4-4-2 (1 Viewer)

I'd say England did.

So did Italy in 2006

I would've thought Germany would have at some point as well?

brazil played 2-2-6 in 1970

England have.

Those are fundamentally 4-4-2. I don't see what the point of the thread is to be fair.

What formation did Uruguay deploy in 1930?

Again, I don't see what the point of the thread is. You've said all that stuff but those formations are fundamentally 4-4-2. They evolved from 4-4-2.

kg82 said:

Again, I don't see what the point of the thread is. You've said all that stuff but those formations are fundamentally 4-4-2. They evolved from 4-4-2.

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When I was 18 I had a lot better things to do on a Friday night.

SkyBlue_Taylor said:

They aren't though, 4-1-3-2 is not 4-4-2, it has a holding midfielder, and does not have '2 banks of 4'.

4-4-1-1 isn't fundamentally 4-4-2 is it? Look at the difference in our play when we moved from 4-4-1-1 to 4-4-2. Also, the CAM in a 4-4-1-1 creates natural triangles which 4-4-2 doesn't have.

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4411 is fundamentally 442 just with a striker (second striker not a cam) that likes to drop in the hole (Totti). You really need to stop player football manager.

stupot07 said:

4411 is fundamentally 442 just with a striker (second striker not a cam) that likes to drop in the hole (Totti). You really need to stop player football manager.

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Yep all the best 442 teams have always had 1 striker who drops deep and the other who stays an occupies the centre halves, anyway formations are so interchangeable these days it is difficult to pin an label a side to a particular formation. What is 433 at times may be a 4231 or 451 at other times. 442 at times may be a 4411 an so forth

Pretty interesting article on a formation used by Universidad de Chile
Not sure if it'd work in League 1...

Revolution in tactics takes Chile by storm

Gabriele Marcotti

Some call them the “Barcelona of the Americas”. Others go farther. They say Universidad de Chile — “La U” — are the best team on the planet. It’s just that most casual fans on this side of the planet don’t get to see much of them. Nor, for that matter, did much of South America, at least until this autumn, when they went on a tear in the Copa Sudamericana, thrashing continental blue bloods such as Flamengo and Vasco da Gama, the Brazilian clubs.

La U have not lost since early June, a streak extending to 28 matches. Having won Chile’s Apertura title this year, they’re on the verge of winning the Clausura as well and, on Thursday, they face LDU Quito in the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final. But these are just numbers and they don’t begin to explain the remarkable events at La U.

It starts with the coach, Jorge Sampaoli, the Argentinian. He may be a tactical savant, but the world woke up late to his talents. That or he’s the latest of bloomers, because he’s 51 and did not get a top-flight coaching job until 2002. Before that, he spent two decades — since injury forced him into retirement at 20 — working in youth football. While he has said that it was the perfect place to hone his craft and run his tactical experiments, in reality it’s hard to believe that a man such as Sampaoli could stay under the radar for so long. He knew what he wanted to do — coach at the highest level — and he sacrificed whatever he could to achieve his goal, travelling to the Netherlands, Italy and Spain during the close season to study training methods and devoting every waking moment to deciphering the game of football.

And after being passed over for the umpteenth time in his native Argentina, he emigrated to Peru, the only place that would offer him a job. From there, he worked his way up the South American footballing food chain to his present job at La U.

This time last year few Argentinians knew his name. Today he’s drawing comparisons to Marcelo Bielsa.

Watching La U, you can see why. The 3-3-1-3 formation is unlike anything we see in Europe, a total rethink of how players occupy space on the pitch and how they move about it.

Yet, compared with Bielsa — whom Sampaoli calls “a role model and an inspiration” — his teams appear better organised and even more free-flowing.

Indeed, Sampaoli is an ode to synchronicity. Time and again, the ball moves into space and is met by an on-running player, while, when the opposition have the ball, every possible channel and passing lane feels congested. It’s a classic situation where the tactical scheme has a multiplier effect on the players’ abilities. Not that La U don’t have good players — they do — but apart from Eduardo Vargas, a forward recently linked with Chelsea, few generate much attention from European scouts. Indeed, one of the more striking things about La U is that despite losing two key players — Edson Puch and Felipe Seymour, both Chile players — at the end of last season, they made no signings in the summer. Instead, Sampaoli simply replaced them with players from the academy. It’s not just that nobody is irreplaceable in Sampaoli’s system, it’s almost that just about anybody can do the job. There’s maximum interchangeability because, above all, it’s about the system, not the players.

The club went out on a limb in appointing him ahead of the more heralded Diego Simeone, who won league titles in Argentina with Estudiantes and River Plate. The choice raised more than a few eyebrows, but, according to the club’s sporting director, Sabino Aguad, he “sold them on his vision”.

Aguad soon realised that Sampaoli was unlike any coach he had met. As part of his contract, La U supplied him with a mansion in a gated development and a luxury sedan. He turned both down, opting instead for a used car and a modest one-bedroom flat in the inner city. A self-confessed workaholic, Sampaoli doesn’t seem concerned with material goods. On non-match days he’s at the training ground by half past 8 and doesn’t leave before 9 at night. And, when he does go home, he sits in bed watching DVDs and doing video analysis on his computer.

Single-minded? Er . . . yes. Perhaps unhealthily so. “Even when I’m resting, my mind never disengages from football . . . I can’t get unhooked,” he told a Chilean newspaper. “I look back and I realise that I abandoned my family because of football. But what’s done is done.”

Compared with some European coaches, who are considered “workaholic” if they limit themselves to one day on the golf course a week, Sampaoli is cut from an entirely different cloth. He seems to approach the game with a sort of ascetic, monk-like, messianic zeal that mirrors his life off the pitch.

The fascinating bit — apart from seeing how long La U’s streak continues — will be what Sampaoli does next. At this rate, Europe is sure to come calling, despite the limited success of South American coaches in the old world. Can his philosophy and vision work on this side of the pond? Or has he created something truly unique, beautiful and important, but which can exist only in a certain space and time? If Sampaoli can recreate his work elsewhere — and others emulate him — then maybe we are on the verge of the next great tactical evolution in the game. If he can’t, well, let’s enjoy it while it lasts.