2012年6月27日星期三
The Fraudulence of Soccer Formations
This is going to be difficult for soccer traditionalists to swallow, but here goes.
Formations in soccer don't matter. Not anymore. Their chief function nowadays is to justify coaches' salaries and make TV commentators sound smart.
For some reason, in the Russia Euro 2012 Jersey run-up to any big match—like Thursday's Euro 2012 semifinal between Italy and the favored Germans—the chatter always centers on the formations each team will employ. Through the first 28 games at this year's Euro, teams used five distinct formations, a greater spread than at any Euro since 1996, according to UEFA, European soccer's governing body.
But for all practical purposes, the 4-4-2, the 4-3-3, the 4-2-3-1 and all the rest no longer have any relevance after the referee's whistle is blown. "Formations are dying out," said Slaven Bilic, head coach of Croatia. "It's increasingly difficult to mark the movement of the players, with respect to the ball, just by assigning numbers to each line."
In a sport which has no timeouts, few stoppages and is often decided by individual acts of spontaneity, formations are one of the few ways coaches can endeavor to shape the action on the field. "I love nothing more than to talk about the technical side of soccer," said Italy coach Cesare Prandelli.
But players and coaches say the game is still largely an exercise in chaos. Soccer has been played in pretty much the same form for close to 150 years. It is now at a point where every responsible way of deploying 11 players has been exhausted.
Juanma Lillo, a former coach in Spain's La Liga, is seen as a soccer swami for pioneering the 4-2-3-1 formation that has been used by six of the 16 teams at the Euro. He says the whole notion of formations is "overvalued" in a sport that still basically boils down to 22 players chasing a ball across the field.
"I would like to demystify this," Lillo said. "The formation is only the first snapshot. After that, the players are always on the move because the ball is on the move, so the formation no longer exists. In any case, [a team's] style of play is related to an idea, not to a geographic positioning on the pitch."
Alexi Lalas, the former U.S. international who played in Italy's Serie A, supposedly the most sophisticated league in the world, said that formations are a suggestion for spacing, but little more than that.
Once the match starts, teams take a quick glance at how their opponent is lined up and adjust, but give little thought to the numbers after that. Formations give players an idea of how they might want to view themselves on the field, but they're never a decisive factor in the game.
"Players come to the forefront and that's why teams win, not because of their formation," Lalas said. "Goals happen because someone makes a mistake and someone does something instinctual, not because they were lined up in a certain formation."
It wasn't always this way. Formations were introduced in the 19th century to impose order on a sport that was still largely a lawless free-for-all. Ever since, the way a team is assembled on the field has been seen as critical to the outcome of matches.
As the game spread into new countries and was adopted by different cultures, fresh ideas about how to maximize the collective talents of 11 players stationed across a soccer field were instrumental in transforming the sport and the way it was played.
When Scotland lined up in a 2-2-6 formation in the first international game against England in 1872, it heralded soccer's evolution from a game dominated by dribbling into one where passing was king. Italy won back-to-back World Cups in the 1930s with a 2-3-2-3 system that emphasized defensive solidity, while the 4-2-4 alignment helped Brazil conquer the sport in the 1960s by accentuating individual skill and fitness.
The most radical tactic in this tournament has been Spain's use of a 4-6-0 formation in which Cesc Fabregas operates as a "False Nine," lining up as a center-forward, then dropping back into the midfield.
But this is hardly a new development. Smart coaches Soccer Jerseys have been baiting opposition central defenders with this tactic ever since Nandor Hidegkuti operated as a deep-lying forward for the great Hungary side of the 1950s. "These systems have been around for decades," said former England international Tony Cottee, now an analyst. "There are no new ideas out there."
In an era when the top teams are filled with studs like Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo and Germany's Mario Gomez, who combine lightning speed with punishing size, soccer has become a game about getting a ball onto a player's feet where he has space to operate, wherever it exists. Make a pass and sprint into space is the basic plan that most of the best teams follow. Defenders try to combat it with compact blocs in the middle of the field.
At some point, most teams look like they are playing with nine defenders and one striker.
"In the end, [the formation] doesn't matter," said Italy midfielder Thiago Motta. "Even Spain play with two wide players up front but then they come inside to play as central midfielders. In the end, we all change."
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