Narrates the progression of football strategy as reflected in team formation, demonstrating various and evolving answers to the dichotomy of results versus aesthetics.
In the 19th century, solo dribbling defended by hacking coalesced into the forward-heavy 5-3-2. As northern UK teams began to challenge London, Scottish sides popularized close passing. As the game spread abroad through colonialism and trade, the pyramid became as the global default until 1925, when the offside rule changed to only 1 defending player behind the ball, after which the WM formation came in.
Why did football spread outside the empire?; but the book is mainly free of racist cant.
The history of tactics is encapsulated in the search for balancing defense and attack. The next innovation was Danubian, the ‘coffee house’ football of Austria, Hungary, and Germany, credited to the coaching tree of expatriate Jimmy Hogan. Contemporary forwards began dropping back or sitting deeper: more forwards make it more difficult to regain possession. The new inside left center came to be seen as more creative than the right center, so although numbering is not universal the number 10 became the playmaker.
English teams resisted the trend. Only much later, following 1953’s comprehensive defeat to Hungary, did the home of football see the modern game passing it by. Most countries have endured doubts of national strengths, whether technique or strength (brawn), and consequently looked abroad; yet Wilson sees England as unusually insular. During the 1960s, English orthodoxy lay in goals being scored in 3 or fewer passes. The author is highly critical of this ‘pseudo intellectual’ fad; but elsewhere suggests Dutch total football exemplifies the contemporary proximity of French postmodernism.
Selections are either for player quality (e.g., Brazil or Argentina) or fit within the system. No tactical system is so dour as the defensive Italian catenaccio of the 1960s. Hereafter, the book tends toward sketching national trajectories which illustrate tactical elaboration, often showing club coaches transitioning from domestic to cross-border or international competition. For example, the isolated teams of Peronist Argentina favored playmaking, the Dutch skipped the ‘WM’ formation as well as the pressures of early league tables. British emigres are often influential. Total football introduced the vertical (not lateral) interchange of positions. Dynamo Kiev’s Lobanovski saw that attack and defense relate not to position but possession.
1970’s World Cup, along with landing on the moon, was the first global TV event and also the last major tournament without pressing: Brazil’s playmakers were ideally suited. But the second striker became the fifth midfielder, upending the 4-4-2 and clogging the midfield. The shift underlined that defensive elements of innovation have often taken root more easily than the offensive, speaking to the rarity of individual skills. 1990’s outlawing the backpass and defensive challenges from behind marked the next major landmark. Who invented the 4-2-3-1 as it evolved over 1996-2000 cannot be established. Will the striker become obsolete?
The point of tactics is to multiply individual ability. Argentina, which reveres the 10, most evidences the struggle between defense and offense; but players can’t be effective 1-on-2. The greatest-ever sides have been 1954 Hungary, 1970 Brazil, 1974 Netherlands, late 1970s Milan.