The surprise package in the second half of Premier League season was the only side who switched to a back three on a permanent basis.

Cruijff was perhaps the most original thinker in football’s history, but most of his thinking was about attack. He liked to say that he didn’t mind conceding three goals, as long as Barça scored five. Well, Guardiola also wanted to score five, but he minded conceding even one. If Barcelona is a cathedral, Guardiola has added the buttresses. In Barça’s first 28 league games this season, they have let in only 22 goals. Here are some of “Pep”’s innovations, or the secrets of FC Barcelona:

Milan face Barcelona in this year's Champions League quarter-finals, having already put paid to one Barcelona Dream Team, 18 years ago in Athens. This is how they did it.

Jonathan Wilson, tactics extraodinaire:

For years that style was almost a default in the English game: one attacking wide midfielder covered for by a narrower, more defensive player on the other flank. Even as late as 1999-00, Sunderland finished seventh in the Premier League with Nicky Summerbee as a bona fide winger on the right, balanced by Stefan Schwarz tucking in on the left and Michael Gray overlapping from left-back. But how to you denote it? As a 4-3-3? As a 4-4-2? It's both and neither, somewhere in between.

"The Argentinian is called El Loco for his attention to detail but he has built the most exciting Athletic Bilbao team for decades."

The World Cup 2010 website is a significant step change in the way that content is published. From first using the site, the most striking changes are the horizontal navigation and the larger, format high-quality video. As you navigate through the site it becomes apparent that this is a far deeper and richer use of content than can be achieved through traditional CMS-driven publishing solutions.

In terms of hard statistics, though, the message is clear. The Premier League may lead the way in terms of marketing and self-promotion, but if you want competitiveness, go to Russia or Brazil.

But they had also done it with the help of 40,000 fans. Afterwards, Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho said he ‘felt the power of Anfield’, John Terry admitted that ‘all of us found it a bit of shock’ and Joe Cole said ‘it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up’, whilst Liverpool’s John Arne Riise simply stated that ‘we wouldn’t have been able to run as much as we did without the energy from the stands.’ The following day, every paper in Britain spoke of the impact the fans made, and it was a view echoed around Europe, from the Gazzetta Dello Sport in Italy to Marca in Spain. Typically, though, it was summed best by Simon Barnes of The Times, who wrote “The Liverpool crowd had done an astonishing thing. They made Chelsea play worse than they can, they made Liverpool play better than they can, they made the referee turn a crucial decision their way. That’s twenty-three people all behaving in the way the Liverpool crowd wished. It was, in the most literal sense, a triumph of hope over expectation.”

It would be misleading to paint the result [Brazil beating Spain in the U20 World Cup] as a great injustice, although Spain certainly had the better of it, but equally it would be negligent not to report just how superior, how much more sophisticated, Spain seemed. Brazil may have won the battle but the suspicion is that if these sides were to meet again, all grown up, at the 2018 World Cup, Spain would prevail; individuals are unreliable; a team system far less so. The full-backs Hugo Mallo and Carles Planas were neat and composed. Isco, at the front of midfield, distributed superbly. Chelsea's Oriol Romeu was imposing yet skilful in front of the back four. Rodrigo of Bolton was intelligent in his movement and scored a header with the stumbling elan of Kevin Davies. The quality of Sergio Canales, used on the right, is well known.

One last thing to note is that Barcelona do not put any players on the goal line at either of the goal posts. This is considered HERESY in British football but Barcelona do it all the time with success. The reason they dont put any players on the goal line is because it would be very difficult to create an offside trap after the initial ball is cleared. This was the flaw in Mexico’s implementation of zonal marking, the player on the far post kept playing people onside as he was late to push up.

As Spain’s two biggest clubs go head to head four times in the next two weeks, Richard Martin looks into the history of this great rivalry.

Based on the premise that the brain is at least 1,000 times faster than any computer, Bruyninckx's intention is to make sure the young players he trains are programmed to take full advantage of the body's "hard disk" and become more skilful and intelligent footballers.

Kenny Dalglish's Liverpool and Steve Bruce's Sunderland have both made eloquent recent cases for the old ploy of three centre-backs and a diamond formation.

While football may have been initially organised and codified on English soil, the tactical and theoretical development of the game has historically been cultivated in other pockets of Europe, most notably the inter-war bourgeois societies of the Danubian region. From Vienna, to Budapest, to Prague and beyond, football was met with a deeply philosophical and sophisticated approach to the game which resulted in a distinctive style of play emerging from Central Europe. The social driving force behind this development was, of course, the coffee house.

At the World Cup, only Spain – who have had a stable side for three years and whose players are drawn largely from two clubs and so have an understanding – and Chile – who were coached by the idiosyncratic and brilliant Marcelo Bielsa – were genuinely proactive and, as Arrigo Sacchi said, it is proactivity that makes for true greatness. Even Germany, for all the goals they scored, were essentially reactive, a very good counterattacking team. Most disappointing were the sides with a great tradition of proactive football, such as Brazil and the Netherlands, who relied on a solid base and hoped individuals could turn the game their way.

Nothing seems to raise the hackles of football fans more than the assist.  Here, Director of Content Rob Bateman explains the Opta approach.

One of the first to go was Leicester’s Paulo Sousa, on 1 October. The club’s board—consisting of Thai investors and Milan Mandaric—appointed Sven-Göran Eriksson, and results have since picked up. Sensing an opportunity, several clubs followed. All these clubs sacked their managers while in 19th in the league or lower, with the exception of Burnley, who sacked Brian Laws whilst in 9th. Of these clubs, only Leicester could claim to have dramatically improved their league position (24th when Sousa was sacked, 12th now), with Bristol City making a modest rise up the table (23rd to 17th). All others have either dropped further into the mire or remained where they were.

Adam Birchall is one of those rare footballers who, when he says he loves playing for his club, actually means it. The 26-year-old, known as the Wayne Rooney of non-league football because of his prolific goalscoring form, loves playing for Dover so much that his eyes shine as he speaks with all the zeal of a religious convert.

WATFORD'S Head of Football Business & Development John Stephenson is leaving to take up a new challenge at Brighton & Hove Albion FC.

However a story can be easy to tell, and still be told badly. Another trot through the events, however breathtaking these events and however comprehensive the description, would have served no purpose; that’s been done before and done well, not least in the club’s Centenary Book. Where this book really triumphs is in identifying a new angle, a compelling angle, and pursuing it doggedly. Whilst Lionel provides a skeleton of detail that would permit those unfamiliar with the narrative to follow what’s going on, the joy is in the reflections, anecdotes and memories provided by the key players. So comprehensive is this coverage indeed that, other than Elton John, the most significant names not to have interviewed are the likes of Iwan Roberts, Worrell Sterling and Rick Holden. Everyone else is there, including occasional glances from the other side of the fence.

RT @RookeryMike: Well worth a read RT @telpierce check out my latest piece for @FourFourTwo on #Watfordfc next generation of Golden Boys ...

In this article, we are dealing with a very specific outcome of the changes. Now, a player who is in an offside position when one pass in a move is played can go onto participate in the rest of the move as long as he doesn’t touch the ball from the initial pass.
If play catches up with him, and a second pass is played to him when he is in in an onside position, play can continue.

Pupils, who must live within 90 minutes of Harefield and are bussed in for the start of school at 8.15am, have training sessions during the day three times a week. When school shuts at 2.30pm, they catch up on lessons they have missed and complete their homework before participating in further training sessions between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, this time with members of Watford's academy who are not students at the school.

Here Anthony, who was present as Watford met Leicester City in the Championship at the weekend, analyses the game and brings us a tactical breakdown of the match.

Amid all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth that followed England's failure to win the right to host the 2018 World Cup, the detail of Russia's bid has been rather overlooked. Like South Africa, for Russia the World Cup represents both a great opportunity, but also major challenges ...

He is not one of the game's theoreticians, that's true. He is not a Viktor Maslov, a Rinus Michels or an Arrigo Sacchi – but so what? He does what he does. He is probably a better motivator than he is a tactician, just as Rafael Benítez is a better tactician than he is a motivator. But that doesn't mean Redknapp is clueless, even if it at times it suits him to set himself up as the bluff English alternative to all the sophisticated foreign mumbo jumbo, a line that always plays well with the media he courts so superbly.

Jurgen Klopp, sitting on the proverbial throne placed on the zenith of Die Südtribüne, has earned his position of Dortmund royalty this season.

His tenderfoot squad has exceeded expectations, and after thirteen games lead the ‘World’s Best League™’ by seven points. The path to seniority in the Bundesliga has not been through attritional, grinding football, but with an expansive and unrepressed style.

The numbers are impressive, they’ve scored the most (31), five more than any other team in the division and have conceded the least (8), six less than their competitors. But we don’t do things by numbers here (apart from painting, naturally), and this startling improvement surely needs to be legitimised through analysis.

When 3-5-2 began as a tactic in the 80s, pioneered variously by Carlos Bilardo with Argentina, Sepp Piontek with Denmark and Ciro Blazevic with Dinamo Zagreb, it was essentially an attacking tool. Fielding three centre-backs seemed to have become outmoded with the emergence of lone striker systems, but the system has evolved and re-emerged, only this time it has a distinctly defensive aspect. Against Manchester United at Old Trafford, Rangers used the formation so successfully they conceded just 12 attempts, only three of which were on target. A similar defensive wall will face United at Ibrox on Wednesday.

This book examines match strategies for creating goal scoring opportunities out of the following systems of play: 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 3-5-2, 4-3-1-2, 4-5-1. For each system, the author discusses the strategy, tactics, system and schemes of play as well as the technical, tactical and physical characteristics of the players who use the system. Several situational attacking schemes are also presented, using clear diagrams and detailed descriptions.

And it's not the prospect of losing that bothers me. Yes of course I'd hate to lose, but it's more fundamental than that. Milton Keynes stole my club and its League position, losing in the cup or league doesn't matter compared to that. I don't believe the club has a right to exist. I want it to go out of business as soon as possible, I don't want Wimbledon giving Milton Keynes any sort of spurious legitimacy by playing them.

'After Danny Baker's cancer news I've realised he's a national treasure.' Wonderful piece by Danny Kelly: http://bit.ly/aNPU2I

There, 2,700 fans who turned away from the whole Old Trafford money game in 2005 roared their own club, FC United of Manchester, to a nerve‑shredding 1-0 victory over Barrow in the FA Cup fourth qualifying round, sending FCUM through to play League One Rochdale in the first round proper a week on Friday, live on ESPN. Barrow, who play in the Conference Premier, brought 500 and the crowd, of 3,229, was bigger than those at four of Saturday's League Two matches.

Football is a holistic game. Advance a player here, and you must retreat a player there. Give one player more attacking responsibility, and you must give another increased defensive duties. As three at the back has become outmoded as a balanced or attacking formation – though not as a defensive formation – by the boom in lone-striker systems, coaches have had to address the problem of how to incorporate attacking full-backs without the loss of defensive cover.

Wilson takes ten key England fixtures - from defeat in Madrid in 1929; to Steve McLaren's evening to forget at Wembley in 2007 - and hacks back through the myth, conjecture and personal recollections, to get at the games themselves, and explore how what actually happened on the pitch shaped the future of the English game. Bursting with insight and critical detail, yet imbued with a wry affection, this is a history of England like no other before.

Of course they are. RT @guardian_sport: Are MK Dons still beyond the pale? http://bit.ly/aFMkeh

It is easy to assume that former Premier League players retire to a life largely spent swigging Château Lafite straight from the bottle while lounging poolside at one of their 18 palatial properties with their former-Hollyoaks-babe third wife, but there are exceptions. Some stay in football, and not just to take up position on Sky Soccer Saturday or be parachuted into a Premier League hotseat. For a small percentage, the call of the non-league game proves irresistible.

Denmark’s victory in the Euro Championships in 1992 had all the ingredients of a unforgetful footballing fairytale. It is the story of a team who didn’t qualify for the finals who went onto win the thing, beating the World Champions, the French and the Dutch; surely this would be a story that was woven into the tapestry of footballing folklore?

RT @guardian_sport: Why we must savour the rare English delicacy that is Jack Wilshere | @BarneyRonay http://t.co/Rla4rGT via @guardian

The bizarre, sad tale of Togo's fake national soccer team: http://bit.ly/aD7XSj

Few positions have undergone such dramatic developments in the modern era as that of the defensive midfielder. Once a role largely neglected across Europe, the concept of the midfield anchor has become central to contemporary tactical thinking.

The likes of Diego Maradona are extremely rare. Football is almost never about one player or about the manager, it shouldn't be about the search for one "world-class" player or coach. It should be about taking the best raw materials available and assembling them in the best possible way. English football needs to rid itself of its messiah-complex, stop looking for a mythical saviour who is going to redeem the protracted decline and get on with making the best of the present situation. As long as there are messiahs, there are going to be crucifixions.

The graphs, diagrams and match reports on Zonal Marking are pored over by thousands of football fans the world over and have helped push tactical analysis towards the centre of mainstream football debate in the United Kingdom. Set up in January this year, the phenomenally successful website received an average of 210,000 visitors per week during the World Cup and counts tactical mastermind Jonathan Wilson among its many admirers.

Variously believed to be the work of either a particularly public-spirited professional coach or a crack team of disaffected former Opta employees, the force behind ZM is in fact one man: Michael Cox. He very kindly agreed to grant his first ever interview to Football Further.

But where does Gerrard fit? Even in conservative England, the World Cup brought an acceptance that sending out the players in good old 4-4-2 and expecting them to sort it out isn't really enough, and that in turn has led to a slew of debate about Gerrard's "best position." But even that seems an oddly English way of looking at the problem.

The @football_league finally have a iPhone App. http://bit.ly/dAQRmw No commentary subscription yet, but here's hoping! #watfordfc
– From The Rookery End (RookeryJon) http://twitter.com/RookeryJon/statuses/22873353721

The Premier League season is less than two weeks old, but a look at how the top sides lined up in their opening matches provides an interesting indication of how they plan to approach the season from a tactical perspective.

Arsenal’s effective wing play, Blackpool’s adventure, two holding midfelders, and the joys of Chamakh and Rosicky.

Surprisingly, Hodgson opted to change nothing at half-time – Liverpool had rallied in the five minutes before the break, maybe convincing their manager to have faith in the 4-4-2. If Hodgson remains committed to that system long-term, then we must have patience with him, and understand that a change in formation rarely has instant results. But in the sole context of this game, Liverpool needed something different.

Tactical notes from the first weekend of the Premier League season.

This has been a decade of broadly attacking football, at least at the highest level, but at the start of 2010-11 the game stands at a crossroads. Internazionale's triumph in the Champions League, the predominance of reactive football at the World Cup and the growing realisation that nobody can match Spain/Barcelona at their brand of possession football, though, might mean a turn into defensiveness.

International competitions are always fascinating tactically if anything for the inflexibility they confront managers with. Arrigo Sacchi, in charge of the Italy side who reached the final of World Cup ’94, stated it was “impossible” for a national manager to drill the same understanding that club level coaches are afforded due to the lack of day-to-day availability of personnel. The sporadic amount of time they have with players means it can be difficult for coaches to develop plans so they usually are forced to stick with philosophies they think are correct – and that in turn highlights the common trends in the thinking of modern coaches. And certainly, what has become oblivious from the recent World Cup in South Africa and indeed club football for the past few years is that the use of two holding midfielders in front of the back four is become crucial in the modern game.

Evolution never stops. As the World Cup showed, 4‑2‑3‑1 has come to replace 4‑4‑2 as the universal default (18 of the 32 teams played some form of 4‑2‑3‑1 at some stage, with another three fielding a 4‑4‑2 that perhaps should have become 4‑2‑3‑1) so the system at the very highest level has already begun to mutate. Spain, by the end of the World Cup, had followed what Barcelona did at times last season, what Arsenal seemed to be reaching towards, and set up in a 4‑2‑1‑3.

River against Boca is the haves against the have-nots.

The two clubs grew up side by side in the working class dockside areas of the city. After a while, though, River Plate moved out to the snooty suburbs. Boca stayed put. Both moved into their current stadiums and firmly established their identities when Argentine football was on the verge of entering its 1940s golden age - Boca amongst the sweat and the smells of run down, cramped streets, River surrounded by swish streets and with so much space that some of the stadium corridors seem wider than the United Nations building.

This game has a specifically Argentine, immigrant twist but the 'team of the elite versus team of the people' plotline is enacted all over the continent - in Universitario v Alianza Lima in Peru, or Olimpia v Cerro Porteno in Paraguay, or the ancient Nacional v Penarol clash in Uruguay.

Stonking Championship preview by Matt Rowson. http://bit.ly/9wRRDK /cc @drbillyo - do you think WFC will sign Deeney after his transfer req?

Football: Observer Fans' Forum club-by-club preview of the Championship season ahead: http://bit.ly/cvYtRV
– Guardian sport (guardian_sport) http://twitter.com/guardian_sport/statuses/20058866965

So where does this World Cup rank in the pantheon? It's probably a question best asked in a few months' time, when the tournament – like a Christmas Day Shiraz – has had time to breathe, and the essential accomplices, such as Cris Freddi's Complete Book of the World Cup and Fifa's official tournament DVDs, have been called to duty again. My instinct, however, is that this has been a middling-to-decent World Cup, but no more.

There is a way to go back to a more manageable 16-team tournament, and a way of doing it that would get 16 competitive teams that would be still fair to all regions and still stimulate growth in the less traditional football strongholds. I'm not naive enough to believe it could ever happen, but imagine this ...

"At the dawn of the tournament Football Further posed ten tactical questions that the World Cup would answer. Three days after Spain’s tense extra-time victory over the Netherlands in the final, the answers to those questions reflect a tournament in which defensive rigour was overwhelmingly de riguer and tactical innovation conspicious by its rarity."

"... passing triangles are only important for a side looking to dominate possession. For a side looking to disrupt that, 4-4-2 can be extremely effective – the famous "two banks of four" that for a long time seemed to be such a feature of any English team playing an away game in European competition. Fulham showed last season how effective the style can still be. Sit the midfield line deep on the back four so there is minimal space between the lines for attacking midfielders or deep-lying forwards to exploit, and it becomes very hard to penetrate. It doesn't matter how many triangles you create if you never get the ball closer than 35 yards from the opposition goal."

RT @pitchinvasion: The terrible state of British World Cup punditry, by @twoht http://bit.ly/9bpgcB

RT @pgoricha: "the fans were treated to the incredible sight of Grenada trying to score in either goal" http://bit.ly/3iFFFp

RT @Zonal_Marking: Great stat from @totalFootball10 app about Juan Veron last night - http://bit.ly/9LK1kX

Two issues, however, do seem to have struck a common denominator with those critics of Del Bosque's tactical plan for the opening group game in Durban.

The first points to the redundancy of Spain's doble pivote of Xabi Alonso and Sergio Busquets when facing against sides such as Switzerland and Honduras who will display a reserved game plan.

The second gripe concerns the presence of llegada, or breaking into the box, arriving as a surprise element for second balls and generally just shooting! Xabi Alonso can launch thunderbolts from distance but he tends to do so only when the play has stalled to a static stage with the opposition defence already amassed on the edge of its 18-yard box. What is needed to punctuate Spain's neat mastication of passes when approaching the final third is a dynamic presence, the arrival of a midfielder who will break the lines and carry the ball beyond the defensive barriers before either culminating or else setting up another attacker.

RT @flimgoblin: Wonderful retrospective on Sensible Soccer by @kierongillen http://bit.ly/9S8DK1 (nostalgia attack!)

"True, this doesn't look a vintage Italian side. But how many do? 2006 wasn't. Nor was 1990 (which needed Schillaci's surprise emergence) and even 1982 doesn't always get the respect due a side that defeated Argentina, Brazil and West Germany in a single tournament."

"Firstly, and most importantly, the site that you’ve decided to “regularly monitor” is no longer being updated. Had you taken the trouble to look further than the one page that seems to have attracted your attention, you would have noticed that there have been no updates to the site since as long ago as 2006; the address that you cite quite clearly lists the Watford FC fixtures for the 2005/06 season rather than anything more recent. As far as we are aware, neither NetResult nor Football DataCo Limited make any claim to copyright over past events, nor have any legal basis for preventing absolutely anyone from displaying such information; we eagerly look forward to any attempt to claim ownership of universally-available historical facts with great amusement."

The investment into English academies and under-18 setups appears to be paying off: The U-17s win the first age group tournament in over 15 years. It will be interesting to see how many players from Watford start to be included in younger England teams now that their well-regarded Harefield academy is starting to produce first-team players.

NEW ON ZM: Two friendlies lead Capello back to square one http://bit.ly/d8nXyM
– Zonal Marking (Zonal_Marking) http://twitter.com/Zonal_Marking/statuses/15051243296

Good piece by Susy Campanale at @footballitalia about Cesare Prandelli getting the Italy job http://www.football-italia.net/blogs/sc116.html
– Zonal Marking (Zonal_Marking) http://twitter.com/Zonal_Marking/statuses/15033895681

Paul Wilson on the England players unlikely to survive Fabio Capello's seven-man cull: http://bit.ly/aOAgql
– Guardian sport (guardian_sport) http://twitter.com/guardian_sport/statuses/15032253595

RT @guardian_sport: RT @DTguardian 'Mail and MoS unwelcome at #Newcastle for foreseeable future' http://bit.ly/cld6NQ

ITV's coverage for the World Cup sounds like it will be absolutely awful http://bit.ly/bRALec
– Zonal Marking (Zonal_Marking) http://twitter.com/Zonal_Marking/statuses/14836332612

NEW ON ZM: Mexico's fluid shape makes them dark horses http://bit.ly/dmClM6
– Zonal Marking (Zonal_Marking) http://twitter.com/Zonal_Marking/statuses/14825290012

RT @Zonal_Marking: NEW ON ZM: Tactical analysis of England’s system http://bit.ly/bJcIaZ Diagrams, annotated photos, videos...it's got i ...

After 30 years, the truth behind Johann Cruyff's World Cup absence: http://j.mp/cxszWD

Friendly internationals are regularly derided as meaningless spectacles with no real benefit other than gate receipts for the national football association. That said, England's match against Egypt at Wembley this coming Wednesday evening is primarily intended to give England experience in playing against an African nation, ahead of their match with Algeria in this summer's World Cup.

Wilson points out that it also provides the opportunity for England to play against a team that line up using 3-5-2, a formation that has largely fallen out of favour in recent years back to the perennial 4-4-2 and the 4-5-1/4-3-3 variant that is currently in vogue. In an article similar to a section of his 'Inverting the Pyramid' book, he draws on the work of Brazilian coach Nelsinho Baptista that explores how the 4-2-3-1 formation currently employed by Capello might nullify Egypt's threat.

Wilson's thoughts on 11 vs. 10 in football are equally applicable to almost any aspect of life where the balance is suddenly tipped in your favour: keep doing what you were doing. "If [Alf Ramsey's] game-plan was the right one against a sub-system of 11 men, he seems to have reasoned, it remained the right one when that sub-system had been weakened by the removal of its key element."

"From the danger of highlights to celebrity undermining the team, that box in your living room could be shaping the sport's future."