3-5-2 vs. 4-4-2: Choosing the Best Soccer Formation

What strategy do you think is the most effective? In soccer, to win games. Okay, I'll tell you my favorite formation. It has to be a 3-5-2. Oh, you know what? Let's pull it up. Let's pull it up. Look at this. Ay, ay, ay. Boom. Oh, not that one. Not that one. 3-5-2. There you have it. There you have it, my friend. Break it down for us. This is a bit of a controversial formation, right? But who do we know that played the 3-5-2? Argentina, 1986, when they won the World Cup. This is the type of formation you could see. A lot of width in the middle, right? A lot of people in the middle. And this is my favorite part about it. Being a wingback. What are the wingbacks? You can see the left wingback, right wingback, the people all the way on the width. This is naturally going to stretch the field. This is why I love it. It creates more space in the middle. It's not as congested. Therefore, stretching the other team's defense. Do you need a specific type of players to make these work? Absolutely. You need strong players on the side, right? You need players that can not only run up when you're in the offense and when you lose the ball and we're defending. People can also book it all the way back. It's called box-to-box defense. So that's the thing. When you have so many people in the middle, they have to double dip, right? They can't be just committed to one side or the other. No, they have to come up, and they also have to do the back. Because also, another pro, if you have the players with that kind of endurance, you're going to have a five-back really quick. And that's really hard for the other teams. You know, if they're playing with your classic 4-3-3, you're only going to have three players up there against five defenders. It's really hard to break through that defensive line. And you gotta have you gotta have good hand. I mean, this is like a good handle you did you said you mentioned Argentina So and not a lot of like long passes. It's you kind of build Absolutely when mentioning that 86 for Argentina, who did they have? That's the type of player It really gave him a lot of confidence a lot of freedom up there to have the space to do what he does But you need a creative player and then it allows the center midfield to go up and become a top three attacking team or come back and drop and do defensives and then you suddenly have a six people line there holding the attack but also one of the things that this team has going for it you can play a high line pushing the other team to their half putting them away from the goal and containing them because like you said He said, stretch your butt. I am an old-school guy, my friend, so let me pull my favorite one, the classic 4-4-2, my friend. Actually, it's 4-4-2. We have two lines of four that you can actually move to become a diamond on top with a false nine, like Messi plays. Or you can be very organized, two blocks of four players in the defensive, four players in the midfield, with two attacking, two attackers, two nines. Normally, this is the idea of the false 9. You have two 9s. You know, positions which are the attackers, but one of them plays right behind with a creative player like Messi, like Maradona, like this big. Examples of this. Let's see. This is a more, in my opinion, a little more straightforward, right? A little bit more cookie cutter. It's not a bad thing. For example, if you look at like the Premier League, English players, it's a lot of this. It's very structured. It's very, you know. Straight forward, you know what you're doing. A lot of area coverage, right? Like each of these players, they're in charge of an area of the pitch and you take care of your quadrant and that's what you do. You don't move around like in the 3x2. Another key factor for this, coaching, right? Who is coaching behind this? I know my coaching experience. It all depends on the type of players you have. You can't go into a team thinking, oh, I want to play this formation. Really? Yeah, absolutely. So you coach middle schoolers? Yeah, I coach all the way from. As little as three years old, four years old, to around 14 in middle school. So you have obviously your favorite offense in mind, but when you see what you have, you've changed. You have to change, right? You have to change. You can't go in. I think that makes the best type of coaches, the kind who are creative, the kind that can be flexible, because at the end of the day... Even if you want to play a 3-5-2, if you don't have the midfield for if you don't have the players who can have that endurance on the wing, you can't play it. Are the midfielders the most important? Because everybody focuses on strikers, right? When they look at a roster, they're like, who's a striker? Who's a striker? But when you're more educated... Every position is important. Honestly, it is true. For example, any team, you might have a team that's stronger in the defense. You might have a team that's stronger in the offense. For example, if you have a team that's very strong defensively, You know that maybe like in the 3-5-2, you can rely on only having three in the back. But if you don't have those strong defenders, you're going to have to play with the four back.