When I started playing soccer with a team, our coach – a high school senior at the time – tried to set us up in “formations”. I and the other kids were confused.
Before we were a team, we just liked playing soccer with each other. We would select sides and have a kickaround, score goals, celebrate, and just have fun.
One day, this guy came along to watch us. Then he started giving us tips, and soon, we started having practice drills because we wanted to learn more about the sport from this cool high school senior.
We started as just seven kids at the time and grew to ten, then to eleven and soon, we were a group of about 30 kids who were overseen by this high school senior and his friends who also loved soccer.
They were all in their school team and used us to gain experience while also getting some practice in. The best thing they did for us was to introduce us to the concept of “formations”.
Formations are how players on a team line up on the soccer field. This is what you will be learning about in the coming sections of this article.
Best Soccer Tactics
The first thing to know about formations is that they aren’t random. They’re well thought out by soccer tacticians and coaches to put forward their best players every match.
Every coach wants to win, so they figure out the best way to get their best players on the field in a game.
This is also why transfers and drafts happen in professional soccer: a coach comes up with a tactic to win games, identifies a particular profile of a player that fits these tactics, and goes out to look for these players during transfer windows or player drafts.
When they get their preferred player profile, they line them up on the field in a “formation”.
In essence, a soccer formation refers to the position players take in relation to each other on a soccer field. It is also important to note that soccer formations are not rigid because the sport is a fast-moving and fluid one. Formations basically define a player’s role on the field.
The first “official” formation recorded by soccer historians was the “Pyramid” – a 2-3-5 formation which reigned supreme in Britain in the 1890s and later across the world (with different variations) up until the 1930s when other formations started to spring up.
Here’s a breakdown of the formations that preceded the ones that we currently watch and use in modern soccer.
4-4-2
4-4-2 evolved from the 4-2-4 formation, which was the first-ever formation described using numbers.
The 4-2-4 makes use of only two midfielders and four attackers, but when Soviet Russian coach Viktor Maslov came to prominence, he made the two wide forwards drop deeper into midfield to create the 4-4-2. This brought about a simple formation that ensured balance all across the pitch.
You must note that every formation only accounts for the outfield players. The goalkeepers are not included in the numbering of formations.
Also, every formation starts by counting the defending players first, then the midfielders, and then the attackers. This means the 4-4-2 formation has four defenders, four midfielders, and four attackers.
The back four consists of two center-backs and two full-backs. They are not lined up in a flat formation. The full-backs are a little ahead because of their added responsibility of joining the attack occasionally.
The midfield four has two center midfielders, one of which is required to join the attack occasionally while the other serves as a CDM to screen the center-backs. The wide midfielders operate as wingers.
The attacking two consists of two forwards who can either be strikers or one striker and a supporting striker, depending on what the coach wants.
4-3-3
The 4-3-3 is the most common formation soccer teams use. It provides even more balance in offense and defense than the 4-4-2.
This is because it allows teams to be able to control possession a bit more because the chances of winning a soccer game increases when a team has more of the ball than the other team. Passing lanes are a lot more defined in the 4-3-3 formation than in many other formations.
In a 4-3-3, a coach lines up his team with four defenders, three midfielders and three attackers. In offense, the two wide midfielders join the three attackers while the two full-backs join the CDM in midfield to provide cover.
Sometimes, the full-backs go further up the pitch while the wide midfielders maintain their position in midfield but occupy a position where they can contribute to both defense and offense in the event of a counterattack from the opposing team.
The 4-3-3 was first used by Brazil in the 1960s. Defensively, the three midfielders can drop back, creating a seven-man defense which opponents find hard to break past.
4-2-3-1
This is simply a formation with five midfielders. Soccer analysts tend to break down formations into four or five numbers depending on the roles that players are expected to play.
Take a team like Arsenal for example who have midfield players like Jorginho, Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard.
If the coach of this team, Mikel Arteta, decides to play all three midfielders in one game, he will most likely not line them up in a regular 4-3-3 or a 4-4-2 because of their profiles.
This means there will be two other midfielders or wide players playing alongside them. The more attacking one – Ødegaard – will get a more advanced role, while the more defensive ones – Rice and Jorginho – will get defensive roles.
This means they will be lined up in a triangle in the middle of the park with Rice and Jorginho at the base, and Ødegaard will get support from two other wide players.
The 4-2-3-1 is just one variation of the 4-5-1, which seeks to overload the field with enough midfielders to intimidate the other team into making mistakes.
3-5-2
The 3-5-2 formation is similar to the 4-2-3-1 in that it focuses on overloading the midfield to intimidate the opposing team. The difference, however, is that this formation is more attacking than the 4-2-3-2 or any other variation of the 4-5-1 formation.
The 3-5-2 has three centerbacks, five midfielders, and two attackers. In defense, two of the five midfielders drop back to make a five-man defense, which effectively changes this formation to a 5-3-2, and in attack, two of the midfielders move up to make a four-man attack which effectively changes this formation to a 3-3-4.
This is why the wing-back evolved from the full-back position in soccer. The wing-back is a type of full-back who is versatile enough to play as a winger (wide forward) and a full-back.
This means that the coach can choose to keep them in defense or attack if the coach decides to use another formation other than a 3-5-2.
Examples of popular wing-backs in football are Victor Moses, Jeremie Frimpong, Alejandro Grimaldo, Denzel Dumfries, Andy Robertson, Alphonso Davies, João Cancelo and Achraf Hakimi.
3-4-3
The 3-4-3 formation originated in Italy in the 1970s as an answer to the 4-3-3. According to player positions, 3-4-3 sees a coach line up three center-backs, two center midfielders, two wide midfielders, two wingers, and one striker.
It is a hyper-attacking formation which, if poorly executed, can lead to a very embarrassing defeat for any team that deploys it. This is why coaches opt more for the 3-5-2 when deploying any formation with three at the back.
In attack, however, the 3-4-3 presents teams with the opportunity of having five attackers – seven, if you count the two midfielders. In defense, the team ends up with five defenders, two midfielders, and three attackers, making counterattacks a little difficult to execute.
Wing-backs are also deployed in this formation because coaches need players who can both attack and defend.
Some coaches employ tactics that see one of the midfielders drop back to become a fourth defender.
3-4-2-1
This is a variation of the 3-4-3, which closely resembles a 3-5-2 in set-up. In this formation, the two wingers are replaced by wide midfielders, which means they’re a little deeper than the wingers would be.
The extra man effectively makes this a 3-6-1 in shape, and the four in the midfield can be lined up in whatever way the coach deems fit. Despite being a highly attack-minded formation, it is a very defensive formation, even more so than others on this list.
Also, the wide midfielders must be creative enough to fill the void that playing without defined wingers would create in the team.
Doing their job well means that the team can have as many as seven attackers. The 3-4-2-1 structure is excellent for teams who want to play out from the back.
The WW/MM formation
This 2-3-5 variation was devised by Vittorio Pozzo, the coach of Italy’s national team in the 1930s.
In this formation, instead of players lining up in a pyramid shape like the conventional 2-3-5, they lined up in a way that resembled two Ws or two Ms stacked on each other.
Pozzo realized that opponents found it easy to counter the conventional 2-3-5 because most attacking players were not the best defenders, and so he pulled back two of the five forwards down into midfield, just ahead of his midfielders (or half-backs as they were called at the time).
Those two forwards became the original attacking midfielders in soccer, a position that has spurned many tactical changes in the sport.
Márton Bukovi of Hungary created his own version in the 1940s as a way to make up for the lack of a playmaker in the team, while closing the distance between the two attackers upfront.
This transformed into a 3–2–1–4 formation when attacking and turned back to 3–2–3–2 when defending.
The WM formation
Herbert Chapman, one of the game’s greatest innovators, came up with this formation to counter the effects of a change to the offside laws in the 1920s – 1925 to be exact.
The change allowed attacking players to carry on with their play if there were two players between them and the ball as opposed to three players which was the rule.
Chapman brought back one midfielder into defense to play in a 3-2-2-3 formation which resembled a WM.
Of course, it was known as the WM and not by numbers because that system of describing formations was still yet to be invented.
The WM is the predecessor of the 3-4-3 formation.
Here are the current formations used in the modern game after decades of evolution of the previously unnamed formations that ruled the world.
FAQ
What is tiki-taka in soccer?
Tiki-Taka loosely translates to “touch-touch,” and it simply means the rapid passing of the ball between teammates, which allows them to keep possession of the ball for large portions of the match.
It is a result of the Total Football philosophy of soccer that the late great Johan Cruyff introduced to the world in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Teams who play tiki-taka simply want to starve their opponents off the ball so that they are unable to muster any kind of attack.
What is a diamond formation in soccer?
A diamond formation in soccer refers to a type of midfield setup that resembles a diamond when you trace the line between one midfielder’s position and another. It can only be achieved with a formation that plays four midfielders (4-4-2 or 3-4-3).
Final Thoughts
I must say that in soccer, formations are not rigid. The game is fluid and fast moving, but players need to have defined roles on the field.
Anyone can score, and anyone can defend, but everyone has to understand what is expected of them by the coach.
This is why there are so many formations and why a lot of coaches can apply more than one formation in a game, depending on what plays out.
Soccer tactics will continue to evolve as long as the sport exists, which means we could be seeing more formations in the future.
