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The traditional 4-4-2 formation

8:00 AM. My acquaintance and I absitively to adhere at his abode and play FIFA 15 on his PlayStation, with the bean bags, consoles and popcorn, in abounding measure. I adulation the Bayern aggregation in the bold and play them all the time, while he’s a hardcore PSG fan. The wagers were out, the lights were on and the teams were ready. I was arena Thomas Muller and Robert Lewandowski up top, with sets of four midfielders and defenders abaft them. He played the same, with the adorable duo of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Edinson Cavani arch the pack. Bold on.

9.00 AM. After four games, we paused for a while. Upon pausing, the awning showed PSG’s team-sheet in abounding splendor. What a altogether counterbalanced team. Two pacey wingers in Ezequiel Lavezzi and Lucas Moura. A 18-carat abysmal lying playmaker and an active box to box man in midfield – Marco Verratti and Blaise Matuidi is a axial midfield bond fabricated in heaven.

The four at the aback best themselves, with him arena Serge Aurier and Lucas Digne on the flanks, while David Luiz and Thiago Silva marshalled the defence. I looked at the band with envy. And then, I started wondering. Why do they play the 4-3-3, if they accept a band so affably ill-fitted for the 4-4-2? And apperception you, this wasn’t Laurent Blanc traveling nuts; sadly, this is the barometer today.

11.00 AM. I was aback home and was account the book I accede my Bible, Jonathan Wilson’s “The Anatomy of Liverpool”. One quick seek on the columnist and I begin myself getting absorbed by the concepts abaft his award-winning book “Inverting the Pyramid”. From Vittorio Pozzo’s Italy to Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, the book was the Britannica of football tactics. Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, What a team. Probably the greatest aggregation of all-time. And their formation? 4-4-2.

Milan’s classical 4-4-2

Serie A titles, Intercontinental titles, European Cups, that aggregation had won everything. Watching a few videos of that team, I was abashed by how top they pressed. The aggregation attacked and dedicated as a unit, with Ancelotti-Rijkaard and Gullit-Van Basten continuing out for their acute and work-rate. 4-4-2 was absolute for them, as it was for abounding of the greatest teams of the backward ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s.

Fabio Capello’s Class of 1994, Sir Alex Ferguson’s acknowledged aggregation of the ‘90s with Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole up top, the abundant Barcelona aggregation of the era with Romario-Stoichkov arch the line, Ronaldo-Bebeto for Brazil; causeless to say, the accumulation disqualified the roost. I couldn’t accept what I was seeing and reading. It was the go-to accumulation of about every acknowledged administrator of the time. A few hours on YouTube and I was absorbed by the football played by these abundant sides. Time flew.

The signal of the end

2.00 PM. With every rise, comes a fall. It is as apparent a actuality of activity as any. Hypnotised by the mesmerising football played by the exponents who took the accumulation to its zenith, it was time to ascertain the added side; time to see the accumulation hit bedrock bottom, the nadir. It was Apple Cup time in the summer of 2010. England was adverse Germany in the Apple Cup R16, with the man at their captain getting Fabio Capello, one of the finest proponents of the formation.

England Germany
The English team lost against a rampant German team

The English aggregation absent adjoin a aggressive German team

90 account later, his beliefs, aesthetics and approach had been broken afar by the aggressive Die Mannschaft, arena the solid 4-2-3-1, which was in faddy at the time, and still is, to a assertive extent. A assertive Mesut Ozil exploited the gap amid the imbalanced and banal English midfield and defence. Four goals and a bulk postmortems later, the British journalists proclaimed in about abrupt appearance – “The 4-4-2 is dead”.

4.00 PM. Account about the perceived afterlife of a accumulation that was already so acknowledged wouldn’t be complete after alive the reasons. One quick attending at all the acknowledged teams of the endure decade or so, and it was there for anybody to see – not one, not two, but a aggregation of affidavit came calm to finer blot the activity out of the 4-4-2.

The archetypal inverted wingers

With the accession of a new brand of proactive managers like Pep Guardiola, Ronald Koeman, Mauricio Pochettino, Joachim Low and others, the bold became beneath absolute and added intricate. Gone were the canicule if the wingers waltzed down the flanks after a anguish in the apple and abounding backs were annihilation added than abetting centre-halves. They were replaced by wingers who tracked aback and full-backs who overlapped, with an able swapping and alteration of duties, arch to a bold added codicillary on short, acute passing.

Along with a change in roles, the arena appearance of wingers aswell changed. One-dimensional wingers like Milos Krasic, Antonio Valencia and Aaron Lennon could no best ability the actual top; it was the time of Franck Ribery, Eden Hazard, Arjen Robben and the brand – it was the time of astern wingers. Wingers could no best affirmation a atom in the ancillary by just sprinting and crossing. Cutting in, passing, acceptable and tracking aback was and is the adjustment of the day. To put things in a nutshell, addition play is no best the same.

Whether it be control aggressive managers like Guardiola and Co or defense-minded ones like Mourinho and Simeone, one affair charcoal the aforementioned – the added accent on a midfield with numbers. While the Bayern supremo has taken it to new levels arena even 6 and 7 midfielders at a time, a lot of of them apply at atomic five. This has resulted in players getting accepted to do specific roles; yield the Chelsea band for instance. They play a aqueous 4-2-3-1 formation, which morphs into a 4-5-1 or 4-3-3, as per the requirements. Nemanja Matic is the boner in the average of the esplanade – their new Claude Makelele. Cesc Fabregas is the abysmal lying playmaker, their canyon master. Oscar plays just abaft the striker, donning the role of the No. 10. Willian is the added absolute and accomplished winger, anyone who chips in with the odd goal. And Hazard is the artistic hub of the team, abrogation the defenders in a befuddlement as he cuts in from the left.

With such top degrees of specialization getting the norm, the brand of box to box midfielders, arguably the pivots about which the 4-4-2 revolves, boring started dying. Players in the mould of Roy Keane and Clarence Seedorf were and are still harder to find. Players like Yaya Toure and Arturo Vidal are the rarities today. And with the afterlife of multi-functional midfielders, came the afterlife of the accumulation that they were such an basic allotment of.

Probably the a lot of important point though, was the change apparent in the art of defending. It was no best about able-bodied and alarming men carrying crunching tackles and bouncing the brawl into the air appear the blithe anxiety of the No9s. The role of a apostle in today’s bold is abundant added complex, with ball-playing centre-backs getting an capital claim for every team. Causeless to say, this has resulted in accretion amount of errors and mistakes in judgement, not to acknowledgment the huge gaps amid the defence and midfield that is exploited if teams are bent on the break.

Birds of the box-to-box feather

Hope for revival

These factors accept conspired and coincided at added or beneath the aforementioned time during the noughties to address the 4-4-2 aggregation bedding into the done and dusted folders, added or less. The important allotment actuality is “more or less”. They haven’t become absolutely redundant. Is there a adventitious for revival? Let’s see.

8.00 PM. After delving abysmal into the how’s, why’s, pros and cons of the crumbling access of 4-4-2, it was conceivably time for me to ache its afterlife afore traveling to sleep. Not so fast though, as one attending at the 2013-14 division gave me renewed hope. Jonathan Soriano and Alan for Salzburg, Sergio Aguero and Alvaro Negredo/Edin Dzeko for Manchester City and conceivably a lot of importantly, the SAS (Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez) of Liverpool were all absurd advertisements for the bang affiliation system. Causeless to say, all three teams active the 4-4-2 to abundant effect, instilling new hopes in the hearts of purists, who grew up watching the accumulation wreak havoc.

9.00 PM. It concluded up getting added or beneath of a apocryphal aurora though, as assorted factors formed adjoin these clubs, consistent in them not arena the 4-4-2 anymore. Instead, a new alternative of the accumulation was on the rise, with one of the aloof strikers aswell arena the role of a accompaniment or trequartista, appropriately acceptable the No. 9, as and if required. The examples of Nabil Fekir and Alexandre Lacazette for Lyon, Lionel Messi and Neymar for Barcelona and Cristiano Ronaldo-Karim Benzema bond at Real Madrid, were all examples of a different, yet tactically adjustable alternative of the acceptable bang duo.

Multi-faceted players – The future of 4-4-2

10.00 PM. So, it was time for me to rest, to sleep. And no, the accuracy abaft the admirable bold hadn’t yet laid the 4-4-2 to rest. The time to play the chant hadn’t yet come. The time to ache hadn’t yet arrived. And clashing this article, the 4-4-2 hasn’t yet become a accomplished close phenomenon. Here’s to acquisitive it stays for good.