This week, FIFA have unveiled their ‘technical report’ on the 2010 World Cup.

Technical reports are, in FIFA’s words, “published after each and every FIFA competition in order to analyse how the game is progressing”. Some of the information is not particularly fascinating, an example being the revelation that “all successful teams have excellent strikers who arecapable of converting goalscoring opportunities that come their way”. Nevertheless, the document does identify some intriguing patterns, and offers a variety of interesting theories about the success, or otherwise, of the 32 teams competing in the tournament.

Even the most ardent football fan would struggle to find the motivation to read all 289 pages of the document, so here’s 15 key quotes, and some comment.

Formations

1. “Of the four semi-finalists, only Uruguay played in a formation that resembled 4-4-2, although the position occupied by Diego Forlan merits further examination. Although he was in principle a striker, he mostly played in an advanced midfield position, behind the team’s main striker, Luis Suarez. In effect, Forlan had a free role and was always looking to keep play moving before driving forward.”

This was the tournament that confirmed the decline of the 4-4-2. Not simply because of the above statement, but because so many sides playing 4-4-2 did poorly and had problems stemming from the system – England, the US and Switzerland notable cases here. Although Uruguay did play with a fairly basic 4-4-2 in some games – in particular the penalty shoot-out win over Ghana, we should note that in addition to the factor of Forlan dropping deep, Uruguay also fielded the Arevalo-Perez combination in every game. Those two are both holding players, both sat very deep and rarely ventured forward, and acted no differently to the double pivot in most 4-2-3-1s. Therefore, even though Uruguay have been identified as playing 4-4-2, the system was not much different from a 4-2-3-1. Read more »