Anyone on here - seriously - understand football tactics deeply ?

Well I have a genuine question. I mean, I understand footie tactics on a basic level but not really to the level of coaching or anything. But I do understand the tactics of yank football to a pretty deep level.

Now, if we had a player that nobody could handle to the point where they would man-mark him, rather than totally change system which would make that player less effective anyway, and also mean we wouldn't be playing in the philosophy we wanted to, what we would often do in poof rugby is to trade him off.

That would mean basically playing 10 v 10, and using this other player to drag one of their best defensive players (as man markers often are), totally out of position all game, creating space for the other players.

Can you do the same in footie ? I think that kind of thing is far less obvious than just switching totally to a 4-4-2 or something which we haven't used effectively for a couple of years.

Posted By: Steve in Holland, Feb 20, 17:15:50