TI #024: Why Football Is a System, Not a Formation
Timeless Insights #024
For decades, tactical analysis in football was built on observation. Coaches, scouts, and analysts watched the game, interpreted shapes, and described what they believed they saw. One team looked compact. Another controlled midfield. A striker occupied defenders well. A back line was too deep. Much of it was insightful, but much of it also lived in language rather than evidence.
Then tracking data changed the landscape.
Once every player could be located multiple times per second, football gained something it had never fully possessed before: a measurable map of collective behaviour. Suddenly, spacing could be quantified. Synchronisation could be tested. Defensive reactions could be timed. Tactical analysis no longer had to rely purely on description.
The authors published it at a moment when the game was beginning to move from intuition-led tactical commentary toward data-supported tactical understanding. Long before tracking departments became standard, before pressing metrics entered mainstream discourse, and before clubs openly discussed machine learning, the authors asked a question that still sits at the centre of modern football analytics:
What if tactics could be measured through movement patterns rather than explained after the fact?
It sounds simple now. At the time, it was a statement about where the game was heading.
Football is not a formation — it is a relationship network
One of the strongest ideas in the paper is that formations alone tell us very little.
A team may begin in a 4-3-3, 4-4-2 or 3-5-2, but tactical performance depends less on the lineup graphic and more on how players coordinate with teammates and opponents over time. A formation is the opening frame. The real tactical story begins only after the ball starts moving.
Using tracking data from a high-level match between FC Bayern Munich and FC Barcelona, the authors explored three themes:
inter-player coordination
inter-team and inter-line coordination before critical moments
tactical interactions and compactness
That framework still maps neatly onto how many elite clubs structure modern analysis departments.
Some analysts focus on internal relationships: distances between players, line integrity, occupation of zones. Others focus on opposition interaction: how one press disrupts another build-up, how one block reacts to rotations, how transitions distort shape. Others still focus on outcomes: which patterns actually lead to territory, shots, or ball recoveries.
This paper was already working in that direction before the industry fully caught up.
Structure often depends on the players who move least
The first major insight explored predictability of movement behaviour.
By measuring how players moved relative to the centroid of their line or positional unit, the authors found that some players displayed highly stable and repeatable movement patterns. Central defenders, for example, were among the most predictable.
That might sound unremarkable but you must think about what tactical stability actually provides.
In most good teams, freedom for some players is only possible because others maintain structure. If centre-backs consistently hold distances and protect rest defence, full-backs can advance. If one midfielder reliably covers central space, another can attack the box. If a striker pins defenders with disciplined occupation, wide forwards can rotate inside.
This is one of the enduring tensions in squad building.
Every coach wants creativity, improvisation and unpredictability in the final third. But every coach also needs enough repeatability behind the ball for the team to remain functional. Elite teams are rarely eleven free spirits. They are usually a carefully balanced mix of anchors and disruptors.
The paper gives us a language for this. Tactical order is not just about coaching commands. It is often carried by the movement habits of specific players.
Chances are usually created long before they look dangerous
Last week we look at a method which tried to find patterns in what happened 10 seconds before a shot:
In this case, the second major insight of the paper comes from examining the 30 seconds before shots and goals.
Rather than focusing only on the final pass or finish, the authors tracked how distances between teams and between lines changed in the build-up to critical moments. They found increasing variability, especially between attacking and defending lines, before chances emerged.
That finding remains hugely relevant because modern football discussion still tends to over-credit the final action.
We praise the assist.
We criticise the missed chance.
We analyse the goalkeeper’s position.
But many decisive moments begin far earlier.
A chance may really start when midfield spacing is broken twenty seconds before the shot. It may begin when a defensive line hesitates over whether to step or drop. It may begin when two forwards exchange positions and force centre-backs into unfamiliar references.
This is one reason elite video analysts spend so much time studying the possession chain rather than the final touch. By the time the shot happens, the tactical damage is often already done.
And that leads to an even bigger question.
If danger emerges from small spatial instabilities long before the shot, then what exactly should clubs be measuring now?
