Diagram 10 – Turkey’ s 5-2-3( against Austria) Diagram 11 – the Netherlands’ 3-4-3( against Austria)
Playing without a typical striker might be a consequence of necessity or creativity, of an intention to be more compact in defense or more unpredictable in attack. In the case of Turkey, it seemed more than anything to be an expression of a different vision of the game.
But Turkey’ s 5-2-3( diagram 10) had one obvious potential problem— goal scoring. In this extremely fluid system, the lack of a striker was compensated for by the finishing abilities of midfield players such as Çalhanoğlu and long-range shooting from Güler and Müldür.
The Netherlands played in a 4-2-3-1 as a default system, yet when they were attacking, they distributed themselves in a 3-4-3 formation.“ Oranje” used two different routes to switch to 3-4-3 in attack, and the one with a false fullback was certainly more creative and tactically demanding. Depending on the phase of play, Geertruida was either a right back or a defensive midfielder( diagram 11).
The tactics are in accordance with the Dutch tradition of player universality and out-of-the-box thinking. Experimenting with fullbacks( if we can call it an experiment anymore) is one of the most striking tactical trends today and the Netherlands were its main representative in EURO 2024( though a similar ploy was used by the exciting team from Ukraine).
CONCLUSION: EXAMPLES AND IMAGINATION
It has been another tactically inspiring European Championship where we saw: some traditional systems,
such as the 4-4-2 and 4-3-1-2, refreshed for the modern era; the 4-2-3-1 as a default formation but with many variations, which almost made them look like different systems; and three-at-the-back( or five) with sometimes totally opposite interpretations and lots of movement up front, as in the case of Switzerland’ s marvelous 3-4-2-1 or Turkey’ s progressive 5-2-3-0, just to name a few.
Inspiring yes, but have all the possibilities been explored enough? With five substitutions available, we may have expected more changes of systems during games— something that was a feature of EURO 2020. There were changes of formations from game to game, and from attack to defense, yet we’ re left with the impression that a step forward— comparing with previous EUROs or last seasons’ club football— could have been made.
The fact that not everything has to be symmetrical and rigid is the biggest takeaway from this EURO, tacticwise. By adding a little bit of imagination to standard structures, we might find a perfect dynamism to make our players tick.
Choosing a system is not only a matter of stabilizing a general model of play, but part of a specific gameplan preparation as well. The purpose of this analysis was to ignite a spark in that direction, too.
Last but not least, EURO 2024 reminds us that if we want our young players to achieve the highest level of success, we need to equip them with the ability to adapt to the ever-growing tactical demands of contemporary football. n
Author Bio: Lazar Šoć is a UEFA A license coach from Montenegro. Most recently he was an analyst of EURO 2024 and Montenegrin national and club teams’ games for CdM, one of the country’ s most-read web portals. Lazar’ s last coaching position was at the U15 team of Celta Academy in Brasov, Romania. He’ s currently a master student of Sports Performance and Management.
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