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WHY YOU SHOULDNT PLAY 442 THESE DAYS UNLESS YOU ARE VERY FAST AT THE BACK

Look at these results for Germany, playing 451

vs Australia (442) - 4-0
vs Serbia (451) - 0-1
vs Ghana (451) - 1-0
vs England (442) - 4-1
vs Argentina (433!) 4-0
vs Spain (451) 0-1
(Argentina's 433 did not have wide strikers - they played very central)

As you can see, when Germany played against 442, they won easy. And why?

451 has advantages over 442. Let me explain why, using Germany v Australia, when we started with a 442 as an example:

This is how they lined up. Aus are shooting to the top of screen, in a442 with Garcia and Cahill up front. Ger in their 4231

The problem? We have a 2v3 overload in the centre of the park.

So, if the Australian defence hangs back, this happens:



As you can see, there is noone watching that German bloke. Who is it? Its FARKEN OEZIL. When we hung back, he had a party, or Schweiny got free. POint is: this is VERY bad.

What can we do about this?

Well, we COULD push a centre back up:



But now we are leaving the German striker 1 on 1 vs moore or neill. Suicide. Breaking defensive ranks is bad.

SO THIS IS WHAT PIM DID:

Push the WHOLE defense up, to compact their midfield and remove the overload:



This works OK usually - but our defence is too slow to play offside trap v germany.

Sure enough how did germany open us up?

1. Either oezil was free and could pick beautiful balls

or

2. They got in behind us, cause the slow defense was pushing up to watch oezil

Time and time again.

How did Spain stop them?

They played 4231/433 transition - 3 strikers in attack to peeled wide to watch the fullbacks. Watch what happens:




Now it becomes an on the ball crowded midfield struggle. And Spain are GREAT like this. In attack their wide forwards can pull inside, opening up space on the flanks for ovelaps from the fullbacks. Gold.

Argentina tried a 433 - only their wide forwards DIDNT defend - and so Lahm was able to bomb forward and ruin them

Key: 442 only works against 451 when you have good understanding at the back and fast centrebacks who can play offside

I particularly like the visual component of the explanation.

Here's a good article regarding the tactics (mostly use of the midfield) in Germany v Australia. Same idea as that post, but in more detail and with different diagrams. The website also covers the other games.


In reality, Germany were playing an adapted "typically Dutch-style" game; 4-5-1 in defence, turning to a 4-3-3 in attack.
With Müller and Podolski, both natural strikers, as the wingers, that's why their counter was so impressive and effective; as soon as the wingers had reached a certain area of the field, they would start slowly drifting inwards and make a compact 3-man forward line (akin to Argentina's attack), and the fullbacks moving forward, hugging the sidelines, to support the gaps left by that movement.

Yep - I gotta give props to ZM and Jonathon wilson for my ideas, theyre definitely not mine.

Im just really unsure what Pim was thinking. Maybe he was trying to create a 460 - with 6 on 5! But the players would have been confused, obviously, not having played this.

If he went the 451 we would have been OK - maybe lost 1 or 2-0, but not that shambles of the first half

I saw it as something akin to 4-2-2-2 with deep ball-playing strikers (could almost argue it as 4-2-2-2-0). That's not a bad thing - we don't have strikers who can play the ball and hold up possession/link up play like we once had. I really don't blame him for not selecting Kennedy for that reason. Cahill played as a striker for large parts of his club season, and Garcia has always looked like he's halfway between striker and winger (perhaps faux-both), so they weren't poor choices.
And I've said it a million times before, but one more time never hurts: It was right to not select Kewell. He was just coming back from injury and to play his first game against a highly-physical defence like Germany or Serbia would have been a disaster. He would probably have only lasted 10-15 minutes before resparking his injury. Sadly he didn't even last much longer than that against Ghana, but for other reasons that we don't need to raise again.

I don't know if the defensive line was too deep for that game (especially when everyone argues that Argentina didn't push up far enough in their 4-0 loss), but one thing I didn't like was seeing the fullbacks pushing up so quickly when we were in possession, when it was all too likely - given the opening of the game - that we were going to make a poor pass or just lose the ball not too long after. The lack of backward movement from the fullbacks was a huge problem, and it left gaping holes and we then had too rely too much on Moore and Neill, exposing their flaws even more than it should.

But the forward movement and want to have high pressure in the midfield/German defence was half-right, and it definitely wasn't a negative tactic. It looked like it was an attempt to stifle their movement in the centre of the park (and you can see most of their attacks ended up being on the wings), and push towards goal with hope that we may have something go our away.
Perhaps a "Do or die" sort of idea that didn't pay off. Hard to tell whether the player performances (absolutely woeful passing an amateur defensive line mistakes from such an experienced group) were their fault or something behind the scenes and probably won't be determined. Media can speculate all they like, though, and a lot of people will believe it.

double post tbh :wink:

Oh, and I agree with Zonal Marking when they said that it seemed like the tweaks Pim made for the second half were much more effective in acting out his game plan, but the Cahill red card was more or less the undoing of that half (it looked to me like every Socceroo on the field just collapsed and started packing their bags after that). The substitutions after that did inject some much needed fresh legs and as I said at the time, some "God damned farken courage," but it just wasn't enough.

Spain and Germany both played the same 4231 system, it's just Spain did it with more talented ball players, more experiance and patience.

Both played with 6 defenders and 4 attackers, whilst Argentina played their 433/451 with 5 defenders and 5 attackers, the lone DM for argentina couldn't cope with the combined ability of Germanys 2 DM/CM's and 1 AM when he didn't get support from his other midfielders who were either pure AM or AM/Strikers.

Part of the reason Germany lost to spain is that Podolski, Klose and Piorkowski and wide strikers didn't have anywhere near the prescence in the midfield as what Villa, Iniesta and Pedro did for Spain.
Even the Spanish full backs would often come into the central midfield to join in the triangle passing game and supply outlets for Xavi when he was trying to conduct the attacks whilst the German fullbacks were pretty much pinned back in their corners by Ineista and Pedro attacking. The overall ability of the Spanish to control possesion and get numbers around the ball carrier is immense, they taught the Germans how to play the 451 formation this morning. The Germans may be more devastating on the counter with their 3 forwards but coming up against a brick wall like Alonso, Busquets, Pique and Puyol in the mifield makes it near on impossible to launch a counter attack.

the Dutch are playing a 4231 with almost the exact same style and intent as Spain atm. will be a fascinating game even though i think it has a fair chance of being 0-0 after extra time.

actually same style isn't really right, the Dutch use Robben and Kuyt to attack quickly down the flanks alot more than the Spanish use their wide forwards. Pretty much the exact same formation and styles of player just executed slightly differant.