When the rules of Association Football were first codified in the 19th century, minimal strategy was involved. Over half the players on any team were forwards, and games were high-scoring affairs played with only limited organization. However, as the game became more popular, the stakes grew, and competition led to innovation and increasing sophistication.
Football in the 2020s is unrecognizable from the game played on muddy English and Scottish fields in the late Victorian era. Everyone from head coaches to football bettors who visit sites like Askgamblers.com understands the depth of tactical awareness it takes to succeed in the modern game, whether that is in winning trophies or betting successfully.
That tactical depth was built on the inventiveness of generations of coaches and managers, from Herbert Chapman to Jurgen Klopp. Here are some of the most important tactical developments that have shaped the sport.
The WM Formation
By the 1920s, football was enormously popular in the UK and spreading worldwide. However, tactics in the English game remained based around two groups of forwards taking turns to score. The most significant innovation in those early years was the switch from six attackers to five. Almost every team played a 2-3-5 formation: two full-backs, three half-backs, and five forwards.
Then came Herbert Chapman. In response to a change in the offside rule, the Arsenal manager perfected the ‘WM Formation’ in which the center half and two of the forwards dropped back to make a 3-2-2-3 formation. The result was a stronger defensive line, a more dynamic attack, and greater balance. Arsenal won the First Division in 1931 and 1933, and soon everyone adopted the WM tactic.
Hungarian Fluidity
By the time the Hungarian national team played England at Wembley in 1953, the WM formation had been the tactical orthodoxy for almost 30 years. Every player in the system had clearly defined roles, which included knowing which opposition player they would mark.
Despite the team’s poor performance in their first World Cup in 1950, England’s football establishment was confident of their superiority. Ninety minutes of Hungarian brilliance shattered that illusion.
Although manager Gustav Sebes set up his team in what looked like a WM formation, it was much more fluid. Center-forward Nandor Hidegkuti regularly dropped deep, leaving opposing center-half Harry Johnston bemused, while inside forwards Sandor Kocsis and Ferenc Puskas frequently swapped positions or doubled as strikers.
Up against a team that didn’t follow the unwritten rules of WM football, England lost 6-3, and their defense was reduced to chaos. In a defining moment, England captain Billy Wright was completely wrong-footed by Puskas. “Like a fire engine going to the wrong fire,” one commentator described it. The manner of England’s 6-3 defeat effectively signaled the end of the WM orthodoxy.
Brazilian Brilliance; Italian Steel
Five years later, Brazil won the World Cup for the first time, playing a daring 4-2-4 system in which two deep midfielders supported four attackers (including Pele and Garrincha). It struck a new balance between attack and defense and laid the foundations for Brazil’s dominance of world football, as they went on to win the 1962 and 1970 World Cups.
Meanwhile, in Italy, new ideas were perfecting the art of defense. Helenio Herrera’s Internazionale team of the 1960s achieved significant success with the ‘Catenaccio’ or ‘door-bolt’ system, in which a sweeper played behind the defense to mop up loose balls. Tough to break down and ruthlessly efficient, Inter won three league titles and two European Cups in the 1960s.
The English Way
It took English football a while to recover from the shock of that 1953 defeat to Hungary, but 13 years later, they won their first and only World Cup under Alf Ramsey.
Ramsey broke with orthodoxy by playing without wingers, adopting a 4-4-2 formation to dominate the center and retain a tight structure. That success led to 4-4-2 becoming the dominant formation in English football until the Premier League era.
In the 1970s and 1980s, managers like Graham Taylor took that pragmatism further. Based on studies that showed most goals were scored from build-ups of three passes or fewer, Taylor and others adopted a direct play style that emphasized getting the ball forward as quickly as possible toward physically strong forwards. Out of favor now, it remains a viable option for underdog teams.
Total Football
Although Brazil played with flair, the real inheritors of the Hungarian style were the Netherlands. In the 1970s, led by manager Rinus Michels and star player Johan Cruyff, Ajax and the national team developed Total Football, a system in which players constantly swapped positions, making it almost impossible for opponents to man-mark them.
Instead of fixed roles, players were given freedom and encouraged to think tactically so that the team moved as a single unit. It demanded a high level of technical excellence, and the Netherlands ultimately failed to win either World Cup finals in 1974 or 1978. However, Total Football was a revolutionary development that later influenced the work of Pep Guardiola.
No Strikers
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, 4-4-2 continued to dominate, and the only tactical innovations were towards more defensive styles of play, most notably the lone striker, as teams opted for ever greater defensive stability. There was only really one place to go after that, and in 2005, Luciano Spalletti’s Roma team took the field against Sampdoria with a 4-6-0 formation.
This tactic was often criticized and sometimes used simply as a blocking strategy, but it made opposing managers rethink how they set up their defense, encouraging more variations. It also led to dramatic changes in the role of the striker, leading to such innovations as the hybrid forward, the defensive forward, and the deep-lying forward.
A more refined version was employed at Barcelona. Lionel Messi, one of the two outstanding talents of the era, played officially as a striker but constantly dropped deep as a ‘false nine’ as Hidegkuti had done all those years earlier, causing havoc for opposing defenses.
Tiki-Taka
Messi’s manager at Barcelona, Pep Guardiola, became more famous for a style of play known as Tiki-Taka. With a roster of short, technically gifted, but not physically strong midfielders, Guardiola developed a tactic based around short, accurate passing, awareness of space, and extreme control of possession that could be employed defensively when required.
The combination of Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, and Messi proved impossible to contain, and it soon became the national team’s preferred style of play. Spain won two European Championships and a World Cup between 2008 and 2012, while Barcelona won the Champions League twice and the Spanish league title three times.
The Gegenpress: Heavy Metal Football
After a spell at Bayern Munich, Guardiola successfully introduced the Tiki-Taka style to Premier League Manchester City, which quickly became the dominant force in English football.
Yet City was soon challenged by Liverpool and their new German manager, Jurgen Klopp. Klopp brought the principle of the ‘gegenpress’ or ‘counter-press’ to the Premier League, also describing it as ‘heavy metal football.’ This tactic was based on swarming the opposition when Liverpool lost possession and was combined with strong organization, abundant energy, and lightning counterattacks. It was the antidote to City’s possession-heavy style, and it helped Liverpool to win the Premier League, the FA Cup, and three Champions League finals, including a victory in 2019.
Final Thoughts
Football’s tactical evolution is a fascinating story of innovation and creativity in the context of intense competition. As soon as one new tactic succeeds, another challenges it, propelling the game forward and ensuring that each new generation of fans has something new to enjoy.