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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...

Jonathan Wilson: Will attacking full-backs win the competition? http://bit.ly/cJmkTB #WorldCup
– Guardian sport (guardian_sport) http://twitter.com/guardian_sport/statuses/16375346348

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."

"The end of the goal poacher and the rebirth of the libero are two trends we are likely to see during the next 10 years."

The always-excellent Jonathan Wilson on the development of tactics, and their symmetry - or lack of it: "England's lack of a natural left-winger is often seen to be their weakness, but Fabio Capello has turned it into an advantage."