I went on a school trip to Germany so long ago that East Germany was still going strong (1978)… And I agree with you. We never got a chance to “practice our German” because they all were dying to use their English. One older couple even went out of their way to walk the group of us teens to the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. Lovely people. But I don’t have a problem with using “blitzkrieg” to describe their steamrolling of Aussie today.
So wait, “in the hospital” means your visiting a sick friend or at work and “in hospital” means you’re the patient, right? I never noticed that distinction–I knew that “in hospital” meant you’re sick; I’ve never heard the other used by a Brit.
4-3-3-2-1… woah…
Fucking hell. That, right there, is why England don’t win anything. I barely understood a word of that. We really don’t do tactics. It all sounds like voodoo to us.
Well, yeah. “In the hospital” means literally in a particular hospital. It’s exactly like “in college” vs. “in the college”, which I believe is a distinction that American English makes, or “in office” vs. “in the office”. One is a general state of being, the other is a literal description of one’s physical location.
Stereotype watch: BBC website headline is “Ruthless Germany hammer Australia”
Ruthless. Efficient. Basically Nazis, let’s face it. Or maybe they are just, you know, pretty good at football? I guarantee that they would not use the word “ruthless” for any other country. If Brazil replicated that performance exactly, they would be going on about “samba rhythms” or some such bollocks.
It’s totally unfair to force a German to come to England’s defence, you know. Your Premier League teams are tactically well trained and play extremely organized. Add to that the incredible inflow of money during the past two decades and it’s no surprise that your teams have dominated European football for quite a while.
And I thought the English team played tactically well throughout the qualification. That their 4-4-2 struggled so much against the American 4-2-2-2 had less to do, imo, with the tactical shape but more with the shape of your players during that particular game.
The American side had realized that they needed to control Rooney and inhibit Ashley Cole from playing a more offensive part. They were successful on both accounts and no other player had it in him in that game to redirect the game-flow consequently.
But I wouldn’t worry too much – it won’t happen a second time that so many English players will take a night off.
Yeah, it is; usually you change your jersey with your opposite player … unless you have reason to wish him dead. Or don’t feel like it.
I wasn’t being completely disingenuous. I quite genuinely don’t buy the whole idea of football formations, but it does seem that those of you who do take them more seriously get better results, so there is probably something in it.
My problem is that when people describe the various formations, they all sound terribly like each other. And when you actually watch a 4-4-2, it looks very like a 4-3-3 or a 5-3-2 or for that matter a 10-0-0. The players do not stand in fixed positions. They are all over the place. How anyone can tell what formation they’re supposed to be playing is a mystery to me.
Precisely what I was referring to. Ball possession & short triangulations; tire your opponents, let them chase in futility…and boom! slot the ball into an open space.
Not sure what you mean by “known to be the bane of.” In a 4-2-3-1, which we also tend to play a lot, we either have Villa or Torres as the sole striker and ad another holding mid (Busquet has Senna’s job now) to the usual trio of Silva, Xavi and Iniesta; that way we get even more possession than usual; which is always over 55% in any case. In the more traditional 4-4-2, Villa and Torres partner as strikers. Intrinsically – though you’ll get a lot of debate on this – neither option is “superior” to the other but rather a matter of adopting the correct tactics vs a particular opponent. Obviously the 4-2-3-1 is not as offensive as the 4-4-2 on paper – but as I wrote above if you can run your opponents into the ground, eventually the floodgates open. The second half vs Russia in the semifinals of the Euro Cup being a perfect example of this. Three zip to Spain. All in that second half.
BTW, I just opened my favorite Spanish sports paper, “AS,” and it looks as if they’ve been reading this thread. Check out the headline for your match:
You can’t look at a snapshot of the field and tell what formation is being played (except along the backline, usually). It’s more about how teams go about the game. A 4-4-2 expects attacks and width provided from their wingbacks. A 3-5-2 has stay at home defenders and gets width from their midfield. The difference between a 4-3-3 and a 4-5-1 are generally more subtle and possibly just academic.
Simple really. Check out the still shots they often take to show an offside call. After you get used to seeing that, it becomes second nature to spot formations.
But what is “width”, for example? Not to single out a particular idea, but these theories seem to be based on nebulous and ill-defined concepts. What you hear is that the X-Y-Z formation gives you more “width” at the expense of, I don’t know, “penetration”. Slight variation W-Y-Z supposedly gives you more “pressure” in midfield (I’m making these terms up, but then I suspect that football tacticians make most of it up too).
Is there any actual evidence to support these eleborate ideas? Or does it, as I suspect, come down to a simple question of who has the best players, once you get beyond the basic schoolboy thing of not all rushing after the ball?
Well, no. An American student is “in college” or “goes to college”; a Brit on goes to “university” (and don’t get me started with colleges within unis!). There are some American unis that have smaller colleges in them and that American is said to be “going to X college”, but that’s only used if it’s known that they are actually enrolled in the larger uni, whereas Brits speak of Trinity college (or whatever) but never say Cambridge (dunno if there is a Trinity at Cambridge. Humor me).
I’ve never heard of “in office”. One is either in the office or away from one’s desk or off-site or on vacation/sick leave/maternity/FMLA–Family Medical Leave Act or fired/laid off.
For specifying location, Americans would say “inside the hospital” or “within the hospital”–although that one sounds a bit stilted.
It’s funny. I have no problem calling it a pitch or a side, but I cannot call it football. Probably due to American football…
Width is having players wide, and using them in attack and defense. A standard 4-4-2 has four players that are generally in wide positions. This means they often try to attack down the wings and have more people in those positions to defend against such an attack. A 3-5-2 on the other hand only has the two wide midfielders providing width. This means they have to work very hard to both defend the wings and attack there. Width is important in attack, because if you don’t have it, then the defense can pack players in the central area and repel attack fairly easy that way.
The trade off here is fairly obvious. 5 vs 4 in the midfield, which usually manifests as 3 vs 2 central midfielders. This give the team playing the 3-5-2 one open man to help out in possession. Usually he’s an easy outlet or can provide extra pressure when playing defense.
That’s the easiest sort of situation to talk about formations. A 4-3-3 vs 4-5-1 is much more fluid. Just drop the two outside forwards into the midfield and it’s the same thing. Plus, various permutations of the 4-4-2 can vary quite a bit. There are no hard and fast rules. It’s not football where you need 7 on the line of scrimmage. They’re mostly to give an idea of what a team’s trying to do.
But the point is, why do teams have to be 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 all the time? You say that there are trade-offs from any of these formations. So, allow your team to be 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 or whatever, as circumstances demand. In other words, why follow any particular formation? Just allow your players to go where they need to be.
