- Jul 28, 2004
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I was being sarcastic because sowing four man midfield totally dominated germany with their five.what?
If we could keep the ball anything like as well as Spain then we might pull it off. Although the 2 wide players in the 4-3-3 work hard and track back, so it really becomes 5 in midfield. It just so happens they're mostly in possession anyway, so the wide players don't need to track back so much.
The key for Spain however is that they do have 3 central midfielders. Alonso and Busquets can protect, and Xavi pulls the strings. So if you can get enough of the ball, then you can expose them down the wings.
I'd far prefer to aspire to that level of ball retention and have two striker to aim for when opportunity arises than just copy the rest. And yes, I know in theory barca, by far the best footballing side going, play that system but when you have players who score that level from the wings you get away with it. We have nobody who can score from the wings like messi and pedro do, and we don't have a lone striker, so unless you think that we should sign three new top class attackers now, and decent reserves for each, sacrificing pretty much all our current attackers barring maybe kranjcar and Pav, I don't see this formation suiting us any time soon.