often forgotten what ex-players (especially the more perceptive ones) actually know and understand about the REAL game. Yet someone like Jonathan Wilson is hailed as a tactical genius because he has a grad degree from Oxbridge and he can write a good non-fiction book. Meanwhile, Wilson probably hasn't actually kicked a football in a straight line since the age of ten. Don't forget that this is being said by a former player (& coach)... ]
Who would you label as the English inside-forwards of the 1966 World Cup mr. Roy? When portraying it as a WM formation.
Greg, where can I find more of these? Do they have digital transcriptions of such articles? Are Kicker magazines available online?
[If the brain AND the eyes can't tell the feet to make the right decisions you won't make it far as a player... Fritz Walter had eyes in his feet... ]
[I've gone over this before in this very thread & it's all in the '66 England squad numbers: Jimmy Greaves wore the No.8 shirt as the "G-S I-F". Sir Bobby Charlton should've been wearing the No.10 shirt as a combination between a "roving"- and an "orthodox"-type I-F. BUT, Charlton wore the No.9 because that was his ususal shirt number w/United because he quite often played as a so-called "deep-lying centre-forward"....]
I'm not sure about digital transcriptions, I've never encountered them online, but can't say for sure. Vintage Kicker does not seem to be available online. I got them the old fashioned way via my library.
Zonal systems were quite well-known throughout the 1950s. According to "Kicker" Brazil did play 100% zonal during the 1950 World Cup. That's why during the 1950s, zonal systems in Germany were known as the "Brazil system".