If you thought the 4-4-2 formation left you exposed on the counter, you have not seen the 4-2-4.
Antonio Conte, the current Italy and three time Scudetto winning coach of Juventus is not a stranger to making gutsy decisions, frankly some would claim are insane.
During his days coaching at Bari and the early days of the Juventus regime, Conte regularly employed the 4-2-4 formation, allowing his wingers to take on the sole responsibility of attacking instead of tracking back and helping defend.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
From a tactician’s prospective, this is ultimately used to overload a defense which may sit back behind the ball for the majority of the game.
As a case example, Italy vs Azerbaijan, which the Italians won 3-1 proved to be a double-edged sword. It worked great going forward, but there was a defensive miscue on a counter attack that surrendered the cleansheet for the Azzurri.
When playing a side you would consider a “minnow”, or a significantly smaller side, this ideology that Conte routinely employed in Serie A may work also on the international scene.
The only problem with the 4-2-4 is it’s a significant variation of what the Italians usually play, and it limits the amount of center midfielders that can be deployed at once, which is one of Italy’s biggest strengths. Claudio Marchisio, Daniele De Rossi and Andrea Pirlo alone did not play in either of Italy’s most recent games, and they are undoubtedly starters heading into France 2016.
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Another problem is the mobility of players like Pirlo and Daniele De Rossi, who are past their prime in terms of fitness. Even against a side like Bulgaria, the Italians were cut open on the counter. Compounding the problem is the lack of a solid defense, which has kept a clean sheet only twice in 2015 (8 games) and only four times in the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifiers (10 games).
This goes without mentioning that come the time of the finals in June, Italy will not be playing teams like Azerbaijan, Malta and Bulgaria. Odds are they will be in the group stage with a team like France, Spain or Portugal.
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The problem come tournament time for Italy will be finding ways to score goals. This qualification round was very difficult to break down, with teams like Malta, Azerbaijan, Norway and Bulgaria all coming into the fixtures playing with 10 men behind the ball. It was natural for Conte to look to the 4-2-4, which I would lobby that he should have done long before the Azerbaijan game, but I digress.
Italy is going to have to find most likely individuals, rather than a system who can score goals. The most comfortable system that Italy has right now is arguably the 4-3-3, which offers more attacking power than the 4-3-1-2, but it’s unclear how it can hold up in the finals.
This will be Antonio Conte’s first international tournament and he will be potentially going up against the likes of Joachim Low, Didier Deschamps, Roy Hodgson or Vicente del Bosque, All whom have managed or even won a World Cup. For Antonio Conte it will be time to stake his claim among the premier coaches in the world.
Hopefully for the Azzurri faithful, the Lecce native can find a formula that brings more smiles to La Nazionale, much like Cesare Prandelli’s 2012 venture in Poland and Ukraine.
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