By Matt Carroll
A 3-5-2 provides plenty of attacking options in the midfield, but sometimes that can get messy, a “too many cooks” situation. Players can play on top of each other closing down passing or dribbling options, and in a effort to get on the ball players tend to crash central, reducing the width of the attack. One way to reduce the clutter is to create runs from the middle of the field to the corner from an attacking player in phase three of the attack.
Phase three is the point between half and when the ball reaches near the 18 where a final killer pass can be implemented. Phase three sets up the killer pass, so finding ways to get players into phase 4 with time and space is the key. Generally the few passes to get there, and the less amount of time is better, but this is an oversimplification, since most of the time just hoofing the ball into the attacking areas allows time for the defense to recover, so even if a player is able to win a ball in phase 4 from a long ball, they are still missing ⅔ of the key ingredients to a killer pass. Defenses generally set their strongest players in the centerback postiions, and naturally get compact in defensive situations, so using the areas wide of the 18 can often create better positions to find killer pass situations.
In the 3-5-2 there is plenty of overlap in the midfield, which is why there are some issues with redundancy in the formation, so losing one attacking player from the midfield really doesn’t weaken the formation defensively, and on top of it other positions can cover. In this situation the 7 is on the ball. The left sided 9 is going to run to the corner to make a diagonal run between the CB and outside back towards the corner space. The reason the left sided 9 makes the run as opposed to the right is that the right sided 9 will hold that centerback in place, the centerback marking the left sided 9 cannot follow or they will leave a massive gap in the backline. The 10 steps up to replace the 9 and get into an attacking position, if the centerback mistakenly follows the runner this player should be wide open in the box.. The 7 then can play to the 9 and move forward to overlap or sit back defensively and provide cover.
Getting the 9 the ball in this position means that they will receive with either an outside back on their tail, giving them space to attack the box, or the centerback will need to slide to cover, leaving gaps for the 9 to play to the 8,9, and 10 crashing into the box.
By Matt Carroll
