The efficiency that two holding midfielders provide makes them very important to have in the modern game.
International competitions are always fascinating tactically if anything for the inflexibility they confront managers with. Arrigo Sacchi, in charge of the Italy side who reached the final of World Cup ’94, stated it was “impossible” for a national manager to drill the same understanding that club level coaches are afforded due to the lack of day-to-day availability of personnel. The sporadic amount of time they have with players means it can be difficult for coaches to develop plans so they usually are forced to stick with philosophies they think are correct – and that in turn highlights the common trends in the thinking of modern coaches. And certainly, what has become oblivious from the recent World Cup in South Africa and indeed club football for the past few years is that the use of two holding midfielders in front of the back four is become crucial in the modern game.
Importance of being compact
All four semi-finalists in the 2010 World Cup used some sort of double screen in front of the back four with Holland, Spain and Germany deploying a variant of the 4-2-3-1 (18 of the 32 teams played some form of 4‑2‑3‑1). Uruguay showed the rigid 4-4-2 isn’t exactly dead but the difference between theirs and England’s interpretation was that the Uruguayan central pair played deeper to counter the threat of players in “between-the-lines.” England’s central midfielders in the system are both required to attack and defend (as classical box-to-box midfielders) and as a result Germany, in their 4-1 win, were able to profit in the large gaps afforded to them. “We knew that Gerrard and Lampard always support the forwards and that the midfield would be open, there would be spaces,” explained Joachim Löw after the nation’s ruthless victory.
England’s failure to get compact quickly also seemingly went against the Fabio Capello doctrine that in modern football, all teams must employ some variation of a 9:1 defensive split in relative to the ball when they lose possession. The use of two defensive midfielders allow for such an easy transition into a defensive block while even the deployment two wingers on the “opposite side” are a means to push opponents inside. “The trend,” says Gerard Houllier, “is to bring the opponents into a defensive block and then aggressively press the ball.” With England playing with two orthodox forwards and one attacking midfielder in Frank Lampard, they were essentially a broken team and that placed too much pressure on Gareth Barry to hold the defensive fort. Arsene Wenger succinctly sums up the conservative trend in South Africa in which most teams were all to willing to get nine men behind the ball. “Tactically, the World Cup was very, very one-sided,” said the Arsenal manager in the club’s magazine. “All teams played five men in the midfield and that was their priority.”
Tactics at club level are expectedly more varied although the desire to stay narrow and compact in the defensive phase still rings true. Most intriguingly, the UEFA Cup was one of 4-4-2 with the quartet in the last four all deploying two deep box-to-box midfielders and placing much reliance on the firepower of the two forwards – perhaps as a means to compensate for the lack of creativity. In fact, in playing the formation nowadays, it is essential to remain compact and that means the central midfielders are forced to play deeper.
I recently watched a friendly between Celtic and Lyon and despite the French side being the one expected to take the ascendancy; it was Celtic who initiated the first signs of adventure. The distance between the backline and forwards for the first thirty minutes was at times, no more than 40 metres apart but as the game wore on, both sides expectedly became more stretched. The two central midfielders, Joe Ledley and Scott Brown, had to start deep to compress the space in front of the defence while the running and natural creation of triangles in Lyon’s 4-3-3 was more superior to their flat four in the middle, not to mention their higher technical ability. The game also showed just how redundant a second striker can be if the team is outnumbered in the middle and the defensive midfielder – in this case Jean II Makoun – able to drop back to mark one of the forwards. Gary Hooper did pull a goal back to help Celtic equalise but only after Lyon rang massive changes to make what essentially was a reserve side.
Between the lines
As Alan Hansen so regularly dissects in the highlights programme Match of the Day, teams must be set up in bands when defending (the term “two banks of four” is usually heard on the show because of the prevalence of the 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 formations in the Premiership). In attack, however, things are likely to get slightly more complicated and, especially for a more forward thinking side, two holders may be repressive. Brazil were perfectly able to switch from their asymmetric diamond formation into a 4-2-3-1/4-3-2-1 in defensive transitions to stay organised but, in the end, were undone due to Dunga’s own stubbornness to abandoning their two defensive midfielders.
Volker Finke, a former coach of German side SC Freiburg, says that the use of two holding midfielders – or the double six as it is more commonly known in his native country – must not be on the same line, a point Pep Guardiola was adamant to stress in the tweaking of his formation last season. “This new look was implemented so that Messi could connect into the game more often because it’s good for us when does,” explained Guardiola when using the same system earlier last season in a 2-1 win over Malaga. Journalists speculated it was a 4-2-3-1, many saw it as an asymmetric version of the 4-2-4 but because of the individual defensive assignments, it more closely resembled an attacking version of their 4-3-3. “We found him more often than in other games. It also puts him closer to Ibra. It’s as if Messi were an ‘interior.’” And upon being questioned on the roles of Xavi Hernandez and Sergio Busquets in front of the defence, he added: “They (Xavi and Busquets) were never on the same line. We have never played with a double pivot. However, we did make a small adjustment with the wingers and their defensive roles.”
Rather, Finke says the two in the middle must be “staggered” i.e. one slightly higher than the other.* Germany, the side who had most resembled a club side in the World Cup due to their efficiency, displayed that with Bastian Schweinsteiger dictating from deep and Sami Khedira essentially supporting and “knitting” things together in a box-to-box role (see Figure 1). For Spain, Busquets and Xabi Alonso only dropped alongside each other in the defensive phase, otherwise Busquets played almost as a third defender while Mark van Bommel, for the Dutch, looked to push up in attacks. “Defensive zones will be broken by players who seem to run out of nowhere,” said Czech Under-19 coach, Jaroslav Hrebik on the anticipated prominence of players such as Khedira. The fact that Lyon played with two similarly deep midfielders, writes Hristo for Ases Del Balon, contrived to the French club’s failure in Europe as he says “most major league teams (in Europe) are concerned with covering and controlling the midfield” and Lyon failed in regards to the latter. Of course, there is no right or wrong partnership although coaches are conscious that the area in front of defence is the space that needs to be controlled. Andrea Pirlo, a great modern day orchestrator, is himself performing a defensive duty just by operating in the zone in between defense and midfield. Yes, he possesses a panache and finesse about him than most holding midfielders but the idea of Carlo Mazzone, the coach who converted the Italian, was that Pirlo was to play as a libero (sweeper) in front of the defence.
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