Análise das formações táticas usadas nas principais ligas de futebol profissional

Abstract

Football has undergone several transformations over time, including changes in its rules, the way it is played, the strategic positioning of players on the field of play and the team's capacity for self-organisation in the different phases of the game. The tactical formation in football concerns the organisation of the players on the field, determining the disposition and locations by sectors that each player will occupy during a match. The study used a descriptive-analytical approach, aiming to quantify the most used formations in the main men's professional football leagues in the world, as well as the main characteristics of the preferred formations. Match data containing special statistics from the company OPTA® Sportsdata (Opta Sports, London, UK) were obtained through webscraping, totalling a sample of 20,656 matches in six sampled seasons (2016/2017 to 2021/2022), involving 284 distinct clubs. A total of 21 distinct systems were identified over the six seasons analysed. The five highest frequencies of use reported the formations 4-2-3-1 (n= 11,386; 27.56%); 4-3-3 (n= 8,260; 19.99%); 4-4-2 (n= 6,814; 16.49%); 3-4-3 (n= 2,901; 7.02%); and, 4-1-4-1 (n= 2,511; 6.08%). This ranking remained constant over the analysed timeline. In 78.3% of the matches, the teams presented different tactical formations. The 4-2-3-1 formation manages to align numerical superiority in midfield with players between the lines and in different angles to receive and pass the ball in the offensive phase, being a favourable formation for ball possession. In the defensive phase, the 4-2-3-1 formation provides a good defensive structure to play in a medium or low block, especially protecting the team from penetrations in the central zones. These virtues are also similar to those presented in the 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 references with some peculiarities for each phase of play. In the offensive phase, these three preferred formations can deliver similar tactical references and possession-orientated game ideas. Future studies could explore additional approaches to tactical formations in football by looking at the ideal game model, comparison between schools or game cultures, effects of substitutions and association with indicators of technical-tactical performances and game demands.