Australian football’s formation deception

If the performances of the Young Socceroos in the 2011 U-20 World Cup weren’t frustrating enough, the analysis in the television coverage (and much of it in the general media) capped it off. Rather than critically and primarily focusing on practical elements of playing football like off-the-ball movement, space between the lines, control and decision making in tight spaces and the simple quality of defending (which was shockingly bad), those heading SBS’s coverage of the games in Colombia (Paul Okon, David Zdrilic, Kimon Taliadoros and host Scott McIntyre) were continuously fixated on the mission to work in with the FFA’s Dutch-inspired planned formation of 4-3-3.

Of more significance than this initiative is surely the more essential aforementioned aspects of play, most of which have been an increasingly worrying factor at youth level for Australia for the past dozen or so years. However much you think of it’s merits, a 4-3-3 (or any specific formation for that matter), the nice-sounding “playing out from the back” mantra and everything in-between isn’t the ultimate remedy for these ills. Whatever’s behind the ostensible decline of Australia’s player development since the turn of the millennium is difficult to pinpoint and I don’t know whether or not or how much it’s to do with the demise of the NSL and the subsequent growing pains of the A-League, something deeper at junior level that’s changed since the 1990s (when the player production for a nation of Australia’s population and other sporting and lifestyle distractions was quite heartening) or changes in immigration patterns taking some sort of effect that Australian football has yet to really sufficiently adapt to. But it would surely be far more worthwhile to focus on these kind of things than constantly look to our formation and how we’re working in a 4-3-3.

What’s also strange is a line often trotted out among Australian pundits (usually when playing the Netherlands and these days Spain)that basically “you never see them [the opposition] change the way they play, they’ve got a style they stick to and this is what we’re tying to emulate with what the FFA are doing.”

Firstly, what’s curiously not mentioned is that both the Dutch and Spanish have changed their formation plenty of times in the past to try to suit their best available players and have enjoyed some of their better times not playing a 4-3-3. The Dutch basically played a 4-4-2 in their Euro 1988 triumph and arguably even more impressive (but shorter on luck) WC 1998 campaign. The Spanish meanwhile have regularly alternated between 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-5-1 and 4-2-3-1 in their incredibly dominant last three years. All this however doesn’t fit in with the theory that a 4-3-3 is the supreme means to gloriously improving Australian football’s technical and tactical level.

Secondly, why should we be so faithfully trying to emulate what these teams are doing with far different pools of players and cultures? This isn’t to foolishly say there isn’t much to take away from them, but I’m also significantly interested in Australia reaching its potential in its own context with a view to our best football historically. There seems to me to be a pretense in the SBS analysis though that everything done in the old semi-professional days, however admirable and heartening, was essentially flawed somewhat or is by now seriously outdated. As it is, the analysis keeps getting stuck awkwardly relating every downfall of Australia’s youth teams to the current national football curriculum and mastering a particular formation. In Okon’s case it extended itself to more or less ludicrously putting the blame on A-League and state league coaches – those being employed by clubs and needing results to keep their jobs – for failing to follow the FFA’s lead by not adopting a 4-3-3 system to assist young Australian players in adapting to it. How many more failed campaigns will it take for it to sink in that we’re missing the point so badly?

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