Sorry for the lack of new posts recently. I’ve been distracted too much by the World Cup. Hopefully now it’s finished I’ll get back to blogging on a more regular basis.

Speaking of the World Cup; now I know this post is a little off topic, but I couldn’t really resist talking about the finals (I’ve also tried to justify it a little by using coffee beans). England’s performance was at best, very frustrating and anxious to watch and at worse a humiliation. The press are very keen to blame everyone and anyone for what went wrong, provided that it sells newspapers.

The Formation

To me the underlying problem for all England’s woe seems to be their formation. A 4-4-2 formation without a proper left winger (no offense to Steven Gerrard) didn’t work. The basic principle of an attack is to stretch the defensive team and so create space for goal scoring opportunities. The problem with England when they attacked was they didn’t keep a good shaped. Other than the occasional width provided by the full-backs getting forward, England kept to the middle of the pitch. This made it easy for the opposition to defend against (particularly as most had 10 men behind the ball), as they weren’t stretched at all. It also made it frustrating for the England players as their bunched up shape left no easy passes on to teammates.
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