| It All Began with Rule 6 in the 1860s |
By John Bluem
In this article, we will trace the development and evolution of the game of soccer through the growth of systems of play. Today’s modern game clearly can be traced back to the late 1800s.
Why study the development of systems of play? Perhaps NSCAA president and Academy staff coach Barry Gorman says it best: “If you don’t know where you have been, how do you know where you are going?”
Well, here we go, back to the 1860s.
The dribbling game
On Oct. 26, 1863, representatives from a group of clubs met at the Freemason’s Tavern in England to draw up the first official rules. The rules were accepted on Dec. 18, 1863.
Rule 6 stated that “when a player has kicked the ball, any one of the same side who is nearer to the opponent’s goal line is out of play” (offside!). The lifeblood of the early games was the skill of dribbling. The forward pass was banned. Rule 6 was changed in 1866 to permit advanced players to receive a pass, providing there were at least three opponents between themselves and the goal line.
There still was little difference in the way the game was played. In the 1870s, soccer pundit C.W. Alcock wrote about “the grand and essential principle of backing up.” This first recognized principle of play was understood to mean the following closely of a fellow player in case possession was lost. There was no mention of passing.
The first international match saw Scotland play England in Glasgow, where the English played a 1-2-7 and the Scots a 2-2-6. It was the Scots who realized the potential of the 1866 rule change and began to employ the short pass. Despite the large number of forwards in the game, the result was a 0-0 tie.
Players now had to think about their positional play due to the new weapon, the pass.
By the 1883 Football Association Cup final, the English had developed the long passing game. Blackburn won the finale easily, using the long pass to change the point of attack from wing to wing.
By this time, new skills had been introduced to the game — the ability to hit a long ball and the skills necessary to receive, intercept or clear long passes. Heading, chest trapping, receiving on the run and volleying were skills now emphasized.
The pyramid system
By 1890 the favored system of play in England had evolved to the 2-3-5 formation. A pyramid shape was described, as one would draw lines from the two wings on either side of the field back to the goalkeeper. The key player was the center halfback, who was supposed to come forward on attack and also serve to organize the five-person defense (versus the five attackers of the opponents). Note that the system utilized only two defending backs.
The W-M formation
The offside law was amended in 1925. From then on, attackers needed only two opponents between themselves and the goal line at the moment the ball was played. If justification for the rule change was needed, it emerged from the matches themselves. The number of goals in the English First Division shot up 40 percent, from 1,192 in 1925 to 1,703 in 1926.
Defenses had to be strengthened, and Arsenal coach Herbert Chapman, who had taken over the London club in 1925, drew up a new tactical plan.
The most attacking damage in the game was being done by the center forward, so Chapman dropped the center half to the position of fullback to mark him. This position became known as the “stopper” and represented the birth of the modern man-to-man marker style. Defensive responsibilities were now reassigned, with the original fullbacks moving wide to mark the wingers and the wing halves assigned to look after the inside forwards.
For the next 25 years, the game was dominated by the new center back or “stopper” and the pivot of the other backs to provide cover and balance. Basically, if the ball was with a winger, the outside back marked that player, the center back provided cover and the weak side back was concerned with balancing things.
Any system of play stands or falls with the men who put it into practice. Arsenal’s W-M prevailed because of the genius of Chapman in finding the right players to fill the roles he had established. The key to the attacking success of Arsenal was in the playmaking abilities of one of the withdrawn inside forwards, Scotsman Alex James.
Chapman died in 1934, but between 1927 and 1938 the team that he built won the league championship five times and the FA Cup twice. By the late 1930s the W-M was the standard formation of every English club.
Outside of the English game, the attacking center half continued to flourish, particularly in Hungary, Austria and South America. In the first World Cup in 1930, both finalists, Argentina and Uruguay, utilized the 2-3-5 pyramid formation.
Artistry was the essence of the South American game, which often emphasized individual talent to decide games while collective tactics were minimized. Asked about the role of coaching in those days, Uruguayan left back Ernesto Mascheroni replied, “What are the coaches for? Only the player can solve the problems on the field. What does a player do when he meets another who makes a fool of him? Ask the coach?”
The Uruguayans won the first Cup by the score of 4-2, and opinions were expressed that they were a better-organized team. With the score 3-2 and with Argentina doing all the attacking, Uruguay laid back and then used a quick counter to score on a breakaway. This type of play now would become a tactic for some teams.
The Italian “metodo”
In Italy, the national team was coached by Vittorio Pozzo, an undistinguished player who, as a coach, had a great interest in tactics. For the 1934 Italian World Cup team, he devised a scheme based on the classic 2-3-5 as played by the Austrians, Czechs and Hungarians, the so-called Danubian school of soccer.
The Danubian school had emerged from the Scottish short-passing game brought to central Europe by a remarkable Englishman named Jimmy Hogan. His philosophy was that soccer was a game in which the ball belonged on the ground, and he used the phrase “keep it on the carpet” to describe how he wanted the ball to be passed.
The Danubian style, based on the 2-3-5, was faithful to Hogan’s artistic approach to the game. By 1934, the Austrians had raised the style to its pinnacle under national coach Hugo Meisl. The Austrian “wunderteam” was considered the strongest in continental Europe.
Pozzo could not simply copy the Danubian model because he lacked the player to fill the vital playmaking center half role. This role was taken over by two players, the inside forwards, who were withdrawn into midfield. Thus Pozzo’s metodo, as it was called, retained elements of the 2-3-5 (particularly the marking assignments under which the fullbacks guarded the penalty area and the wing halves marked the opposing wingers), but used the M formation for the forward line.
The metodo proved ideally suited to the Italian player. It stressed methodical defense and gave birth to the lightning counterattack, which was to be the basis of the Italian game for a long time. As one journalist put it, “The other team does all the attacking, but Italy wins the game.”
In the 1934 World Cup final, the metodo triumphed over the Danubian 2-3-5 of the Czechs. However the general feeling was that it was Italian strength, stamina and ruthlessness that actually determined the 2-1 outcome.
The 1938 final resulted in a similar match-up, the Italian metodo against the Hungarian 2-3-5. It was an easy 4-2 win by the Italians, whose system proved itself capable of accommodating a new, faster, more athletic type of game.
The 2-3-5 was stagnating and the tactics of its defensive system were about to be exposed. As the world prepared for war, there were three systems of play throughout the world:
The W-M, the standard formation in England; the Italian metodo, part W-M, part 2-3-5; and the 2-3-5, the Pyramid, still favored in South America, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria.
The “Swissbolt”
Within the various systems, soccer had become a game for specialist players, each with certain rather limited functions (i.e., wingers). There was one system that went against this trend, a system that at the time didn’t receive the study it deserved. In part this was because it was developed in Switzerland, which was not considered a bastion of soccer thought, and in part because it was a difficult theory to put into practice.
Karl Rappan, a former Austrian international who from 1931 on coached club soccer in Switzerland, concocted the system. The aim of the “bolt” system was to create a team that would outnumber opponents in both attack and defense. On attack, the bolt had a 3-3-4 shape complete with an attacking center half, with all the players, including the three-man fullback line, moving well upfield.
When ball possession was lost, all 10 players retreated. The function of the four forwards was to harass the opponents and slow down the attack. The other six players raced deep into their own defensive half of the field. The attacking center half now became the center back, while the former center back retreated to an ultra-deep position behind everyone else. From this deep position, that player could move laterally across the field, covering the other three backs and functioning as the sliding “bolt” to lock out opposing forwards.
The bolt system required great fitness from its players. They had to be capable of high-speed running and have the ability to function both as attackers and defenders.
The system was not widely utilized, but it did introduce the two ideas: a retreating defense and the lone fullback playing deep. Its attacking and defending shapes are shown in the diagrams below.
Uruguay’s 2-1 victory over Brazil in the 1950 World Cup final remains the most astonishing upset in World Cup history. The Brazilians produced an attack-oriented version of the W-M that they called the diagonal system to start the tournament and dismissed Mexico, 4-0. They then were held to a 2-2 tie by Switzerland, which frustrated them with their bolt system. Changing to a more traditional W-M, the Brazilians regrouped and defeated Yugoslavia, 2-0, Sweden, 7-1, and Spain, 6-1.
Meanwhile, the Uruguayans were plodding along with their version of the metodo. In the final the Uruguayans utilized a deep-lying fullback and tight man marking everywhere on the field. In reality, the team looked more like the 4-3-3 of the future than the metodo. Although the Uruguayans trailed 1-0
at halftime, their counterattacks exposed the fragility of the Brazilian defense to capture the Cup.
The Uruguayans, an Italian journalist commented, had become the world champions of marking.
The Hungarian team, 1953
By the 1954 World Cup, the attacking center half was on his last legs. Attention now switched to the center forward, in particular the so-called withdrawn center forward utilized by the Hungarians.
Chapman’s invention of the third back killed off the attacking center half and also changed the role of the center forward from the talented all-rounder to the strong, powerful battering ram who battled the stopper.
Brawny center forwards were not available in Hungary. Marton Bukovi, coach of a top club in Budapest, Voros Loboga, got around the problem by bringing the center forward back to play in midfield. The role of the center forward was assumed by the two insides. The M had been turned upside down. These changes were the basis for the great Hungarian national team formed in the 1950s by Gustav Sebes.
The weakness of the three-back game was exposed when coaches began to think about attacking space. By withdrawing the center forward, the center back had to make a choice — follow his man and expose the central attacking space, or leave his man free to protect the central space. The fullbacks, when confronted or not confronted by the withdrawing wingers, were faced with the same problem. Defenders always have had two responsibilities, to mark and to cover.
In 1953 Hungary crushed England, 6-3, at Wembley. The following year, to prove it was no fluke, Hungary defeated England, 7-1, in Budapest.
Through a series of training drills known as three-man combinations, the Hungarian players Puskas, Kocsis, Bozsik and Hidegkuti built up a great understanding. First developed around 1951, the combinations largely were based on positional switching allied to the wall pass. Later, between 1954 and 1956, these combinations were further developed to involve not two players, as in a wall pass, but three.
The great Hungarian team of 1953-54 had one player who was generally considered to be inferior to his colleagues. At the time no one could understand how left half Joseph Zakarias managed to keep his place in the team. It is now clear that Zakarias was not a left half at all but a left-center back.
Way back in the 1860s, the English had started playing soccer with one fullback; in 1872 the Scots had made it two; in 1925 Arsenal had introduced the third back, and now here were the Hungarians with approximately three-and-a-half fullbacks.
The 4-2-4 formation
The essential features of the 4-2-4 system introduced by the attack-minded Brazilians in 1958, two center forwards and two center halves, already had been seen in the Hungarian game.
While the Hungarians concealed their system through place-changing, the Brazilians’ rigid formation had Vava and Pelé clearly operating as twin center forwards. It was no longer possible for any opponent to play with one center back. Within 12 months of Brazil’s World Cup success, almost the entire world had switched to the 4-2-4.
The 2-3-5 and 3-4-3 formations that have been discussed were not referenced in a numerical way at the time. They were simply the Pyramid and the W-M. Following 1958, all the talk was about the 4-2-4. Methodical coaching was on the rise, and identifying formations with numbers gave them a more modern scientific sound.
Despite the four fullbacks, the 4-2-4 as played by the 1958 Brazilians was far from a defensive scheme.
An exhilarating feature was the attacking role of the two outside fullbacks. On attack, the formation became 2-4-4, enabling Brazil to commit as many as eight players to the offense.
The new role demanded fullbacks who were quick-moving, with a fair share of the forward’s talents, the ability to exchange short passes, and, once in attack, to shoot accurately.
Quite a change from the W-M days when a fullback’s main functions were to stay deep, win the ball through hard tackling and deliver long downfield passes. As Brazil spent most of its time on the attack, little attention was paid to its defensive adjustment. When its opponents had the ball, Brazil’s left winger, Mario Zagallo, quickly withdrew into midfield, changing the alignment to 4-3-3.
The 4-2-4 succeeded in 1958 because the Brazilians’ extravagant attacking talents allowed them to maintain relentless pressure on their opponents. But it contained a serious weakness. When forced into a defensive mode, the 4-2-4 was dangerously underpopulated in midfield.
The 4-3-3 formation
The 1962 World Cup featured a 4-3-3 system of play employed by the Brazilians as the altitude of the Chilean site demanded a bit more defensive posture by the participating teams. The use of three midfielders gave greater strength to the midfield and their more central alignment still allowed for attacking runs by the outside backs. The midfielders themselves could be staggered in a number of ways (one up, two back; two up, one back, etc.).
Of interest was the fact that the average number of goals scored in World Cup matches during the period of 1954-1962 decreased from 5.38 per game to 2.78 per game. Clearly the emphasis of coaches was more on the defensive side of the game than on the attack.
Catenaccio
The Italians continued the trend toward defensive soccer during the 1960s. They had perfected a system that used the deep-lying fullback seen in Switzerland’s 1950 Verrou formation. Catenaccio (“large chain”) was the name the Italians gave their system.
Three of the fullbacks were given strict man-to-man marking duties. The “libero,” or “free man” because he had no specific opponent to mark, played deep behind the markers. His job was to patrol the entire center of the defense and to quickly close any gaps that might be opened by other defenders’ errors.
The history of catenaccio tells much about the development of soccer tactics. There was absolutely nothing positive about its origin. It was designed not to win games, but rather to avoid losing them.
The Italian Serie A (first division) had long been an unbalanced league, with a few rich clubs regularly carrying off all the honors. In 1947, Nereo Rocco took over at Triestina, a small club that was barely surviving. It was Rocco who loosed catenaccio on the soccer world. He had immediate and dramatic success. In 1948 Triestina climbed to second place in the league. Noting the team’s success, other Italian clubs began to utiltize the catenaccio system of play.
Herrera perfected the system with Inter Milan, which won the European Cup twice using its own brand of catenaccio. So even the wealthier, more powerful Italian clubs adopted catenaccio. It would become more than a style of play; it became a mentality that dragged Italian soccer down to a style of game that emphasized negativity at the expense of creativity.
Catenaccio had a special appeal for the Italians because it relied so heavily on the sudden counterattack to score goals. The quick breakaway, the rapid switch from defense to attack, had long been a feature of the Italian game. Now it had been given an almost scientific basis.
4-4-2 system of England
The English acknowledged the coming of the libero, but coined their own term for the position. They called the player the sweeper, the man who moved about at the back of the defense, cleaning up the errors of his teammates.
Wingers were an endangered species and what looked like their burial took place in 1966, when England won the World Cup using a formation that included no wingers at all. It was dubbed the “penguin” formation. Wingless! Sir Alf Ramsay, England manager, said he had experimented with wingers, but found none to his liking.
An increasing emphasis on not conceding goals led to the packing of numbers in midfield. Just as the 4-2-4 formation had lost a forward to midfield and became the 4-3-3, the process continued and the 4-3-3 became the 4-4-2.
England’s World Cup-winning side included a novelty in midfield — the evolution of the screen man. Nobby Stiles fulfilled this function as a defensively-oriented player detailed to mark or act as a sweeper between the back four and midfield.
Tactical trends, 1970-1998
Brazil won the 1970 World Cup due to the brilliance of Pelé and the goal scoring of Jairzinho, who scored in every game. The Italians’ deep sweeper and counterattacks were not enough to win, but they would be heard from again.
“Total soccer” burst on the scene in the ’70s, with the emphasis on players fit enough and skilled enough to play any position on the field and intelligent enough to know exactly when to switch roles. The style reached its zenith with the Dutch National Team of 1974, which featured the brilliant play of Johan Cruyff under the direction of Rinus Michels.
The Germans won the World Cup that year, however, led by the equally brilliant Franz Beckenbauer, who had revolutionized the role of libero in soccer by reshaping the position so he could utilize his immense attacking talents.
By 1978 total soccer had begun to dissipate, primarily because its two most inspirational players, Cruyff and Beckenbauer, had retired from international soccer. The Cup-winning side from Argentina had reverted to a traditional 4-3-3 and reintroduced the long-forgotten wingers to defeat the Dutch in the Buenos Aires final.
In 1982 the Italians used Paolo Rossi to effectuate their counter-attacking game as they overcame a solid but somewhat unimaginative German team in the World Cup final in Madrid. By 1986 Maradona was playing as a midfield schemer behind the double forwards. His skill at both freeing others and scoring goals himself led the Argentines to the title in Mexico. Maradona was covered by what had now become known as a defensive midfielder. That player’s job (not unlike Stiles in 1966) was to break up play and play balls forward.
By 1990 and 1994, World Cups were becoming marked by strong defensive play, with no goals scored from free play in either final match. Germany won on a penalty kick in 1990 over Argentina in the Italian staging of the event, while Brazil prevailed in a penalty kick shootout over Italy in Los Angeles in 1994.
Editor’s note: John Bluem, men’s coach at Ohio State University, is a member of the NSCAA National Academy staff. He cited Paul Gardner’s book “The Simplest Game” as a source for this article, which originally appeared in the March-April 2002 issue of Soccer Journal.
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