The article is what it is, a brief introduction to how the 4-3-3 system developed. As I mentioned a few times, formations evolve in different parts of the world, sometimes together with different tactics. How the Dutch play a 4-3-3 is different to how the Italians play 4-3-3. This is based on tactics.

A playing formation is a static plan or template. It does not tell you how to do it. This was my point by discussing the Brazilians. How they play a 4-4-2 or 3-5-2 is very different to other countries. For example they use a box system in the midfield as a template. It is the same when building a house. A blueprint does not tell you how to build the house. It will tell you whether it is a single story or double story. This is the same in football. A formation does not tell you what shape to defend in, or how to defend, or how to attack. A formation is a static plan.

Games often come down to how effective teams are at 1v1 situations not static formation. The Brazilians do this well, but are not the only ones.

Tactics tell you how to do things within formations. The article describes some tactics (Total Football), as you have done. Formations in real life are dynamic and change regularly depending on the play. Perhaps we are discussing semantics but it is what creates passion and discussion. If you want to call a static formation a tactic do so but it may not get you very far coaching a team.

I am a student of the game and learn something about the game every day. Thank you for your comments and knowledge.

Think you probably either need to talk about the history of football formations, the Dutch 4-3-3 and Total Football, or you need to talk about 4-3-3 and the different types. Personally, I don't think you have enough room to talk about the history of formations, which is one big evolutionary mess anyway.

Ramsay was one of the first to use 4-3-3 in competition when he managed Ipswich in the 50s. But that wasn't a planned 4-3-3, as such - it was very much like Brazil's 4-3-3 in 1962. It was a skewed formation that we wouldn't recognise as being a 4-3-3 because it catered to the idiosyncrasies of one or two players in the squad - Zagallo's fitness, or Leadbetter's positional favour.

By the way:



I'm shocked. Tactics are all about the formation - they dictate where your players are on the field, what players they will be, what zones people will defend in, where they attack. In fact, formation and interchangeability within that formation is the key to Total Football. You can't play Total Football in a 4-4-2 or a 3-4-3 because the systems aren't fluid enough. The idea is that your 4-3-3 balances out defensive and attacking zones on the pitch so those zones can easily be covered by another player. But the weakness is that those players have to be very used to playing together, which is why it's suggested that it worked so well for the Dutch but not very well for anyone else... like many unique squads in history, they all played together at the same teams all year round. Like many innovative tactical developments, it only worked for a short period of time and it only worked for a select few squads. It's difficult to think of a manager that made it work other than Michels.

If individual, "Brazilian" flair was what it was all about, then no-one would spend time working on formation. You'd just train people individually and send them out on the field. People wouldn't write books about it. We wouldn't talk about it so much. We wouldn't train players for a position, we'd just put the good ones and the front and the big ones at the back.

This isn't League. It's football.

Thanks olrac, Yes the intention is to provide attack and defence implimentations of the system and training sessions. The tactics can become quite complex and depends on your opposition and the coaches philosophy.

NIce article, but I feel like it is just the introduction to a much deeper one. In another blog can you go further into the attacking and devensive implementations of this system?


What do you think about the FourFourTwo blog Where Did The 433 System Come From??
Did the Dutch invent the 4-3-3 system? No they did not. But they did give us "Total Football" and a whole different way to look at the game. Total Football utilized space in a different way, used a ci...

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