First of all, the formation you pick must be perfectly compatible with the players at your disposal. The runnings each one of them can give are the No1 decisive factor on how you set your team up. You also have to consider the defensive capabilities of each player. Players who go too hard on the opposition are at risk of giving away many set pieces and getting cards very often, while players who go too soft (or don't go at all) let opponents reach the goalpost with ease. The third factor to be taken into account is the passing skill. Football is a team sport, you don't want your players to strain the ball with dribble abuse or hoof it as soon as they get it, you definitely prefer them to pass it around nicely and look for the chance in a sane manner.
How can a formation be complimented or ruined though? This question is answered in this post.
Firstly, you need to consider how you want your team to defend. Is your team going to press, or will you prefer patience? Also, what metres is your team going to use for defending? Make the right picks and your team will be winning the ball off the opponents in most duels.
And then you have to consider how you want your team to attack. Possession football occurs much more easily against teams that defend at low metres, while counterattacks are easier to use against a team that presses higher than its players can support. Choose the right players for each case and your team will create enough chances to put up a convincing performance at the very least...
There are though differences between proper possession football and Guardiola's "tiki-taka". The first difference has to do with positioning. Ever noticed the gaps in Guardiola's teams every time they lose the ball? These gaps do not exist in proper possession football. If you 're not FIFA's favourite kid, the only reliable way of retaining high possession numbers goes through proper supportive positioning, a feature evidently absent from Guardiola's all-out-to-the-front approach. The second difference has to do with passing. Guardiola's teams pass the ball nicely when their opponents do nothing to defend, but put him against tougher defences and his players suddenly start to hoof the ball. Hoofing is a very risky passing style, as it leaves the ball trajectory to the weather's appetites. Wind and rain have much more of an effect on air balls than on ground balls. Can players control wind or rain?
As I caught Guardiola in my mouth, why not catch Klopp as well? His famous "gegenpressing" is not something worth any pride. It works in low-level leagues such as the one he takes part in by guiding Liverpool, but put it against a fast counterattacking team and it does nothing. It looks like the patient defending option mentioned above, but only with the two central defenders and one midfielder taking part in it. Liverpool's opponents win the ball at X seconds, yet at X+5 seconds we still see Liverpool's flankers and "internal midfielders" waiting ahead of the ball. The media have made Klopp's name as "the ultimate counterattacking coach", but the hard reality shows Liverpool to need ball possession in order to avoid humiliations. Klopp's Dortmund showed the same story: they won a low-level league, went far in a low-level Champions' League and were highly favoured by the media.
Back to the core of our topic now. There also are options on how to take set pieces. The way to kick penalties is pretty much preset, but fouls and corners are another story. Most teams kick fouls and corners in the traditional manner: get everyone to the front, hoof the ball and hope that the wind does its trick to confuse the opposing defence. There are statistics on how ineffective this is, so let's have a look at a much better way: the ground pass. Efficiency statistics are vastly in its favour, but the teams using it on TV are so disappointingly few... Direct shooting is also a fair option for fouls, provided that the position is right. Not like Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi who kick it directly from any random position (and most often miss the target by quite a wide range). Sport is not about the glory, it is about the effort. Even if Messi and Ronaldo scored all of their free kicks, them being as selfish as they are would still prevent them from being the best free-kickers. The best free-kicker is the player who primarily makes the right decision on how to take each set piece. Effort is not just about power or technique, it also has to include strategic thought - else I wouldn't have to create this blog at all...
Last but not least, defending against opposing set pieces. Again, there aren't many options as far as it goes for penalties, but there are options to choose from for corners and fouls. One-on-one marking is a very usual pick when the opposition has many tall and slow players (most teams on TV do), while area marking is more suitable against teams that want to go through large gaps. The wall is a standard when it comes to fouls, just so that the direct kick becomes hard enough to make other options worth considering. There have been a few goals from direct corner kicks, but have you wondered why they 're so rare? Simple couple of reasons: angle and distance. A direct corner kick is anyway very much like a hoof: it can be severely affected by the wind and/or rain. Again, can players control wind or rain? Right, this is why there is no wall in corners.
There also are a few more options on how to handle the pace of the given match, such as playing with the clock or purposed fouling. The media drop a lot of hate on these methods and I sort of agree with them on purposed fouling, but delaying the pace of the match is perfectly fine with me. Playing with the clock is actually one of my favourite things to do when it 's late and the score difference is small or zero. The ability to break the opponents' pace is a great strategical advantage if you know how to pull it off when necessary - regardless why it may be necessary. In one of the matches I 've played, it was very close to the end and we were 1-0 down against a mixed-gender team. At that point we got a throw, which I went to execute, as I had a fullback position that time. I purposedly ate up at least ten seconds before handing the ball to a teammate. Because of the pace break I created, my teammate had no opponent ready on her, so she easily slotted in an assist for our striker, who made it 1-1. We kept on eating up seconds after this and finally managed to hold this draw. Moral lesson: pace breaking can even be used by the trailing team. At the end, my personal opponent for the match shouted at me "You, dirty bitch, you stole the result from us with your delays!". I was going to beat him up for his lack of respect towards my strategic effort, but one of his female teammates grabbed his arm, pulled him to turn towards her and asked him "Why didn't you go to mark her at that time? Remember, she was your personal opponent!", his response being "Leave me alone, bitch". To this disrespectful and spiteful reaction of his, she responded "Athletes are not enemies with each other. You 're out". Then he tried to punch her, but she caught his fist and twisted his arm, forcing him to fall down and start crying. Since then he 's been replaced by a girl with much better defensive characteristics.
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