New To PPM Football? An Introduction To Soccer Formations

Soccer is among the worlds most played sports. As you can imagine, there are a great number of managers on PPM who actively play the soccer manager game. There are however, also a great number of hockey people who are getting involved in the soccer game who naturally have loads of questions. One of the more common questions has to do with formations.

So, what exactly "are" formations?

The term formation refers to how your players are positioned on the playing field. A field is divided into 3 primary zones; Offensive, Midfield and defensive. Each of those zones is then divided into 3 areas, 2 wings (left and right) and a center. When describing a formation, the order is Defensive-Midfield-Offensive, and represented by numbers defining how many players in each zone. For example if you had 4 defenders, 4 midfielders and 2 attackers, you would describe that as 4-4-2.

Common Formations

The most basic of combinations is the 4-4-2 formation where you have 4 defenders, 4 midfielders and 2 attackers. This gives you a well balanced game.

Another common formation is 4-3-3. This one gives you strong defense and a powerful attack but does leave you very weak in the midfield. This formation is popular if you have a few very strong midfield players.

A less popular formation is to run with 3 defenders, which gives you an offensively minded playing style. 3-5-2 and 3-4-3 are the 2 best options if you opt to go with this formation, however make sure you have good quality defenders if you're going against a stronger team.

Advanced Formations

Once you get more comfortable with the idea of formations you can start to play with the more advanced formations. these often require training your players a certain way.

The most common style of advanced formation is to split the center midfiend zone into 2, where you have midfield defense and midfield attack. Quite often managers will train midfielders with high shooting and technique and use them as an attacking midfielder. The same goes if you train defense in midfielders, and put them into the center midfield defense position. This gives you more options in the midfield as you can have your midfield staggered to cover more of the field. When you do this, you end up with a 5 positioned formation such as 4-1-2-1-2 (4 defense, 1 midfield defense, 2 side midfield, 1 midfield attack and 2 attackers).

This is a 4-1-2-1-2 formation using midfield attack and midfield defensive positions

You can also stagger your attack and defensive players so your wing defenders are positioned slightly closer to the midfield zone, or have your wingers back on the end-line and your center defenders up a bit. As you may have guessed, you can essentially use any formation that you so wish.

At PPM the field positions you have available are varied, as you can see from the image of my current football formation above. This is the 4-1-2-1-2 formation that I previously mentioned.

Winning games is about having good players and playing good formations. If you have a team with weak midfielders, play a formation that puts more strength in the midfield (ie. more players). If you have incredibly strong midfielders but weak defenderrs, look to play 4 or even 5 defenders and only 3 midfielders.

As with everything PPM related, trial and error is the best way to play the game. You might be surprised just how much better your team can be if you find the perfect formation for your players.