Dummy Give & Go

This is a combination play that has almost been forgotten, mainly because in recent times most team have either played a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3. With the success of Leicester City in the Premier League playing a 4-4-2 and even other teams adopting the formation such as Watford the formation is seeing somewhat of a revival. Of course you lose midfield superiority but what you lose in midfield you gain in attack. With 2 strikers it is much easier to manipulate the movements of the 2 central defenders. And if you do not play a possession game and say play either a direct game or counter attack game having 2 strikers can be very effective.

The dummy give and go is just one combination and like everything should be used in the right scenario. Way back in 1998, Manchester United played Barcelona at the Nou Camp in a thrilling game that eventually ended 3-3. One of the goals in this game was via a dummy give and go (which is on YouTube and I advise you to watch it). The reason it was successful is because the two strikers in question were Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole. You would not consider either of these individuals the greatest strikers in history but they had one of the deadliest partnerships arguably in history. With both of these strikers playing in a 4-4-2, Man Utd won the treble (Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League) something that has not been done before or since.

So if you play 4-4-2 already or want to, you must make a commitment for your two strikers to work together as a partnership, not as two individual players. They must be both want the other player to score and have an unselfishness about their own personal stats and play for the team. Now if you can get 2 players who can combine well together and have this personality the combination of the dummy give and go can cause huge unrest for defenses.

Execution:

The aim of this game is to get the ball wide as often as possible to one of the two neutrals, they then run with the ball down the wing to just before the striker zone.

Once in position the striker closest to the ball comes forward, to create a line between the 3 players. On the right we see the beginning of the move that lead to the goal for Man Utd against Barcelona in 1998.

Because of the position of the striker and ball being passed to them, the defender marking them steps forward out of position. They believe that the striker will control the ball, but instead the striker lets the ball run through his legs to the striker behind them.

After the dummy the striker then runs around the defender who has stepped towards them to receive the ball off the 2nd striker.

In the practice the striker should shoot at this moment, however in the game because they are still some way from goal Dwight Yorke sees the defense coming across to him, therefore out of position so he passes the ball back across to Andy Cole who now has the opportunity to score.

This goal is only one instance where they scored from the dummy give and go, because of their intelligence and team work they were able to score from this combination throughout the seasons they played together, but only when the scenario was right.

To increase the difficulty for the practice, allow a player from the midfield zone to be able to enter the striking zone in order to stop the pass through to the other striker. If the first striker sees a player doing this then they should take a touch around the mannequin and shoot.