The football tactics pendulum has definitely swung towards a focus on dominating central areas as more and more teams look to use as many players as possible in central areas. Thus, a focus on central combination play is evident in many very good teams. A natural result is that teams then defend in a more narrow and compact manner to stop teams playing through them. The consequence? Teams need to be good in wide areas, too.
The purpose of this tactical theory piece is to look at three different ways of attacking wide areas. In any discussion of general tactics, the examples provided can be adapted and viewed based on the tactics of every team and coach based on his/her preferences. Hopefully this can make you think about how you approach attacking wide areas.
The first approach looks at the concept of maximising width with players always positioned in the wide spaces.
The second approach looks at the concept of adaptable width.
The third and final approach looks at the concept of dynamically occupying wide areas.
Let’s begin with the first one.
Maximising width – always having players in wide channels
“When we have the ball, make the pitch as big as possible.” Hands up if you’ve heard this repeatedly during your life in football. Bonus points if the concept of a flower opening up has been drilled into your mind as a metaphor for a team’s positional objective when possession has been regained. For many coaches, maximum width is a necessity when attacking as it is supposed to stretch opponents horizontally and in turn create more space centrally. As such, we see so many teams attack with one player in each wide channel and the remaining nine players in the three central channels.
For some teams, this positioning is necessary regardless of how the opponent is set up against you. For instance, as the image below highlights with the ball in the possession of the blue player highlighted with a red circle, the opposite wide player remains wide despite the opponent left-back being almost 30 metres away. Against a man-orientated defensive system, this type of positioning is very effective in regards to ‘creating space centrally’ as an opponent will be orientated to the wide player on the ball-far side. However, a ball-orientated system will be happy to leave the ball-far wide player out there on his/her own as the player is very isolated and less of a danger due to the team’s defensive orientation. In essence, the idea from a ball-orientated defensive system is that the wide player circled in yellow is removed from the game and, as such, the defensive team has a numerical advantage in the spaces around the ball.
From an attacking perspective, there are plenty of positives. For instance, the ball-far wide player is an easy target for crossfield passes to switch the play as there is no defender close to him/her. Therefore, the attacking team can make use of the maximised width to switch the play and force the defensive team to shuffle across. If this is done effectively for prolonged spells in a game, gaps will appear in the defensive structure at some point.
Additionally, if an effective switch is made, the wide player can make use of the available space to get running at high speed before the defenders have a chance to settle into their defensive shape on that side. As such, this can create a dynamical or even qualitative advantage for the attacking team. The crucial part is getting the ball out there quickly enough for this to happen. If the switch is slow and predictable, this potential advantage cannot be utilised as seamlessly as is often imagined.
Basically, there are positives and negatives with this approach. Against certain defensive systems, maximising width can pull defences apart horizontally but, against others, attackers can be left isolated and cut off from the action.
Adapting width – base positioning on the width of the opponent
An alternative approach is based on adapting the width of the attacking team on the width of the opponent. The wide players will have the task of stretching the opposition defence, but this will be done differently to the maximising width idea discussed above. In this system, the wide players will put themselves in positions where they are in enough space to have time to receive the ball and then run at defenders while never being removed from the game.
Imagine the positions of the blue players circled below. Either player is positioned outside the defensive line so they do stretch the defensive team horizontally, but they are also connected to the other attackers so that they are always involved in the game. Crucially, this prevents the defensive team from taking their eye off them, as they could do and still recover against a player positioned 30 metres away.
The situation below highlights the difference in positioning. According to this idea of adapting width based on the opposition’s positioning, the blue player circled would move substantially more narrow to the examples discussed earlier. Still, he/she would remain outside the left-back and thus stretching the defence. By being closer to the other players, the wide player is also more of a threat in terms of off-ball movements as the player can attack the space behind the defence and basically head straight for goal. If needed, the player could also invert or drop off to connect between the lines.
In summary, you retain width to stretch the opponent, but your wide player is also more connected to the other players. However, a disadvantage could be that the attacking team becomes too clustered when there is no static wide presence.
Dynamic wide occupation – no static presence in wide areas
Finally, the last approach is one I call dynamic wide occupation. This setup is intriguing for teams looking to play through the central channels with staggered attacking structures such as a 4-1-2-1-2, a 4-2-2-2 or a very narrow 4-3-3, for example. The idea is basically that no player will statically occupy the wide spaces outside the opposition defence but rather occupy these spaces dynamically attack them when the opportunity arises.
To highlight what I mean, I have opted for a 4-1-2-1-2 as an example. The attacking system as seen below features narrow full-backs, a diamond midfield and two strikers. No player is originally occupying the highlighted wide space. In this example, this space could, if needed, be occupied dynamically by the left-back, the left-sided central midfielder and the left-sided striker.
The blue team in a 4-Diamond-2 with no wide player on the left.
When the ball is moved diagonally towards the left, the left-back in this case makes an overlapping run outside the midfielder to attack the wide space. Not only is this very difficult to deal with as a defensive team as it happens, the movement also creates a dynamical advantage for the attacking team. All of a sudden, the blues are 3v2 against the ball-near right-back and right-sided midfielder of the white team.
The movement of the left-back allows the blue team to occupy the wide space dynamically.
Dynamically occupying wide spaces is definitely more difficult to achieve than instructing at least two players to always do it, but it presents an intriguing method in attacking wide areas. By allowing teams to defend narrow, you naturally open up spaces outside them to attack and, if this can be done efficiently and at pace, it will be very difficult to defend against. Since it is very difficult to get the timing right, however, the approach might be carefully woven into a team’s attacking play over time rather than thrown in from one day to another.
Final thoughts
So, there you have them: three ways of attacking wide areas. Whether you use maximum width, adaptable width or dynamic width when you attack, finding a formula that works for your team will go a long way towards creating effective attacking play.
Personally, I’ve used both adaptable width and dynamically attacking width this season and see both as effective strategy to hurt teams in wide areas. I’ve sporadically used static presences in wide areas, particularly from deep build-up to pin an entire defence and create free players centrally, but I see some of the merits of using it higher up the pitch too.
Hopefully, this piece has inspired you to think about how you approach attacking wide areas. If you like this piece, give us a follow on Twitter (@DaveSelini and @RunTheShowBlog) to keep up to date with all our tactical content.
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