Choosing Formation in Soccer

The soccer formation and Style of Play you use can mean the difference between success and failure. I get many emails about this and you may have read some of them in the SoccerHelp Newsletter. I have received letters from coaches who were losing all their games, changed their soccer formation and started winning. There isn't a trick to this - what is sometimes happening when a team is losing all its games is that the coach is being unrealistic about his or her team and trying to get Rec players to play like college players, and that doesn't work any more than it would work to try to teach 10 year old basketball players to play like a college team.

In brief, you should choose the soccer formation and Style of Play that gives your team the best chance for success. There is an article on SoccerHelp from a coach who had lost 45 straight games, then changed his formation and started winning - he explains why it made such a big difference (see the letter at the bottom of Soccer Formations that Win Games). Your Style of Play is decisions like whether to Push Up or Defend Deep when you attack and to what extent you try to play a short passing game)

There are over 300 pages of information on Soccer Help Premium about how to teach and how to coach soccer formations and positions.

For example:

Which soccer formations work best for slow players?

Which soccer formations work best if you have unskilled players?

Where should you play your best players?

Why it is more important to be defensively strong in the Center of the soccer field (between the 2 goals) than it is to defend the sidelines.

What is the best soccer position for a player who is a great athlete but lacks soccer skills? (Your soccer formation should be chosen based on your players speed, ability, experience and the number of "weak links" on your team).

When is the "Depth" of your team more important than their "Width"?

What types of teams need a soccer formation that has Width?

How to decide the best soccer formation for your team?

David at SoccerHelp