Tactics

It was a foggy Saturday morning soccer match and I was defending the goal spectating the action going on the field. I had stopped a few shots earlier in the match and my confidence was quickly rising. Thoughts raced through my head, realizing that I was about to officially record my first clean sheet of the season. Then as clear as day the ball was passed to me, and as I went to stop it with my foot it slowly but surely skipped right below my outstretched foot and into the awaiting net behind me.

MANCHESTER, England - Even the best players in the world have not been spared Pep Guardiola's attacking tactical innovations.

"I was called up to Guardiola's office and he said he had thought about me playing as a false nine," Barcelona's Lionel Messi said last year. "He was going to put Samuel Eto'o and Thierry Henry on the outside, and I was going to play as the false center forward."

Football was changed forever in the 1950's by a man named Charles Reep, a retired Wing Commander from the British Royal Air Force. After watching and meticulously analyzing hundreds of soccer games, Reep came to the conclusion that the majority of goals in soccer come from moves of three passes or fewer.

This simple deduction shaped British football from that point on, changing it from a game based on individual dribbling ability and guile into a long ball jamboree and war of field position. Thus, England became a country known for aerial duels and rough and tumble soccer.

Memories of the Premier League 10-15 years ago conjure up very specific visions, with the nostalgia usually centering around someone hitting the piss out of a classic Nike ball.

No 2000s soccer mixtape was complete without some random gangly defender hitting a 40-yard rocket to the top corner, Wayne Rooney burying a dipping half-volley or a center midfielder charging forward and doing unspeakable things to a one-touch shot from long range.

With soccer tactics constantly changing, certain types of players are not always accommodated.

Roles like the libero, trequartista, striker partnerships and burly center backs have become, or are quickly becoming, outdated in modern football. Other roles like ball-playing goalkeepers, false nines and wingers that cut inside onto their stronger foot have become very trendy.

This often leaves current players wishing they had played in a previous decade and former players wishing their career had started a little later. Ah, what could have been.

The FA Cup is one of football's most prominent cup competitions due to the tournament's proclivity for surprise upsets and underdog stories. Despite the absence of fan support, this season's FA Cup has still seen its share of upsets.

Four non-league clubs reached the FA Cup Third Round, but only one progressed to the next step in the competition 

Few things in sports are as difficult as predicting results of future games. According to Chris Anderson and David Sally, authors of The Numbers Game, soccer is 50 percent luck and 50 percent skill. Add in an overwhelming number of professional leagues and players and the low-scoring nature of matches, soccer is one of the most unpredictable sports. 

We’re at a point in football where there’s no reinventing the wheel. Everything’s been done before, and the introduction of and emphasis on things like video analysis, data tracking and sabermetrics translates into a more uniform approach than ever before.

Manager Sam Allardyce brought his West Brom side to Anfield on Sunday as massive underdogs. His Baggies had just one win all season and were on the road against league leaders Liverpool. 

Big Sam brought out his big guns: the rarely seen 6-4-0 formation, which West Brom stuck to despite conceding an early Sadio Mane goal. 

Got to love the West Brom 6-4-0 fromation pic.twitter.com/6UZJk7hA38