by Ruud Gullit
At Feyenoord I started by using 4-3-3, since I had Dirk Kuyt, a genuine striker. On the right I had the young Salomon Kalou, still a teenager at the time, a hugely talented Ivorian with an amazing ability to pass; quick, effective and with the knack of scoring. On the left I had the Belgian international Bart Goor, a diesel engine and a great striker of the ball who never stopped running back and forth. On paper he was a left winger, yet in reality he was a false winger who took every liberty when in possession.
In the Netherlands, Ajax have still held on to the 4-3-3 system, with the wingers sticking close to their positions rather than continually moving in to meet the advancing backs. Even when the club was playing in the Champions League or the Europa League, the recent manager, Frank de Boer, made no concessions. That generally resulted in a quick elimination for Ajax, since it is relatively easy to defend against this system.
Moreover, Ajax do not have the financial muscle to raise their talented youngsters to full maturity before they move elsewhere. And Ajax certainly don’t have the resources to buy players of sufficient quality to play the old variation of the 4-3-3 theme which worked so well forty years ago. The world has caught up with Ajax and passed the club by: financially, physically and tactically. Physically, since Ajax field young players who have yet to mature. Tactically? That’s simply a matter of obstinacy: the people at Ajax are living in the past.
In Amsterdam they like to point to Barcelona, but there is really no comparison. Barcelona can play 4-3-3 without having to take the opposing team into account. Their players are powerful individually—technically and tactically. At Ajax, that’s beyond them.
Crazy or brilliant?
Wimbledon were known in the mid-1990s as the “Crazy Gang.” But they weren’t really crazy at all. The philosophy behind their 4-3-3 was extremely well thought out. They made clever use of the qualities at their disposal. I knew that from experience, because Chelsea played Wimbledon in the spring of 1997 in an FA Cup semifinal.
They did nothing without a reason in that team. It was certainly not a question of kick and run like mad, as many supposed. They built up from the keeper to the central defender, who passed the ball to the wing, slightly ahead of the approaching right back. With a tight diagonal ball forward, the winger sought out the striker Marcus Gayle along the touchline. He was a giant of a player and strong as an ox, who looked for confrontation and went into every challenge at full throttle, his objective being to force a throw-in deep in the opposing half or a corner. Then the three midfielders would move up to collect the loose ball.
They had a plan worked out for every situation. Wimbledon had specialized to such an extent that a throw-in or a corner was effectively a chance at goal. That meant all hands on deck. They were way ahead of their time. Now every team trains extensively for these standard situations because it is increasingly difficult to get through tightly organized defenses filled with top athletes. It was all superbly coordinated with players like Vinnie Jones, Øyvind Leonhardsen, Robbie Earle, Dean Holdsworth, and top scorers Efan Ekoku and Marcus Gayle. That season, 1996/97, the Dons finished eighth in the Premier League and reached the semifinals of both the FA Cup and the League Cup, with the lowest budget in the whole division!
My strategy for Chelsea to get past Wimbledon to the FA Cup final was to throw our 3-5-2 system overboard and to work out a plan based on a 4-4-2 formation. I had to find a way to stop the long ball getting all the way forward, and if it did get forward then I needed a right and left back to help defend. I drummed it into my players that they had to do everything in their power to prevent corners, free kicks and throw-ins. Force them to play in the wings, I said, because they are far less skilled there than in their standard situations. It worked out brilliantly and Gayle hardly got a chance to cause his customary havoc.
New demands on the striker in 4-3-3
Soccer’s evolution has led to a different kind of 4-3-3 from the formation that worked so well forty years ago, when Dutch players successfully developed the system at Feyenoord and Ajax and in the national side. Just take a look at Barcelona.
The attacking runs by their midfielders almost always go through the center, so that the other side’s backs are forced to provide support in the center and leave their position on the wing exposed. That creates space for Jordi Alba and Dani Alves charging in from behind, alternating with Neymar and Messi playing from the left and right flanks.
Today the wing backs in a 4-3-3 system play a crucial role as attacking players, at first in the buildup and then in the actual attack. They are able to advance on the outside right and left because these days almost every team playing the 4-3-3 system has a left-footed forward on the right wing and a right-footed forward on the left wing. When the team has the ball, outside players gravitate naturally to the center. That allows the backs to dive into the open space on the flank, while two midfielders keep control behind these two advancing players. Ideally teams should also be able to switch play quickly from one side to the other, because the side where the ball isn’t suddenly has oceans of space, all the defenders having moved to the side where the ball is.
When playing wide defenders who serve as attacking wingers, and outside players who move to the center to create a combination or go for goal themselves, strikers have to prove their worth.
Strikers have the toughest time in today’s 4-3-3, while they used to have it easy. You used to wait for a pass from wide, make your run and then turn up just as in training at the near or far post to finish off the cross. Today, strikers are no longer able to run in at the head of the attack; they have to make space for other players in the team, especially as the wingers move in. But since there is hardly any space in front of goal, the striker often pulls back.
The modern 4-3-3 system creates new stars on the flanks, such as Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo and Robben, and it leaves great strikers in limbo, like Ruud van Nistelrooy in the Dutch team at the 2006 World Cup in Germany and Robert Lewandowski in his early years at Bayern Munich. They were among the leading players of the day, and yet they struggled in their position since it had become more important to make space for Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben, or Franck Ribéry and Arjen Robben, than to hone their own role as finisher.
In short, strikers have metamorphosed in the new 4-3-3. They are no longer purely attacking forwards. Even Zlatan Ibrahimović often falls back and gets involved in the midfield. In attacking teams that can produce an almost impossible combination. It is no coincidence that strikers find themselves under almost constant fire and often have to make way for midfielders who move easily and control the ball.
In the Dutch team at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie were continually running in from the right and left flank and poor Van Nistelrooy had no idea where to go. It was enormously frustrating for him, and was exacerbated by the manager, Marco van Basten, who openly and repeatedly spoke about Van Nistelrooy being unable to do his job in his position. After the World Cup, Van Nistelrooy retired from the Dutch squad.
In 2015 at FC Bayern, Pep Guardiola started by recalling Robert Lewandowski to the bench. Guardiola placed Thomas Müller, originally a midfielder, as the striker, with indifferent results—until Lewandowski suddenly scored five goals in a midweek home game against title contenders VfL Wolfsburg, then second in the Bundesliga. It was the sixth round and Lewandowski was on the bench. At the start of the second half, he was brought on instead of the midfielder Thiago Alcantara with the team 1–0 down at Munich’s Allianz Arena. Between the fifty-first and sixtieth minutes Lewandowski scored five goals (final score 5–1), which earned him various records: fastest hat trick (three and a half minutes), fastest four goals (in under six minutes) and fastest five goals (within nine minutes) in the Bundesliga. And to think that before that he had been having an appalling time trying to recapture his place in the starting lineup, because he was unclear about what Guardiola wanted him to do and did not seem to have the qu
alities Guardiola expected of him as a striker.
Interestingly, neither Robben nor Ribéry played in that game against VfL Wolfsburg: the two wide players who constantly find their way into the center, Robben from the right with his left foot and Ribéry from the left with his right foot. Of course, it was no coincidence.
Strikers often experience this kind of problem in today’s 4-3-3 system, whereby teams try to keep play in the opposing side’s half. If you fall back into your own half using this system, or rely on the counterattack, then it leaves the striker in a difficult role, although it is still possible for him to remain in position. Strikers need to be able to cover big distances to gain possession behind the opposing defense and they have to be able to keep the ball while outnumbered. In effect the striker is a target, the focus of play in depth.
That is yet another way of interpreting the striker’s role. Normally, at least fifteen or twenty years ago, wide players were expected to support the striker. Today when the team loses possession, the wingers are practically forced into the role of right and left back since they have to chase their direct opponents (defensive midfielders) as they throw themselves into the attack while the actual right and left backs move into the center when a counterattack develops, often to the edge of the penalty area. Sometimes you see around five or six players form a defensive line, or a neat crescent.
When the wing backs move forward, a 5-3-2 formation becomes 3-5-2.
3-5-2 game plan
When I arrived in England, Liverpool were using a 3-5-2 formation. That was due primarily to the presence of John Barnes in the team. Barnes was not especially skilled at tackling, but he was exceptionally good with the ball and had an amazing overview of the game. So what do you do as Liverpool manager? Give Barnes the opportunity to direct play. When defenders had the ball they immediately sought out Barnes, and of all the five midfielders it was Barnes who shaped the attack and had a free role to play as a striker too.
Juventus and the Italian national team, the Squadra Azzurra, used the same system to exploit Andrea Pirlo’s qualities. Depending on who they were playing against, they sometimes adapted it to a 3-4-3 formation, purely to spare Pirlo when the team lost the ball and to protect him when they gained possession.
The latter was crucial since no team can afford to find itself paralyzed if a particular player is marked out of the game. When that happens, the team has to be able to make room for others to take the lead, or the players switch to another formation to deal with the vulnerability.
A 3-5-2 formation is perfect as you need plenty of players in midfield for your game plan. Inevitably, the formation will call for two players along the touchline who are able to run and who have no trouble dashing fifty or sixty meters back and forth time and again. Depending on who has possession, these amazing sprinters effectively cover three different positions: wide defender, midfielder and forward. At Juventus they have the Swiss Stephan Lichtsteiner on the right. He must have five pairs of lungs.
Van Gaal, Brazil, 2014
To the horror of all Dutch purists, Louis van Gaal played a 5-3-2 system at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, to support the weak defense with extra players. He even had one of the strikers (Robin van Persie) drop back half a line to seal the back completely. Van Gaal had the national side playing to its own merits.
With Robben able to cover every space in attack, the Netherlands may have abandoned their own historical 4-3-3 formation, but they did succeed in reaching third place in the tournament. As manager, you have to analyze the qualities of your players before you mold them into a tactical formation. In the World Cup qualifiers and in the competition games in Brazil, Van Gaal did an excellent job.
While the Dutch team played the defensive form of 5-3-2, the art is to quickly switch to the attacking form of 3-5-2 when you gain possession, by moving the two outer defenders up. Then you almost always have a numerical advantage in midfield, especially if the other team is playing 4-4-2. When losing possession, the two outer defenders move in to replace the midfielders dropping deep.
In response to the criticism in the media and in reply to the suggestion that he had stopped believing in attacking soccer, Van Gaal stated that he hadn’t actually played a 5-3-2 formation, but a 3-5-2 system. No one believed him.
Whether the system is attacking or defensive depends on the team and the manager’s game plan: how does the manager aim to win the game? Here too it was clear that a system is not in itself sacred; it stands or falls by the individual qualities of the players.
Van Gaal at Man Utd
Interestingly, after moving from the Dutch national side, Louis van Gaal introduced the 5-3-2 system to Old Trafford. In Brazil, with that bronze medal around his neck, Van Gaal had come to believe in the formation. That was surprising, since he had always held to a quite different philosophy: he had always stood for a 4-3-3 system, for attacking soccer, dominating in the opponents’ half.
Van Gaal’s new soccer vision was all the more unusual because he was projecting his new creed on one of England’s most aggressive teams. Sir Alex Ferguson had developed a versatile style featuring calculated attacking soccer, a style that was a lot closer to Van Gaal’s former vision epitomized at Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern.
Because Van Gaal felt that his defense was weak, yet continued to buy forwards instead of defenders, his system was described as negative, even though he often switched to four defenders during a game. The Dutch manager came under a lot of fire as a result and he won far too few games. Moreover, former stars such as Paul Scholes and Rio Ferdinand complained that his system was boring and soporific.
4-5-1 game plan
One of the most defensive tactics is a 4-5-1 formation. The four defenders are not expected to switch to an attacking role at any time, while two of the midfielders are principally concerned with maintaining the balance in defense. That leaves four players to go forward, though the attack mainly comprises the lone striker. If you have a quick striker, then the attack becomes a solo effort with support from one or at most two players. The remainder stay in position. If the striker is more of a ball player than a sprinter, then the whole formation has to move up to bridge the long distances and provide support. Without that, the other side has far too much space in which to counter the attack.
4-2-3-1 formation.
Leicester City’s sensational triumph in the 2015/16 season was astonishing. Becoming champions of England is an amazing achievement. Claudio Ranieri’s team played excellent counterattacking soccer because this style suited the qualities of the players perfectly.
Whenever they lost possession all the players went back to their defensive positions and only the lightning-quick striker, Jamie Vardy, remained up front. The result was a 4-5-1 formation; when the team regained possession this transformed into a 4-2-3-1. That works when the team understands what to do and everyone plays his part when the ball is lost. Vardy continually disturbed the other side’s buildup, giving his teammates time to reassemble their tight, defensive lineup.
Not only were Leicester well organized, but the players were hard as nails in matches and possessed unbelievable energy, which they maintained for ninety minutes. Because they managed to work out the details of their strategy so well, they were able to exploit the qualities of their striker to the fullest, and those of their French-Algerian playmaker, Riyad Mahrez, and Malinese Frenchman N’Golo Kanté. And since the team were able to drop so deep there were always oceans of space in front of them that fast players and quick-switching midfielders were able to exploit. Week after week the ball found its way into the net, although everyone thought that this time their fairytale would come to an end.
Moreover, it was great to see that the tactics and the system were tailor-made, precisely to fit the team’s players, just like at Wimbledon twenty years before. Had Leicester played a 4-3-3 formation it would have come to nothing and they would have lost more than half their games since p
laying without much space in the other team’s half is not in their genes. And the defenders at the back were not the type of players who feel comfortable with wide-open spaces behind them. So Ranieri didn’t even try.
In short: Leicester didn’t adapt to the opposing side but to themselves. And then there’s no point in listening to the critics who always start to complain once the honeymoon is over. Because Leicester City managed to challenge the top—the big money and the expensive players—so successfully, they began to find the major clubs ranged against them. And especially since they managed to achieve their success with a limited budget.
The ideal tactic against Leicester City is simple: use the same system they use. Force them to take the bait. Withdraw the team to a defensive position and think about attack only when you regain possession. It sounds simple, but can you do that if you’re Manchester City, or Arsenal, or Chelsea, or Manchester United, or Liverpool, or Tottenham Hotspur? Which teams have the courage and the patience to play that way? Few, even though it would give them a chance to win. In fact you have no choice. This is top soccer, after all. Offer the initiative, and see what happens.
Leicester City aren’t used to playing with the ball. They like to be the underdogs. If you let them have the ball they’ll start to think they’re actually pretty good and they’ll soon tie themselves into knots. That’s in every player’s makeup; every player started out thinking he could do something special with the ball as an attacker.