Systems and Tactics

Discussion in 'USA Men: News & Analysis' started by Pragidealist, Oct 15, 2018.

  1. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    So I've said this a couple of times and I don't know if people disagree with me or if I'm not explaining it well. But here is my take on systems and tactics. Before my kids, I used to volunteer coach a lot at different levels. It was then, when I had to explain systems to kids that I suddenly had this epiphany about systems (that many already knew).

    "Systems" and number systems ARE over rated. They explain what is happening in only crudest sense, and they are terribly hard to explain to youth players as a whole.

    But roles and instructions are not. When you coach (kids anyway) you don't explain what a 433 is or a 4231 or a 442. You explain what their roles are in a match. What do you expect them to do? Then those come together to form a system that works together like music or a play.

    When you get down to it, there is a lot more nuance and tactical capability in a group of players than can be explained in a simple number system. And really the number systems can really start to blur together.

    For example what is this?

    -----------------X
    x---------------------------------X
    -------x-----------------x
    ------------------x
    X------x----------------x-------------x

    Is that a 433 or a 4141?

    If you tell me a 433, or you saying those wingers are not ever tracking back to help on defense? If you say a 4141, are you saying those outside mids are not getting forward as high as wingers? If I tell you those two higher central mids are Tyler Adams and Mckennie, does that change which one? Even if their instructions haven't changed? What if those two central mids are Orzil and James Rodrigeuz? Are they CAM's now because of who they are?


    What about this?

    ........................x
    X..................X...................X
    ...........x................x

    Is that a 433 with one attacking mid or a 4231? What if I told you that high central mid was Dempsey and my instructions were to stay high with the single forward combine, and charge late into the box? Is that suddenly a 4411, if I only changed his instructions?

    What if we have this in the back

    ----------------X
    X ......X................X...........X

    but I told the outside full backs to get high as possible, provide width and I told #6 to drop in behind them and fill the space? Is that now a 3 man back line?

    Using the number system works for quick understanding and a lot of times they can be boilerplate. but most of the time they are better understood as shorthand or stereotypes that are only surface level descriptions.

    So when we say a coach tends to like the 4231- we aren't really saying much until we say how he generally likes to deploy them. Then how does he tweak that game to game while keeping enough consistency? There has to be versatility, adaptability in any "system." So its really hard to watch a game and say with any certainty exactly what "system" they are playing unless you really rewatch and break it down a bit. A few key instructions here or there can really change how it attacks and how it is attacked.

    The coach's job is three fold here.

    1. Its to create a sustainable system where the players can play fast and not over think. They need to know where the space will be and where their teammates will be.
    2. They need to maintain tactical flexibility to adapt game vs game without breaking that understanding the players build with one another.
    3. They need to teach and be able to communicate well each individual role to the players where they clearly know what is asked of them and how it fits with everyone else.


    So that's how I view systems and formations these days. What are your thoughts?
     
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  2. Excellency

    Excellency Member+

    LA Galaxy
    United States
    Nov 4, 2011
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    What do I think? I think you could show why the supposed 4231 v Colombia was actually just more of the same 4141 from Sarachan.
     
  3. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    Green seemed to play much played higher- So you could call it. 4231 or even a 4132.... Acosta played more box to box to box to me.
    Bradley was a very deep 6.
     
  4. bharreld

    bharreld Member

    Jan 26, 2008
    Westlake, OH
    Hang with me here for a minute. I’m a science teacher. When I am teaching a group of honors/gifted kids it means a couple things.

    1. I can give them a simple assignment and I have to do very little explaining. They figure things out and can do it without a whole lot of guidance.
    2. I can give them a more difficult assignment than regular Ed kids, but more guidance/support/whatever is required.
    *This is where Klinsmann failed imo. He was used to teaching honors kids that could figure stuff out*

    The USMNT is NOT a group of honors students. The coach is going to have to be a good teacher. The best teachers can get students to over perform, just like the best coaches.

    Teams like Colombia, Brazil, etc. are better than us, but there is a coach out there that can get the team to play better than the sum of our parts. Does anyone out there think UCF has the #10 best players in college football? Obviously not, but they have/had a coach that figured out a system that hides their weaknesses and emphasizes their strengths. I just hope and pray that Berhalter or whoever is able to do that for the usmnt.
     
  5. manfromgallifrey91

    Swansea City
    United States
    Jul 24, 2015
    Wyoming, USA
    Club:
    Southampton FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Systems and number systems are extremely important in young teams (not so much age as Soccer IQ). The more versed in the game a player is, the better it is as a coach to just define roles and the easier it becomes.

    As a former youth coach and current high school coach, I can tell you Ive had teams that I had to stick to a rigid 442 (easiest formation to teach), and had teams that I could define a role to a player and let them play into it.

    As the experience and talent rises, numbered systems (4321) versus explanations of roles become less needed and it depends on the role a manager is giving a player moreso than the starting point on the field, though it is still important.

    So to answer your question, it totally depends on the players you have available to you. I think as a Senior coach it should matter less(but sometimes like in this period where younger players are rotating through it could mean more), but in the UX teams it matters much more all the time.
     
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  6. TheHoustonHoyaFan

    Oct 14, 2011
    Houston
    Club:
    FC Schalke 04
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #6 TheHoustonHoyaFan, Oct 16, 2018
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2018
    I am not sure if from your post you are unaware or disagree that the formations provides much more layered information about the scheme than just the positional structure that you seem to be describing? All the standard formations describe a set of roles, responsibilities, defensive rotations, transition rotations, and offensive rotations, in addition to just the positions.

    For example, take a standard 4-4-1-1 and a standard 4-2-3-1 which have similar positions. If you are defending an overloaded attack on the flank at say midfield, your shape rotation and individual slot responsibilities are in fact very different. The difference is inherent in the specific formations. In fact the difference roles, responsibilities, and rotations are what make the formations different, not just the positions on the field!
     
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  7. deejay

    deejay Member+

    Feb 14, 2000
    Tarpon Springs, FL
    Club:
    Jorge Wilstermann
    Nat'l Team:
    Bolivia
    Obviously we don't have the luxury of just picking soccer savvy kids like in soccer centric nations. For the most part the kids have a very simplistic viewpoint on roles. Defenders clear balls, mids chase them.down and dribble forward, forwards shoot at goal. Very high energy, dribbling is head down and very vertical, players often get isolated and shot selection is typically high and hard. Playground and parents rarely explain these concepts and if they do it's hard to get a group of those guys together. All that makes instructions on hiw to play roles very important and for the forseeable future a good program will introduce those ideas to players. Mediocre programs will teach only spacing, pressing and finding the empty space.

    I typically see good programs introducing spacing and dribbling with the head up at U6. At U8 they progress to learning how to provide support and form triangles. Also this is a good time to introduce strategies and positions in goal kicks, corners and free throws. Its best to avoid pressing at this stage because it's too easy for a team to win solely with that. U10 ideally you should be able to learn defensive shifting, overlapping and some offensive patterns. At U12 one hopes to see teams able to switch balls along the backline, overload one side and press both high and low but by this time a program typically has enough change in their roster that they often require a lot of remedial work. If they do learn all those things then they should be able to handle just about any formation.
     
  8. Excellency

    Excellency Member+

    LA Galaxy
    United States
    Nov 4, 2011
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Your American prejudice is getting in the way of an objective treatment of the subject and you nevertheless happily conflate a) the different nature of soccer, in respect of being able to coach while the game is in progress, with b) the importance of synergy.

    Klinsmann wanted players who could figure things out on the pitch without coaching because in soccer he can't call a time out. He cant take 5 minutes to walk out to the mound and discuss things with his pitcher. Tackle football is divided into discrete plays which take 10 seconds or so each, interspersed with coaching from the qb who coaches the players on what play they will run.

    Klinsmann was less knowledgeable about synergies. Most posters on BS say you pick your best xi (best athletes to BS posters in this cycle) and play them. The business aspect of the professional sport reinforces that doctrine. And it is wrong.
     
  9. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    My point is that they don’t really. Those nuances distinctions exist but the numbered notatons don’t describe them. They can’t - there is too much variability.

    It’s the assumptions around that variability that often create the most disagreement
     
  10. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    People assume standardization of tactics due to the number notation that doesn’t exist. Largely because as a coach the individual roles and responsibilities are what’s important.

    But a fan or even an analyst don’t get to hear them. So rather than describing the tactics as intended - most just describe the rough positions on the field
     
  11. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    This discussion would be much more fun in person with a white board
     
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  12. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    We could all give a hand to Jogi Löw.
     
  13. bharreld

    bharreld Member

    Jan 26, 2008
    Westlake, OH
    #13 bharreld, Oct 16, 2018
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2018
    I don’t want to turn this into yet another Klinsmann thing, but I’d argue that Klinsmann either didn’t have a good grasp of tactics or didn’t do a good job of teaching them to the team (see - Philip Lahm’s comments). Many super talented athletes in many sports have trouble coaching because everything was so natural to them.

    I’m not combining prematch, not in-game, tactical instruction and player chemistry. I don’t think Klinsmann was great at either of those things. His success with Germany was more due to his courage in calling up young players/dropping veterans (which frankly was great and we could use more of) than his tactics, which have been credited mostly to Low in any case.
     
  14. MPNumber9

    MPNumber9 Member+

    Oct 10, 2010
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This is a good analogy, but in general I think people overestimate how often even the best players "figure stuff out" in real time. The game today is highly tactical. Players at the highest level, whether it's Zidane's Madrid or Deschamps' France are carrying out strict, tactical instructions all the time. Individually, yes, good players figure out their own, individual tactical battles in the process of developing into effective footballers -- which is the difference between, say, Christian Pulisic and Juan Agudelo -- but it is the coach's job to devise a team strategy to defeat the day's opponent and give tactical instructions to each player to implement that strategy.

    Conflating these different types of tactics (individual vs. team) Klinsmann was the first to offer up American culture as the the reason his teams didn't not respond well tactically, rather than his inability to give tactical instruction. It's since become a meme:

    There have been some pretty tactically adept Americans over the years, like Donovan, Dempsey, Jones, etc. But it's not their job to assess, in real-time, how their opposition is intending to play (which coach's usually do with the benefit of days of preparation and access to hours of matches) and, not only react to it on the fly, but, somehow, be in synch with their teammates and their reactions. So yes, young players do need to figure out individual tactics like how to move, how to close down, how to make runs that create space for teammates -- but at the top level they need instruction on how and when to employ those tactics, in synch with others, as part of a strategy to win on the given day.
     
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  15. TheHoustonHoyaFan

    Oct 14, 2011
    Houston
    Club:
    FC Schalke 04
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    What then do you believe the formations describe?

    Here is a concrete example; France won the WC playing primarily what they stated was a standard 4-3-3. They just beat Germany with the same 11 players in a stated 4-2-3-1.

    You don't believe that there is any specific tactical schema information that is explicit in that change in formation? You don't believe that Kante, Pogba, Mautidi, Greizman et al have different offensive, defensive, and transitional responsibilities specified just by that seemingly subtle change in formation?
     
  16. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    No - I believe professional tactics are more nuanced than that. It’s lazy writing and analysis mostly
     
  17. Bob Morocco

    Bob Morocco Member+

    Aug 11, 2003
    Billings, MT
    Formation descriptions should describe the collection of roles each player is asked to execute. Starting with explaining each player's respective role makes sense.

    What separates a 4-3-3 with a V midfield from a 4-1-4-1 is that the wingers stay higher to pin the opposition fullbacks back (especially on the weakside) and to provide threats in transition while the CM's play relatively deeper and need to slide out wide to cover more often, the DM's role is roughly the same.
     
  18. Pegasus

    Pegasus Member+

    Apr 20, 1999
    Club:
    FC Dallas
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Glad you posted that as I was about to ask the difference as a 4-3-3, 4-5-1 and 4-1-4-1 seem they "could" all be the same. I suspect that a lot of times formations are actually posted by a team's media person and might have it wrong. Somehow I don't see coaches as people that would really want that type of info to be correct before a game.
     
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  19. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    So in a 4 33 those wingers don't come back or in the 4 1 41 the outside mids don't press? I would suggest those instruction differ by the coach, the opposing team, and the players they have. Then the media or the fans puts a number notation on it that may or may not line up with what you're saying.

    Or in a 41 41 the inside mids can press more so it looks like a 44 11 on defense. The point being is that there is too much variability and too much nuance to be captured in a simple number notation system.

    I would suggest with a really good coach, those instructions can even become game situation specific so that at times it looks like a 4 1 4 1 or 4231 or even a 433. As a coach, I don't care what number notation system you want to categorize it as.. I need the players to react and play together to accomplish specific objectives.

    The number notation system is a false narrative most of the time.
     
  20. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    These days many formations are asymmetric too, so you may have a 4-1-4-1 that looks more like a 4-3-3 on the left and more like a 4-5-1 on the right, meaning the wide man on the left keeps getting forward while the one on the right and the CM on the right stay back.

    Formation and roles are sort of like a grid: they can be used as a guideline, but they must be flexible.
     
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  21. Excellency

    Excellency Member+

    LA Galaxy
    United States
    Nov 4, 2011
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    So it's a little bit of everything. Klinsmann was right in urging his players to think more on their own. At a high level of play, very good teams can become static -"on the given day". In fact, it is likely, as the level of competition rises. Klinsmann made a good contribution there. Hopefully we will have a foreign manager
    every other cycle.
     
  22. Excellency

    Excellency Member+

    LA Galaxy
    United States
    Nov 4, 2011
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    To make this a little more relevant to the recent performance v Colombia and Peru, let me say that some make a distinction between a 433 and 4123.
     
  23. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    Against Peru we played a 4-3-3 but the 3 in the middle needs an arrow on top pointing towards the 4.
     
  24. Bob Morocco

    Bob Morocco Member+

    Aug 11, 2003
    Billings, MT
    Going up a level I'd say that system is the global totality of the players' roles, those roles interrelationships, and then the formation that results from it. So you can easily have multiple different systems use a 4-2-3-1 (possession, pressing, defend deep and counter, etc...).

    With an actual 4-3-3 it's a little different because inherent in that description are 3 forwards, which kind of eliminates sit deep and counter. If there aren't 3 forwards then, by definition, it's not a 4-3-3. Those forwards can be true wide players or inverted wingers or raumdeuters or mobile strikers or closer in style to an attacking midfielder. Ronaldinho, Messi, Henry, Ronaldo, Figo, Mueller, Coutinho, Iniesta, Overmars, etc... could all find a place in that position.

    The wing forwards' skill sets don't strictly make a formation a 4-3-3. What makes it one is that they need to be using their positioning to stretch the opponent's backline high and wide, creating space for the rest of the team underneath, especially early in attacks. Once the ball has progressed they have more freedom to find gaps.

    This stretching of the opposition defense is the philosophy that precipitated the invention of the 4-3-3. So if both wide players are consistently deeper than the opponent's DM then that is not a 4-3-3 unless both opposition fullbacks are pushed up into the attacking third. The key 1v1 matchup are the wing forwards versus those fullbacks and they need to use their positioning and movement to punish fullbacks who become disconnected from the rest of the backline. Generally the ball-side wing forward will be deeper than the weakside one because there is more imminent danger from that fullback and the risk reward of cheating towards a more advanced position, anticipating a turnover and a run in behind, is more favorable. It's a matter of degrees and how the CM positions/rotates to compansate based on how many numbers and how high the opponent pushes that allows for the different formation classifications.

    With all the talk of using it with our youth teams that has hardly been the case. Usually we don't position our wide attackers to do that (they aren't forwards) and usually we have a single AM/SS who plays close to the ST with two holding mids, meaning a 4-2-3-1 or 4-4-1-1.

    Mixing and matching, hybridization is always possible. Liverpool did this last year with Salah. They'd play him as a RWF and have Mane drop deeper and sometimes have Oxlade-Chamberlain or Milner, playing as RCM, take up a RM spot. Sometimes Firmino would drop into a SS or AM position and Salah would stay as a RF pushing the backline to stay deep and making runs to exploit the gap between the LB and LCB.
     
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  25. Pragidealist

    Pragidealist Member+

    Mar 3, 2010
    We need a white board. I get that systems have a beginning. I’ve read the inverted pyramid and own it somwhere. I think the lines have blurred though and what a system used to be isn’t the same as what is.

    Not that there aren’t some stark differences between widely varying systems to a degree but mostly I just think years of hybridization- as you call it - have created systems that done really fit into boxes categories.

    That’s mostly what the notations are try to do. They are attempting make dynamic, models multifaceted systems one dimension categorical things. I don’t think anyone really plays that way anymore.

    Great discussion - and I’m a lot less sure of my original thinking on this... mostly I’m thinking “out loud” now
     

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