Basic Tactics: Shape

In soccer, the way in which a team of players lines up is called a team's shape or formation. Shape is an important part of tactics. Depending on what kind of players a team has, and what their particular skills are, a manager needs to field them in a way that harnesses those skills to maximum effect. While footballers are generally more fluid in their ability to move around the pitch, generally speaking players tend to stick to the part of the pitch assigned to them in the team shape. In this article, we'll talk about how a shape is organized, how notation defining a shape is written. We'll go into the specifics of different formations in later articles.

How is the sport structured? Transfers

Let's talk about player movement.

How is the sport structured? - The Cup

In our post on league structure, I mentioned that soccer leagues tend not to have playoffs determine championships as American sports do. Instead, league titles are decided through the regular season. Instead of playoffs, nearly every national league has a Cup title, which is the second trophy a team can win in a season, though it is usually considered less prestigious than winning the league title. In this article, we'll discuss how Cup competitions work, and how they differ from the classic concept of the playoffs.

Basic tactics: Philosophy

(This article owes a lot of credit to the excellent Mr. Btongue's youtube video on soccer, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT3PElHuxCY)

In this article, we're going to discuss the basics of team philosophy. Philosophy is probably the most basic thing to organizing a team; determining positions, choosing players, deciding on formation, all those things are based off of a team's philosophy.

How is the sport structured? - Domestic leagues

Parallel to the posts on tactics, I'm going to write a series of posts on how the different competitions in soccer work. I think it's safe to say that there isn't anything quite like the league format of professional soccer in the USA.

Basic Tactics: The positions

Now that we know the rules, let's expand our knowledge. I'm going to start talking about the different positions on a soccer team. In this article, we'll talk about how positions are defined, and very briefly describe each of the basic positions. Then, we'll expand in a series of articles that talk in greater depth about what each position does, what kind of attributes you need to play that position, etc.

Laws 15 - 17: Throw-ins, goal kicks, and corners

Law 15: Throw-ins

A throw-in is taken when the ball crosses one of the touchlines and goes out of play. The team that kicked the ball out of play loses possession of the ball, and the other side gets to take a throw-in. During a throw-in, a designated player stands out of bounds and, as the name suggests, throws the ball back into play. This is the only time during play that a non-goalkeeper may touch the ball with their hands. Opposing players must stand at least two meters away from the player taking the throw-in. The player who throws the ball in cannot touch it again until it touches at least one other player (so they can't throw it to themselves). Lastly a player cannot score a goal by throwing the ball into the opposing net.