4-2-3-1

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2008/dec/18/4231-442-tactics-jonathan-wilson http://outsideoftheboot.com/2015/07/21/a-guide-to-formations-the-4-2-3-1/?relatedposts_hit=1&relatedposts_origin=26017&relatedposts_position=2

A flexible formation in prospects to defensive or offensive orientation, as both the wide players and the full-backs may join the attack. In defence, this formation is similar to either the 4–5–1 or 4–4–1–1. It is used to maintain possession of the ball and stopping opponent attacks by controlling the midfield area of the field. The lone striker may be very tall and strong to hold the ball up as his midfielders and full-backs join him in attack. The striker could also be very fast. In these cases, the opponent’s defence will be forced to fall back early, thereby leaving space for the offensive central midfielder. This formation is used especially when a playmaker is to be highlighted. The variations of personnel used on the flanks in this set-up include using traditional wingers, using inverted wingers or simply using wide midfielders. Different teams and managers have different interpretations of the 4–2–3–1, but one common factor among them all is the presence of the double pivot. The double pivot is the usage of two holding midfielders in front of the defence.[31]

At international level, this formation is used by the Belgian, French, Dutch and German national teams in an asymmetric shape, and often with strikers as wide midfielders or inverted wingers. The formation is also currently used by Brazil as an alternative to the 4–2–4 formation of the late 1950s to 1970. Implemented similarly to how the original 4–2–4 was used back then, use of this formation in this manner is very offensive, creating a six-man attack and a six-man defence tactical layout. The front four attackers are arranged as a pair of wide forwards and a playmaker forward who play in support of a lone striker. Mário Zagallo also considers the Brazil 1970 football team he coached as pioneers of 4–2–3–1.[32]

In recent[when?] years, with full-backs having ever more increasing attacking roles, the wide players (be they deep lying forwards, inverted wingers, attacking wide midfielders) have been tasked with the defensive responsibility to track and pin down the opposition full-backs. Manuel Pellegrini is an avid proponent of this formation, and frequently uses it in the football clubs that he manages.

This formation has been very frequently used by managers all over the world in the modern game. One particularly effective use of it was Liverpool under Rafael Benítez, who deployed Javier Mascherano, Xabi Alonso and Steven Gerrard in central midfield, with Gerrard acting in a more advanced role in order to link up with Fernando Torres, who acted as the central striker. Another notable example at club level is Bayern Munich under Jupp Heynckes at his treble-clinching 2012–13 season. Mauricio Pochettino, Jose Mourinho, and Ange Postecoglou also use this formation.

The 4-2-3-1 formation came to prominence in Spain in the 1990s and early 2000s and is now used by many teams throughout the world. The two players in front of the back-four, known as the ‘doble pivot’ (double pivot) in Spain, give support to the defense, with one player breaking up opposition attacks, and the other putting more emphasis on distributing the ball to the attacking players. The formation should ensure teams are not out-numbered in midfield, and with so many advanced players, there is great flexibility. Striker in the 4-2-3-1 Formation In this formation, the striker should not lack support as he has three players whose job it is to supply him with ammunition. If the players behind the main striker are of genuine quality, the formation can be a dream for a striker as he should receive plenty of balls into the penalty area. The 4-2-3-1 formation can accommodate a big target man who can hold the ball up and lay it off for the oncoming midfielders, or a more nimble striker capable of running on to balls and finishing chances. It is important that the front-man is a strong physical specimen as, despite the support from midfield, he will need to hold off defenders as he looks to carve out chances for himself or teammates. The three attacking midfielders can be hard for opposition defenses to pick up, especially if they interchange and run in from deeper positions. There is usually one central creative force, playing behind the striker. When Deportivo La Coruna and Valencia won Spanish League titles in the first half of the last decade under Javier Irureta and Rafael Benitez respectively, Juan Valeron (Deportivo) and Pablo Aimar (Valencia) both featured behind the striker, their subtle skills creating havoc in opposition defenses. To either side of the playmaker, there are two wider players whose job it is to create chances from the flanks as well as cutting in. There is also an onus on these three players to help out defensively, particularly those playing in the wide roles. When on the back foot, these players should be helping their full-backs, and the formation will look more like a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1. Defensive Midfielders in the 4-2-3-1 Formation It is imperative that the two players have positional sense in order to protect the back four properly. One of these two is generally more of a tackler, with the other concentrating on distribution. In that title-winning Valencia team, David Albelda and Ruben Baraja formed an excellent partnership. Albelda did much of the tackling, while Baraja was more offensive. The pair complimented eachother superbly. Xabi Alonso is the perfect example of a player whose job it is to defend, but also to open up the opposition with his cultured range of passing. Having two players in front of the back four provides a platform on which the team’s more attacking players can create chances. Full-backs in the 4-2-3-1 Formation It is the job of full-backs to defend against opposition attackers, particularly wingers. It is important that they stop the supply line for the striker, so must be strong in the tackle. Pace is key if they are up against a speedy winger, while they will also be expected to help defend against opposition set-pieces so good heading ability is also required. A team’s full-backs can also be a major attacking weapon. A full-back with pace, power and good crossingability is a real asset on the flank as they can stretch the other team’s wide players and provide ammunition for strikers. Central Defenders in the 4-2-3-1 Formation The job of the central defenders is consistent with other formations such as 4-4-2 and 4-5-1. They are there to repel opposition attacks by tacking, heading and marking players (employing either zonal or man-marking tactics). Center-backs can often be seen going up for set-pieces in the hope of heading in a cross or a corner, but their primary role is to stop the opposition strikers and midfielders. Strength and concentration are two important attributes when playing in this position. The Question: why has 4-4-2 been superseded by 4-2-3-1? At what turned out to be Roy Keane’s final press-conference as Sunderland manager, after the 4-1 defeat to Bolton, he admitted his side’s 4-4-2 formation had been part of the problem. Kenwyne Jones and Djibril Cissé may be a forward pairing that, given their power and pace, will terrify defences, but it doesn’t really matter if, as happened in that Bolton game, the midfield four are outnumbered and - outplayed - by an opposition using five midfielders, rendering them unable to work the ball into dangerous areas. Fielding five midfielders was for a long time considered a negative tactic, but that is dependent entirely on the make-up of the five. It is still a commonplace of English punditry to speak of teams not playing “two up” as being negative, but even a glance at a team-sheet should show what nonsense that it. Take, for example, France in the Euro 2000 final with Youri Djorkaeff, Zinedine Zidane and Christoph Dugarry playing off Thierry Henry, or Portugal in the same tournament with Luis Figo, Rui Costa and Sergio Conceicao playing off Nuno Gomes. Take Spain in the final of Euro 2008, with Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregás, Xavi and David Silva arrayed behind Fernando Torres. As ever in tactical matters, the sense is that British football lags behind. In Spain, for instance, 4-2-3-1 was common by 2000, and within a couple of years had become almost a default. Perhaps that is not surprising, for it was in Spain that the formation first developed as something distinct from 4-4-2. Once sides had started using their playmaker as a second striker – a trend that emerged at the 1986 World Cup – the coming of 4-2-3-1 was inevitable. Initially a holding midfielder would be deployed to pick him up – hence the late-nineties boom in players capable of playing the Makelele role – at which point the deep-lying forward would start drifting wide to find space. If the holding player followed him, that created space in the middle, so an additional player would be dropped deeper as cover, with knock-on effects for the more attacking midfielders. Or the evolution could come from the other direction: a side playing 4-4-2, with the wingers pushed high and one of the centre-forward dropping deep, is effectively playing a 4-2-3-1. When Manchester United beat Barcelona in the 1991 Cup-Winners’ Cup final, for instance, they had Bryan Robson and Paul Ince holding, with Lee Sharpe and Mike Phelan wide, and Brian McClair dropping off Mark Hughes. Everybody still referred to it as 4-4-2, but it was in effect a 4-2-3-1. Self-conscious symmetry in Spain The first to deploy the new formation self-consciously, at least according to the Spanish coaching magazine Training Football, was the Real Sociedad coach Juanma Lillo while he was in charge of the Segunda Division side Cultural Leonesa in 1991-92. “My intention was to pressure and to try to steal the ball high up the pitch,” he explained. “It was the most symmetrical way I could find of playing with four forwards. One of the great advantages is that having the forwards high allows you to play the midfield high and the defence high, so everybody benefits. But you have to have the right players. They have to be very, very mobile and they have to be able to play when they get the ball. You have to remember that they’re pressuring to play, not playing to pressure.” At Leonesa, Lillo had Sami and Teofilo Abajo as his two pivots (the system in Spain is known as the “doble pivot”), with Carlos Nunez, Ortiz and Moreno in front of them and Latapia as the lone forward. Seeing the success of the system Lillo took it to Salamanca. There, according to an editorial in Training Futbol, the players reacted with “faces of incredulity because they thought it was a strange way to play; they responded to the positions they were told to adopt and the distribution of each line of the team with the same sense of strangeness and surprise as someone who had just come face to face with a dinosaur.” Nonetheless, it took them to promotion. The formation rapidly spread. Javier Irureta had been using it with Deportivo la Coruna for a couple of seasons before they won the league title in 2000, and when John Toshack returned to Real Madrid in 1999, he deployed Geremi and Fernando Redondo as his holding midfielders, with Steve McManaman, Raul and Elvir Baljic in front of them and either Anelka or Fernando Morientes as the lone striker. 4-2-3-1’s transfer to England – at least in terms of a recognition of it as something distinct from 4-4-2 – came with Manchester United as an emphatic 3-2 home defeat by Real Madrid in the Champions League in 1999-2000 convinced Sir Alex Ferguson that the more orthodox 4-4-2 he had employed to win the treble the previous season had had its day in European competition (although he maintains, with some justification, that he has never played 4-4-2, but has always used split forwards).

Pro-active or reactive? The great advantage of using the two holders is that it provides a platform on which more creative players can express themselves, effectively allowing dribblers back into the game, but for a purist like Arrigo Sacchi, it is a retrograde step. His AC Milan side won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990 playing a highly fluid and compact 4-4-2. “Today’s football is about managing the characteristics of individuals,” he said. “And that’s why you see the proliferation of specialists. The individual has trumped the collective. But it’s a sign of weakness. It’s reactive, not pro-active.” Like Valeriy Lobanovskyi, Sacchi was a devotee of universality, believing that if players were capable of operating in multiple positions, they could create an interactive “energy-system” whose effectiveness was greater than the sum of the effectiveness of the individuals within in. It was during his brief spell as sporting director of Real Madrid in 2004, that Sacchi realised just how far football had drifted from his ideals. “There was no project; it was about exploiting qualities,” he said. “So, for example, we knew that Zidane, Raul and Figo didn’t track back, so we had to put a guy in front of the back four who would defend. But that’s reactionary football. It doesn’t multiply the players’ qualities exponentially. Which actually is the point of tactics: to achieve this mulitplier effect on the players’ abilities. In my football, the regista - the playmaker - is whoever had the ball. But if you have [Claude] Makelele, he can’t do that. He doesn’t have the ideas to do it, though of course, he’s great at winning the ball. It’s all about specialists.” In that he has a point, and it may be that today’s celebrity players, who enjoy such freedom of movement under modern transfer regulations, would never sublimate themselves to a system as Sacchi demanded his players should. Even at Milan, for all his success, Saachi ended up falling out with Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit. Offside considerations There is a question, anyway, as to whether Sacchi’s style could operate in the same way today. His ideal was a maximum of 25m at any moment between centre-back and centre-forward, but that level of pressing demands a high offside line. It may be that the liberalisation of the offside law in recent years has rendered that impossible; certainly few teams operate an offside trap any more. Lillo, intriguingly, acknowledges that his high-pressing game was conceived to take advantage of the old offside law; his thinking may have diverged from Sacchi’s, but he is just as much a part of the tradition of Lobanovskyi and the Total Football of the Dutch. The difference perhaps is that while 4-2-3-1 allows a high defensive line, Sacchi’s style of 4-4-2 demands it. The changes to the interpretation of the offside law mean that defences tend to play deeper these days, and the game is therefore more stretched than it was even a decade ago; given that, it is perhaps logical to split the midfield into holders and creators and so play in four bands rather than three. This is not new: the W-M, a 3-2-2-3, was also a system of four bands. Recent developments All of which begs the question of whether, given many 4-4-2s were effectively 4-2-3-1s, it matters what we call it. Should we really hail Lillo as a pioneer, when his breakthrough was to do self-consciously and give a name to something that was already happening? Isolating and naming something, though, as Wittgenstein argues, is a highly significant step. Once an idea is understood fully enough that it can be described by a simple term – 4-2-3-1 – then work can begin on developing it. What happened in Spain in the early part of this decade, as the basic template moved from 4-4-2 to 4-2-3-1, was nothing less than a paradigm shift. Almost every tactical innovation of the past five years can be seen as developments from a 4-2-3-1. That is true of Roma and Manchester United’s experiments with strikerless formations, but also of the fluid 4-3-3 of this season’s Barcelona. One of the great advantages of the 3-5-2 was the flexibility offered by the use of three central midfielders. Slaven Bilic still speaks disbelievingly of the flair of Croatia’s trio of Robert Prosinecki, Zvonimir Boban and Aljosa Asanovic in the 1998 World Cup, but against Germany in the quarter-final, Prosinecki was replaced by the much more defensive Zvonimir Soldo. Two years later, Italy’s interpretation was a stage more defensive: a 3-4-1-2, with Demetrio Albertini and Luigi Di Biagio holding and Stefano Fiore operating as a playmaker. Midfield flexibility The triangle of two holders and the central creator in the 4-2-3-1 is similar in that it allows the tone of a side to be changed without a major tactical overhaul. Advance one of the holders and a 4-1-4-1 is created. It was that system to which Spain switched in the Euro 2008 semi-final after Fabregás had come on for the injured David Villa. They retained the shape for the final and, counter-intuitively, probably produced their best football after their top scorer had been ruled out. More subtly, if United play Anderson or Paul Scholes alongside Michael Carrick, their emphasis is more positive than if Darren Fletcher and Owen Hargreaves occupy the roles. Away against Roma in the Champions League last year, the central creator was withdrawn, forming a 4-3-3 with Carrick, Scholes and Anderson as the midfield, and Park Ji-Sung, Cristiano Ronaldo and Rooney as the forwards. It is essentially a more attacking version of that shape that Barcelona tend to operate – the two wingers slightly withdrawn off a central striker, with, usually, Xavi Hernandez advanced of two more defensive midfielders. And there is, frankly, no better football in Europe at the moment, in terms of both aesthetics and results. All tactical systems are relative and, as Lillo stresses, all are reliant on the players available and circumstance. It may be that the overwhelming dominance of 4-4-2 in English thinking means it retains a valuable function, but the closest any of the Big Four come to using it is Arsenal’s fluid 4-4-1-1. At the highest level, the paradigm has already shifted: 4-2-3-1 is king.