Last night’s match between Italy and Paraguay was a refreshing sign that the charge of the 4-3-3 may be halted before it envelops the footballing world entirely.
Barcelona have enjoyed great success with the formation. Jose Mourinho won the European Cup with Porto against all odds and then back-to-back Premier League titles with Chelsea playing 4-3-3...and so on.
Too many teams though, in my opinion, fall back on the 4-3-3 as a safeguard when things aren’t going too well; the philosophy being if you can’t beat them, join them.
The shape, rather than innovative, versatile and positive as such a switch may suggest, can also be negative. The coach escapes criticism off the pitch as the formation suggests attacking football; on paper he has swapped a midfielder for a striker, but the 4-3-3 can be the public facade for a 4-5-1. When two teams play this same formation (as happened many times in the Premier League last season) games can be scrappy and devoid of chances.
The manager has an extra man to flood the midfield and limit the space given to the opposition’s schemers. He has wingers who are often asked to drop back into midfield leaving the lone front man isolated and battling two central defenders for every ball. As a result this central striker is often the archetypal ‘big man’ whose immobility can make him predictable should he be starved of the support from midfield he needs to do his job effectively.
There are situations when the 4-3-3 can work, but many others when it can be disjointed, with players being asked to play out of position. It can work when a team has genuine wingers or second strikers comfortable when playing out wide. With the glut of such players at his disposal Diego Maradona is justified in playing this system with Argentina. When three mobile, versatile forwards are rotating and dragging defenders around as Argentina did against Nigeria the effect can be devastating. With this in mind it is even more surprising that Antonio Cassano was excluded from the Italy squad.
Raymond Domenech, the France manager, simply seems to have run out of ideas as to how to get his men to play to their potential and so has followed the trend. He has left out his country’s all-time leading scorer and former captain, Thierry Henry. While he has been admittedly short of form for Barca he has been so as part of a 4-3-3. Put simply Domenech’s tactics work against France’s best player over the past decade.
Nicolas Anelka, preferred in the central role, is not comfortable with his back to goal, nor is he strong enough in the air to play this position alone. If Domenech’s switch to a 4-3-3 had been anything more than a late knee-jerk reaction to his team’s profligacy pre-tournament he would surely have taken Karim Benzema.
Marcelo Lippi’s team also suffered a poor warm-up schedule, and so he reverted to the 4-3-3. This meant playing last season’s top scorer in Serie A, Antonio Di Natale, as one of the two wide supporting strikers, with the consistently inconsistent Alberto Gilardinho up top. The patient catenaccio style favoured by the Italians meant that Gilardinho was kept embarrassingly quiet by the Paraguayan defence.
Italy were deservedly trailing 1-0 until Lippi swallowed his considerable pride, brought on Mauro Camoranesi (who like Henry is a victim rather that a benefactor of the 4-3-3) and switched to 4-4-2. Suddenly the Italians were running the game with the recognisable pomp of old, rescued a draw and were unlucky not to win all three points.
If Domenech was watching last night's game and wants to avoid a display as flaccid as we saw against Uruguay he should take note before it is too late for ‘Les Bleus’, in what will surely be his last tournament before Ramond Blanc takes the reins. Great teams make others imitate them and not vice-versa, which is probably why you don’t see Brazil or Spain pandering to the modern scourge that is the 4-3-3.
No comments:
Post a Comment