Football Favorites - Diamond Formation

After a week of holiday, we are back at it again. Whilst enjoying the time off, I was sometimes thinking about football and some possible formations and why some of them are really my favorite. As I am playing football myself I often think about such things, is this something to worry about? :D Anyways, in this article I want to talk about the Diamond formation in the way my team was playing it for about a season now. Note, that we are amateurs and I am not a football coach, so I might get some things wrong, but in general I think I have a good overview over this formation. Furthermore, I want to focus on the offensive part of this formation, as we often merge into another formation while defending.

Playing Out Of The Back

In general, I do not like these formation numbers like 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 as the formation morphs during the game anyways. On the other hand, I think that a certain base formation should always be considered as we will see in my example. I want to start of with the first third of our field. The risk factor is very high here, which is why a lot of teams are not bothering to play out of the back. In my opinion, this should not be an option for teams that want to consistently improve themselves. With the diamond formation we will always have some feasible option to play out of the back. Whether it will be over the wing backs (white) or with the help of our Central Defensive Midfielder (red) who can even drop between both Center Backs. The beauty about the diamond formation is that we also can utilize the box-to-box midfielders (gray) and create an overflow of players which gives us a lot more options to play out from the back. This way we are not forced to play the ball wide and potentially lose possession.

Midfield

Once we managed to get out of the last third it is all about creating the advantage in the middle of the field. As most teams are having wing players that are very focused on their game on the wing, they will have the struggle to decide whether they will close down the white route down to our striker, or try to cover the box-to-box midfielder which is waiting in the center of the field. Most of the wingers decide to cover the first option which leaves us with a 4 vs 3 advantage in the middle of the field. Very often, this advantage should be enough to maneuver the ball into the last third. Sometimes it will take a little bit more fore-play in terms of moving the ball from one side to the other, in other cases it can be done rather quickly. The main goal here is to create a chance by bring the ball into the last third, whether it is on the wing or preferably into the box straight away.

Last Third

This brings us to the last third, where we can play very risky and make mistakes without them being punished straight away. I always like when our team is able to produce chances which result in a trough-ball. In order for these kind of passes to be very dangerous, they must be played straight and not diagonally, as defenders will always have an easy time to defend the diagonal balls, since they have more time with these. In this formation our strikers are somewhat of wingers that are either being available on the wing or make the runs into the center. This creates a lot of pressure onto the defensive line, especially if the Center-Offensive midfielder has the ball with a clear path onto the opponent’s backline. I think the most effective way to create a chance is to get behind the backline which what we can do with the red route. The white route should be the back up option in order to take away pressure from our midfield. After we managed to get behind the line, the opportunities are endless as it very often comes to the creativity of the players to achieve something out of this position.

Conclusion

All in all, this is why I love this kind of build up and formation. I admit that it was a rather not so deep analysis of tactics, but I really hope I was able to bring the general points across! I would also be happy to know what your favorite tactics in football are! 😊

Published by ga38jem on
Hive Sports Talk
On 16th April 2022