The coach's vision together with the team's goal for the season dictate the tactics used. Here is why.
While you can always read a football tactics book to get fantastic insights into playmaking, there is no better teacher than experience and history. Over the past 50 years, football has been enhanced with a few of the most pleasurable formations in the history of the sport, and a few of which are still utilised to this day. Nevertheless, the 2010s saw an obvious shift in football tactics with the emergence of a more attacking design of play and a more structured technique to playmaking. Modern football has actually leveraged both ability and tech to develop a few of the most effective strategies that have actually managed to win clubs numerous trophies. In this context, the revised 4-3-3 formation has become among the more popular modern football tactics due to its efficient attack and balanced defense. The minority shareholder of Liverpool FC will agree that technical skill and speed make this tactic very tough to ward off.
Commonly deemed one of the most versatile football formations, the 4-4-2 is a tactic that can be tweaked to be more offensive or leaning more to the defensive side. It is for these factors that this tactic is among the most common football tactics throughout different leagues and competitions. If the manager wants to use an offense-forward 4-4-2, they can present some crucial modifications to enable increased fluidity in passing and play building. For instance, they can create a lozenge in the midfield that consists of one defensive midfielder, 2 playmakers on the sides, and one attacking midfielder. This lozenge would provide balls to the wingers and a false 9 that occasionally drops to a lower position. In a more defensive 4-4-2, the former owner of Aston Villa would inform you that the coach can form an arch composed of 4 players that acts as a barrier that keeps the adversary from reaching the defense line.
Today, there are numerous football tactics and formations out there to choose from but coaches invest a lot of time adapting and tweaking classic tactics to fit the particularities of their clubs. The reality is, there are many parameters that affect this choice, and not all of which are strictly technical. For instance, the quality of players in the squad can make coaches hesitate about what tactic to use. In the absence of quality footballers in attack, some managers choose to utilise a more midfield-dense technique in an effort to dominate ownership of the ball. In the attacking stance, midfielders and wingers will attempt to send out through balls or shoot from outside the box in order to destabilise the defenses of the other team. The AC Milan former US owner would likely agree that other elements like player injury and managing a hectic calendar also influence tactical and technical choices.