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Diamond Frights: How Change of Shape Unsettled England in Italy
Published: April 1, 2015
It’s a chance to experiment, pundits always say, and yet what coaches probably should be doing, given how few opportunities they have to play against sides of a similar level, is fine-tuning and finessing, using the games to work on building familiarity between a putative first team.
Not that it’s always the manager’s fault. Injuries and withdrawals meant that the England coach Roy Hodgson was without Raheem Sterling, Danny Welbeck and Daniel Sturridge for Tuesday’s trip to Italy and so, as he acknowledged after the 4-0 win on Friday, a switch away from a 4-3-3 to a system to two central strikers was almost forced upon him.
Given he has used the shape at times in qualifying and given the—understandable—pressure to give Harry Kane a start, he may have done that anyway, but ideally, surely, not against Italy and their 3-5-2.
There are few absolutes in tactics, little that is definitely right or wrong, but the 3-5-2 will always cause problems for a diamond. The three centre-backs in the 3-5-2 can mark the two centre-forwards with a man spare, while one of the three central midfielders can pick up the player operating at the tip of the diamond with a two-on-two match-up in the centre.
Probably most significantly, the narrowness of the diamond means that the wing-backs in the 3-5-2 will have space in front of them, allowing them to push up to join the midfield battle or offer attacking width.
England ran a similar risk away in Switzerland, meeting a side with very attacking full-backs with a diamond, but on that occasion, Wayne Rooney and Welbeck did a superb job of pulling wide from centre-forward to occupy the full-backs, which had the bonus of creating space for Ste...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football
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