Any other fans of the 4-2-4 in soccer???

I really wish more coaches would use the 4-2-4. Strong offense, strong defense, and two amazing athletes at halfback/midfield. We used it on one of my little league teams as a kid, and the team went undefeated. The problem is that the midfielders need to be so amazing that most coaches don't feel like they have the talent to play the 4-2-4 for very long, so they play a 3-3-4 more conservatively, and they decide to have one midfielder push forward at opportune times. I get it, and I still thirst for the 4-2-4 like Brazil did during Pele's prime so that I can watch midfielders create and marvel at their athleticism...

I think the closest you will ever see is the 3-5-2 rendition with a deep sweeper, 2 marking backs, 1 defensive mid and 2 attacking mids.... Which performs a pretty similar function...

The last time West Virginia was here they played the 8-2-0.

That was pretty boring.....

Purplegeezer wrote:The last time West Virginia was here they played the 8-2-0.

That was pretty boring.....

Gotta love the Alamo formation.....

The offside trap will turn a 4-2-4 into a 4-6-0 pretty quickly. Playing against intelligent, defenders I don't think it would be effective. Plus the impression the AR would get is that half the attacking side is trying to pull something.

DaTruRochin wrote:

Purplegeezer wrote:The last time West Virginia was here they played the 8-2-0.

That was pretty boring.....

Gotta love the Alamo formation.....

Fulham used it to get a 0-0 draw at Old Trafford last year.

Auto Pilot wrote:The offside trap will turn a 4-2-4 into a 4-6-0 pretty quickly. Playing against intelligent, defenders I don't think it would be effective. Plus the impression the AR would get is that half the attacking side is trying to pull something.

Pele's Brazil teams never had that problem. It's just like other formations, and players need to hold their shape for it to work well. IMO the main problem with the 4-2-4 is that most teams just don't have two ridiculous midfielders to make it work. All the same, I wish more coaches would seek out those two players and take the chance. As far as offsides goes, that's just about timing through balls...and a lot of times defenders will retreat when they are facing 4 players instead of one or two on a break away play.

It's not that rare to see two defensive mids.

Spain uses two (sometimes three) when they play their 4-5-1.

Argentina plays a 4-2-2-2 that is devastating to defenses because anybody can push forward. They even sometimes use guys who made their living in Spain and Italy as strikers in the holding mid position. Brasil had no answer for it this last Olympics.

Even UP appeared to play is last fall up in Seattle against Colgate or Kennessaw St. (can't remember which) They had Kelly and Jackman both in the middle and they played pretty much side by side.

The key is how well you transition out of it. We do a pretty good job in transition from the 4-4-2.

I guess I should just become a little league coach and see how it works for myself. I can see why coaches use the 3-3-4, and at the same time if every team starts doing it, it loses its effectiveness. The most ridiculous formation that I ever played on with a team was the 2-3-2-3. Although I understood my coaches' point of using all of the "triangles" created by this formation for passing, the formation has real disadvantages for using the width of the field.

I agree that there may be better fomations for the transition game and the counter attack. IMO the 4-2-4 allows teams to start off games as the aggressor, and then teams can fall into a more defensive stance playing the 3-3-4 (having one forward drop back) once a team grabs the lead in a a game. My little league team went undefeated with the formation, and I've been biased toward it ever since...

But, as you can probably see from some of my posts, I am a bit stubborn.

2-3-2-3? wow.

That was the formation we used back when we played with goat's heads. it was sometimes called the WM and I think Arsenal used it between the two Wars-to-end-all-wars. Sometimes it went into a 2-3-3-2 or even a 3-2-3-2 , depending on how well we were doing defensively.

It was considered pretty static, and didn't do well against a flat-back 4-4-2.
Of course, the way some teams used it, it seems like the two fullbacks never made it much past the top of their own 18 yard box. We have keepers push up more than that now...

Yes, the games with the goat's heads were memorable, weren't they? LOL

Yeah, one of my coaches said it worked great for indoor, so he tried it for outdoor. In indoor soccer, width really isn't as much of an issue. You just kick he ball off the wall. LOL.