The legendary Red Devils coach: The road to success

Chapter 191 Taking off from the side

"Ferguson creatively used two very distinctive wingers, creating a new situation for quick wing attack. Ferguson's double wingers on the tactical level are not just one trick, but are constantly changing, constantly innovating, perfecting offensive play, and opening up new horizons."

--Inscription

For a long time, almost all clubs in English football have played in the 442 formation. Their tactical thinking is also a continuation of the traditional style of play, with few changes. Coaches still insist on the 442 formation, with two forwards in the front and the four midfielders basically standing in parallel. The two wingers are both offensive and defensive, mainly in a supporting role, and the central players are mainly responsible for sweeping the midfield and protecting the backcourt. The team is more likely to implement simple rushing tactics, or rely on the individual ability of the attacking players to fight alone, leaving the strong forwards to solve the problem.

As soon as Ferguson arrived at Manchester United, he was determined to rebuild the team and naturally innovate the Red Devils' playing style. In 1990, he was determined to inherit and continue the Red Devils' previous wing attack tactics, strengthen the attacking ability of the wing, and let the left and right wing players have stronger attacking ability, break the opponent's defense system, and directly create opportunities.

Ferguson also highly advocated wing attack during his time at Aberdeen, but he never made this tactic the most critical. After coming to the Red Devils, he considered the difficulties his team faced when facing the opponent's frontal defense and the limitations of wing crosses, and decided to greatly enhance the attacking responsibilities of the two wingers in the 442 formation, allowing the wingers to transform into wingers. Such inheritance and bold innovation are natural for the Red Devils, but it is really a surprising thing in this league. The success of such innovation subsequently triggered a wave of follow-up in the league.

It is an extraordinary innovation in English football to transform the wingers in the traditional 442 formation into more offensive wingers, and rely directly on the wingers to attack the opponent's defense and tear open space.

Ferguson's winger tactics are not the fast-paced 433 of Dutch football. They emphasize the rapid movement of the whole team and coordinated protection. Such tactics require a comprehensive operation, which is very damaging and has a huge impact. The English football soil is unable to provide enough player resources, and Ferguson himself is not a disciple of this school. Ferguson's reform is an innovation based on the popular 442 in England, emphasizing the attack of the two wingers and improving the attacking ability of the wingers, especially emphasizing the speed, breakthrough, cutting inside, and creating penalty opportunities and shooting opportunities in the penalty area.

This is a way of thinking that Ferguson has integrated after learning the all-out attack and defense style of Dutch football and the traditional English full-back cross-field play. This unique style of play emphasizes the expansion of the horizontal and vertical attack area through the depth of the wing. This is very different from the 433 winger configuration, which only emphasizes the attack on the front two wings. Ferguson's research on winger tactics has been sublimated. He has brought forth new ideas and innovated the wing tactics in the British football, a country without the technical advantage of footwork.

In the history of football, the wing is an extremely important area. The development of winger tactics has always been a major issue. In Manchester United, Ferguson's innovative wing tactics made the team win brilliant success. This is the uniqueness of Manchester United and Ferguson's greatness.

In modern football theory, winger is a traditional term and also a representative name of a style and school of play. In the early days of modern football, center forwards were very popular, and offense was simply a rush or a center forward entangled in the opponent's frontcourt and looked for scoring opportunities. After the idea of ​​focusing on defense emerged, sometimes strong offensive players would be tightly entangled by the opponent's defenders, or the offensive team's long passes were inaccurate and difficult to find their own tall players, and the offense became helpless.

In order to solve the problem of the center's weak attack, a fast player gradually appeared on the field to rush on the wing and break the opponent's defense by attacking from the wing. This winger can break through and then cut into the penalty area to shoot or cross from a better position. This time marks the emergence of the winger role and winger tactics. At this time, football showed the most basic offensive means - technology, strength and speed. As the wing attack was unimpeded, the winger became a combination of speed and technology.

After the 70s, the offensive and defensive order was constantly changing, and the defensive and offensive forces were increasingly balanced. The previous 109 and 127 lineups, which were heavy at the top and light at the bottom, disappeared, and more 1243, 2332, 2323, 3241, 4132, 3331, 433, etc. appeared on the court. In order to pay more attention to defense and the balance between offense and defense, starting from the 80s, teams gradually gave up the wingers who played an outstanding role in offense but were not good at defense, and chose more wingers with balanced offense and defense. In this way, the classic tactical position of winger began to gradually fade out of the mainstream.

Although wingers are better at attacking than defending, they find it difficult to retreat when defending, resulting in a fatal flaw of having few defenders at the back. Even so, wingers can continuously accelerate the offense of the football during the game, which is the key to breaking the balance. Because his advantage is speed, which requires not only absolute speed, but also turning speed, short-distance sprint speed and acceleration ability. The presence of a good winger will make the football move faster and faster, just like a bullet out of a gun, rushing straight towards the target, and all obstacles are broken. In the world of wingers, the opponent has almost no time to deploy defenses a second time. Breaking through once is directly fatal. This is the ultimate goal pursued by the wingers. A great winger must be obsessed with offense. Only faster and sharper attacks each time are the value of the winger's existence.

The wingers first appeared in the WM formation created by Chapman in the 20s, but at that time they were more focused on scoring, and the wingers were used for direct breakthroughs and shooting. Later, Hungary and Brazil adopted a 4-forward system, and purer wingers began to appear, known for their speed and dribbling, which gave the audience great enjoyment. Brazil's Vava, Zagallo and Garrincha brought the realm of wingers to a dazzling and showy field. Under their feet, the football was like a lover, and the opponent's defense was just a wave barrier.

After the 80s, the world football lineup evolved into 442 as the mainstream, and the wingers were transformed into wing forwards, and were given more defense and defense tasks. The previous skills such as assault, shooting, dribbling, etc. were gradually put into the old paper pile. Under the configuration of 4 midfielders, those fast and good at breaking through the wing forwards are often limited by tactical discipline and have no room to play. Only some teams that insist on the 433 lineup will have two pure wingers among the three forwards. In the late 80s, with the rise of utilitarian football, wingers were accused of showing off their skills and being flashy. The wingers' play was no longer useless. Many teams gradually reduced their dependence on wingers, and the winger tactics also went from popular to gradually declining. Among all the world's strong teams at that time, only the Netherlands still insisted on using wingers under the influence of the all-out attack and defense tactical thinking.

In the first few years after Ferguson came to the Red Devils, there were very few teams in the British continent that could stick to the winger style of play, or even almost none. Even if there were good wingers, such as Barnes who played for Watford and Liverpool, they did not really make the winger position shine again. Barnes' success was still labeled as a striker by the British, and he was a rare striker who could break through from the wing. Even if Barnes was so outstanding, Liverpool did not really form a winger style of play at that time. Liverpool dominated the English League One in the 80s, and was better than other opponents in terms of technology. It relied on overall strength and the comprehensive technical advantages of Beardsley and others in the midfield. At that time, they did not strengthen the winger style of play. Even for a super winger like Barnes, they did not design a wing tactic specifically for him, but returned to simple British football. Some fans even said that throughout the late 80s, British football was playing low-level football games, with low-level tactical literacy and stadium deployment. Compared with the European continent, there is nothing to be proud of.

This situation gradually changed after Ferguson came to the Red Devils.

Starting from 1987, Ferguson began to gradually transform the Red Devils' style of play. At the beginning, Ferguson's Red Devils emphasized ground attack, abandoning the simple and mechanical style of play such as center forward and long pass. At that time, the Red Devils with Strachan and Robson were still quite good at central attack. After 1990, the Red Devils, without Strachan, Robson was injured and could not be used, the Red Devils' central road no longer had any support, and no advantage over other teams. So, under Ferguson's insistence, the Red Devils played a wing attack. In 1990, Lee Sharpe made a big splash. The vigorous and youthful Red Devils star opened up the wing corridor for the Red Devils. Under his effective attack, Wallace, Robins and others were also able to make a fuss on the wing, and even Mark Hughes would play tricks on the wing.

The Red Devils won the FA Cup by opening up a gap through attacking from the flanks.

With the FA Cup championship as endorsement, Ferguson began to strengthen the wing attack.

Analyzing the Red Devils' wing attack, we can see that it is actually Ferguson's inheritance and development of the winger tactics. The Red Devils' wing attack has its own characteristics, which is to emphasize the speed and breakthrough of the winger, but also emphasize the balance of offense and defense. The Red Devils use the 442 position more often, assigning the two wingers more wing breakthrough tasks, and giving the wingers the freedom to attack from multiple points and multiple directions. This is very different from the pure wingers. It can be said that Ferguson improved the winger tactics and made up for the fatal flaw of this tactic that it is strong in offense but weak in defense.

The Red Devils under Ferguson have always adhered to the wing attack tactics, and have always adhered to this 442 wing attack. The only change was when Ronaldo shined on the wing. The Red Devils played many front tridents in the 2007-2008 season, and the 433 wing attack was extremely sharp. When Ronaldo left, the current Red Devils returned to the traditional wing attack.

Since Ferguson came to the Red Devils, there have actually been several generations of good wingers. Lee Sharpe, Giggs and Kanchelskis, Giggs and Poborski, Giggs and Beckham, Giggs and Solskjaer, Fletcher, Giggs, Ronaldo and Nani, Giggs and Nani, Valencia, Nani, Valencia and Ashley Young. It can be said that almost every generation of Red Devils under Ferguson has flying wings. The Red Devils' wing attacking style, under Ferguson's insistence, has been integrated into the players' blood and has become their habit and tacit understanding.

Ferguson's inheritance and exploration of the wing attack style is long-term and constantly changing. He constantly injects fresh blood into the wing attack, injects new content into the Red Devils' offense, constantly replaces the wings for the Red Devils, keeps the Red Devils flying, pushes the Red Devils to fly to a more magnificent sky, and achieves remarkable achievements.

Before the end of the 1990-91 season, Ferguson went to the home stadium of the Ukrainian powerhouse Shakhtar Donetsk to watch several games and inspected their winger Kanchelskiy. At the game, Ferguson was quickly attracted by the Ukrainian powerhouse's wing attacking style and was very impressed with Kanchelskiy, the main force of Shakhtar Donetsk's wing breakthrough and advancement.

At the end of the season, Ferguson made up his mind and bought this winger without waiting for the end of the season.

He is Kanchelskiy, from the Soviet football league powerhouse Shakhtar Donetsk. He has a nickname: Ukrainian Express.