Name: Using the 4-2-3-1 Formation in 11v11 Soccer - Principles of Play
Uploaded: 2025-05-03
Duration: 16 min 9 s
Channel: Coach KW
Description: The numbers don’t tell the whole story - having a coherent set of principles of play no matter the formation is one of the most important things a coach…

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Part of the series: The Big Picture, 11v11

About this video

The numbers don’t tell the whole story - having a coherent set of principles of play no matter the formation is one of the most important things a coach needs to communicate to a team - what do you do when we have the ball? When we lose it? I explain how to define a set of principles of play using the 11v11 formation of the 4-2-3-1. I also explain why I think the 4-2-3-1 played in the described fashion is an ideal formation for young 11v11 teams. 00:00 - Kick-off 01:22 - The formation numbers don’t mean anything 02:58 - Basic 4-2-3-1 Shape 03:38 - Playing out from the back 05:00 - In Possession - Position of Ball is Trigger 06:34 - Ball dictates movement 07:05 - Creating Attacking Overloads 07:29 - Why this concept is good for young 11v11 teams 08:17 - Loss of Possession 09:21 - Transition to Defense 09:52 - Defending into a 4-5-1 10:41 - The difference between a formation and principles of play 10:58 - Strengths and Weaknesses of our Principles in the 4-2-3-1 13:34 - Post-Game Wrap-up Playlists: 9v9: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpUycE4Fq1TE1gJT67VeG4_EEq24RRYtJ 7v7: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpUycE4Fq1TEZU65U8W-2Ll-NTTD23hXP Big Picture: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpUycE4Fq1TG__907rrtzDrgm7Y940xR8 Sessions and Drills: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpUycE4Fq1TF0ls71Zhq0PBL514IF91WU Futsal: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpUycE4Fq1THDbZz8K-XDeROSyiQJ1jS5 Full Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQkkm5iE_Xld9p49k7dlog?sub_confirmation=1 Get the AI Camera for soccer that doesn't nickel and dime you! https://partner.reeplayer.com/soccercoachkw Amazon Coaching Items: Kwik Goal Digital Ball Pump: https://amzn.to/4blZmoK Small Tactics Board: https://amzn.to/48Ug0tP Small Magnets (Light): https://amzn.to/43iHk3S Small Magnets (Dark): https://amzn.to/3wUh6bM Big White Board: https://amzn.to/3x0NBoU Large Soccer Tactics Board: https://amzn.to/3VhzO7d Large Magnets: https://amzn.to/48RGiNv Large Magnets: https://amzn.to/3VfQxIc Waterproof Stickers: https://amzn.to/3Vfhn3b Folding Goals - High Quality: https://amzn.to/3AEITP7 Books: https://amzn.to/4jNrsOC - How to Coach Girls - Are you coaching a girls team? Th is little book is invaluable to understanding the different mindset and dynamics, esp. if you only coached boys soccer (or don't have girls) Coaching younger players? Give this a look for some innovative ideas: https://amzn.to/40RI9j7 Scoreboard Soccer: Creating the Environment to Develop Young Players https://amzn.to/40MuPNb - Soccer Starts at Home General Coaching or Soccer/Football Books: https://amzn.to/4hGf1BP The Coach’sGuide to Teaching: What great classroom teachers do is relevant to coaches in profound ways. After all, coaches are at their core teachers. Lemov knows that coaches face many of the same challenges found in the classroom, so the science of learning applies equally to them. https://amzn.to/3EvW332 Football's Principles of Play - We all know the standard principles of soccer (right?!) - this book looks at those, and then multiple other ways to break down the game, with good example sessions to drills to illustrate the points. https://amzn.to/3DUAY2q - Constrained - Constraints Led Approach Connected to Principles of Play - Great book about using rules and limitations to change player behavior in game-like activities https://amzn.to/4gvYSOT - Inverting The Pyramid Most Dan Blank's Books are worth it for at least ideas to incorporate: https://amzn.to/3CwNKUd - Soccer iQ Presents... POSSESSION: Teaching Your Team to Keep the Darn Ball https://amzn.to/4hSlpGV - Soccer IQ: Things That Smart Players Do, Vol. 1 https://amzn.to/4gxhOwE - Everything Your Coach Never Told You Because You're a Girl: and other truths about winning Lastly - really interesting concept - having 10 or so standard layouts for a practice sessions, and then dozens of different drills that use the same setups (Amazon UK only): https://amzn.to/4hKGxyy Essential Practices for Player Development: The Ultimate Program for an Entire Season of Training soccer strategies and tactics, coaching soccer formations and tactics, best soccer formations, how to teach offside in soccer, best 7v7 soccer formations, best 9v9 soccer formations, football tactics for beginners As a memeber of the Amazon Affiliate program, I earn a small commission off items you may buy off these links. Thank you!

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Transcript

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Hello coaches. Welcome back. Coach KW here uh for another video. I skipped a week, not on purpose. I recorded one of my 9v9 practices with the idea of having

a great video for you all. The wind was blowing so hard that it actually moved my GoPro during the practice so that it turned ever so slightly as the practice

went along until it was cutting off enough of the field on the far side that you couldn't even see my players. I was super annoyed. I'm going to redo that

practice again. Anyways, so hopefully I'll have uh that video. It was really a great video uh I had planned and you know best light plans. Today what I'm

going to do is something a little different. We're going to look at 11v1 uh because eventually we all get there but two other reasons. First, it's another great example of how a formation

doesn't mean it describes how your team is going to play. And why I say this is uh on one of the Reddit forums I'm an active member in uh somebody asked why

can't my team score more playing my 433 and myself and a bunch of coaches said that doesn't give us enough information.

How do you play your 4-33? There's lots of different ways to do it. What are you telling your players to do when you have the ball? When you don't have the ball?

Who's responsible for X, Y, and Z? So, I want to do this 4231 in the 11 v11 as another example of the numbers don't mean anything until you've put

definitions behind why it is you're asking your players to do certain things in certain situations. And lastly, I had made a video for 4231 as a private video

for some viewers a while ago. So, if you went to my channel and you were looking for that video, you can't find it unless you had the specific link because I had

made it for another organization. I had to kind of uh deidentify it. And so, I just made it as a private video uh while I was in that process. And tonight's the

night where I'm going to redo that. So, let's take a look at this presentation.

We'll talk about the 4231. We'll talk about why I think it's a great formation for players moving out of 99 in your young ages and grades seven and eight.

And we'll also talk about how it is that when we look at a formation, it's really important to make definitions as to what it is you're doing in that formation

because the numbers don't tell the whole story as I hope you've learned from watching other videos of mine. All right, let's go. Okay, so here we are at the

beginning of the presentation. So, we're talking about the 4231. Uh it's a simplified uh general principles of play. It's a formation that we have my town use as we move into

11v1 for grade 7. Unfortunately, we don't get to keep our players in grade eight because they go off to our high school. Although, for our travel teams

that play high school level in the spring, we do ask that we play this and it's been super successful because again, you're getting lots of different players from different teams thrown

together. It makes it pretty straightforward. So, let's take a look here. So, here's the basic shape that we want to talk about here. We have a keeper. We've got two center backs, the

five, the four and the five, two fullbacks, the three and the two. We play with a midfield triangle. So there's where the two it's a pair of

sixes. This is a double pivot and you'll see that in a moment. We've got uh a line of three here with our midfield. We got our width coming from our seven and

11 with a 10 in front and a nine. So pretty standard straightforward. You would say, "Okay, great kids, go play with this." But if you're just lining

them up in four straight lines across the field, you're going to be ineffective because it doesn't give your players enough information to be successful. So we talk about here now

when we're playing out of the back. So again, here's a phase of play that happens all the time is the keeper has the ball. So we're now going to define

what we do when we have the ball. So you can see here now our center backs are wide and low. They're closer to the goal. Making sure we don't get too wide

because if you take this five and you push them out wider, it flattens out the angle to the three and the two. It makes it easier to deal with those threes. Of

course, we tell them to keep and the two the fullbacks we keep paint on our shoes, stay wide, move up and down.

We've got two sixes here and we can drop in or pivot as part of our concept here.

and our seven and 11s are looking for pockets of space while the nine staying high looking for occupy those opposing center backs. So again, everybody has a

job, everybody has a role. As you can see here, we talk about in the midfield, we can take that triangle and rotate it.

So if one six drops into a pocket of space, maybe one six rolls out, you could even flip the entire triangle. So it looks like a six and two tens

depending on how you want to play the ball out or what the other team does.

And again, we're giving those directions to those players to say, in this scenario, when the keeper has the ball, here are your options based on what the

other team is doing. So, clear, concise directions for your players. And you can see the rotation comes back on that slide. So, here now we talk about when

we're in possession. So, again, we're being definitive in what we're talking about and why we're talking about it.

And what we say that when we're using this, we're going to use the position of the ball to guide our player placement.

So you can see we've cut the field in half. So we've got a top of the screen and bottom of the screen. So left and right. And we remind everybody that the

strong side is the side that the ball is on and the weak side is the side where the ball isn't. And here are the directions that we deal with. So as

we've played and pushed up, you can see here that my center backs are still occupying the center of the field. But you can see here with the double pivot

and I'll draw this line in here. The double pivot. You can see now that one six has dropped in heading towards the back two to make a little triangle. And

this six has pushed up. At the same time, this fullback has pushed up and this fullback is dropping back to make a line of three across the back. So what

we're saying is here is because the ball is up here in this location on this half of the field. These are the things we want our players to do. We've kept our

width. Our 10 is still here. Seven is still out there. Our nine is looking to stay on side. But the idea here is what we're trying to do is if the ball swings

over, you can see the opposite now. Now that double pivot has happened. We've got those players now swung over. You can see here now this fullback has

jumped out and this fullback is tucked back in and we've slid back over. We're still maintaining our width with our 11 up here. who might even come into this

pocket of space. But the idea is again, it's very simple. The ball dictates what those players do and they have a clear understanding of what it is that you

want them to do here when we're in possession. The idea here is as we do these things, we're looking to create overloads on one side of the field or

the other. So you can see here because we've now pushed further up the field and we've now done that full swing inside this circle. We've got five

attacking players around the ball with support still behind the fact with their center back. The other six, these players probably have are going to swing over even a little bit more um to take

that cover and that player there. But again, we've got lots of players around the ball. And the idea here is in our early years of 11v1, our players don't

have the ability to get into a track race to run those 100 yards and launch 40 and 50 yard passes all the time. We want to use our strengths of what we

learned in 77 and 9v9 to play possession to have support around the ball, play with the ball, and try to overload a team to be able to possess that ball.

That's what we're trying to do here is we're trying to use our strengths, our abilities to counteract the fact that our players being young in seventh and eighth grade and their first

year of 11 v11 are going to find that size of the field difficult to deal with from a physical point of view. And you can see here because we have players all

around the ball, we can use these players to switch the point of attack, come around the center backs. Now you can see the ball is shifting across that

center line and so the pivot is starting to happen. And when that does, we now create overloads on the other side of the field. Now let's talk about when

we're in transition because again this is a phase of play that we want our players to understand. When we lose possession because we have so many players around the ball, it gives us a

circumstance where counterpressing becomes very effective. We're usually going to outnumber the other team. So, if we lose the ball in our attack here, you can see here we've got four players

in a really close proximity to take care of things. In the meantime, we also tell our players what we want from recovery runs from those other positions that are

out there. So, maybe this fullback was a little further out. We're telling them, you're trying to get back in line with your center backs. We're telling this

wide player here to keep an eye on their wide player, the seven that's over here.

Again, the six in the double pivot, they're trying to get back and into position in this area to help support and cut off any play that might go

forward. But again, we're giving them very clear directions in this formation.

When we lose the ball, we should have numbers up and we should try and use that ability to get the ball back quickly while filling in behind to

defend. as we drop in, if our counterpress isn't successful or we've slowed it down, we have enough time to get ourselves back into shape to now set

up in our defensive posture. So now you have a typical back four with a front two screening in those double sixes while the sevens and 11s track their

wide players to keep those fullbacks uh or the wide midfielders covered here. So again, they have a set of directions on what to do when they're out of

possession. And it's an easy concept to talk about. So now as we've dropped in, it almost becomes a 451. And that's what we're telling our players is, hey, we're

collapsing into the middle. We're using the double sixes as a screen or a fence in front of our back four. We're maintaining that tightness that a back

four should do. were shifting and sliding as a unit, but those 11 and seven, they're tucking in and taking care of their wide players to try and

cover them one for one. And so now we have a really compact defensive unit looking to break out. We still have our 10 and our nine up and out there as

somebody to receive that ball. But again, we've given everybody clear, straightforward direction as to what happens in each phase of play when we're breaking out, transitioning to attack,

attacking, transitioning to defense, and then fully in defense. And that's the difference between just saying we play a 42-31 and here are our principles of play in the 4231. That's the big

difference that we have here. So again, we talk about in the big picture when we do this presentation for my teams, we talk about our strengths. The roles are

clearly defined. The location of the ball dictates what the players are doing. It's balanced. We defend with five. We attack with five. In a general sense, it limits the need for extreme

fitness, especially for the fullbacks. They don't have to go doing lung busting runs up and down the field to provide width all the way to the opposite

penalty area. It's flexible. If you're down a goal, you can invert that midfield triangle and all of a sudden you have two tens and a six. So you

could throw six players into the attack uh in terms of a structure. And if you're upper goal, you can drop that 10 back a little bit as more of an eight

and really limit how far up they go just to provide that four and that three in the middle. And you're almost now playing a 4321 in that sort of shape.

Uh, and really just if you really want to do it, you can bring in that seven and 11 and get that 451 shape in. We do talk a little bit about the weaknesses

here. I'll move my window so it's a little easier to see. It's not as dynamic in the attacking third because you are sort of working the ball through

the thirds and using your overloads. But the whole point is if you can do that and you can find the switch, usually that far player on the opposite side,

whether it's that 711 is usually an acres of space. If you've overloaded that side, you're going to pull defenses over to the ball. If you can play

through your 10 or your nine and get to that wide player, you we've had tremendous success because that player now is making a free diagonal run into

the box or at least towards the box. And now as the rest of the defense pulls over, your players who are over overloading one side of the field now

can come up in mass and really provide multiple options in the box for crosses, pullbacks, etc., etc.

Um, where this formation really succeeds is if you have at least four smart, disciplined players for the two and the three, the two fullbacks to know when to

seessaw back and forth. And the same for the double pivots, the two sixes to make sure that they know to stay home, to make that pivot back and forth,

maintaining that structure in the field.

That's where you need about four players to really kind of have their wits about them and understand the game. And that counter press obviously has to be

coordinated because if just one player goes, it's easy to play through. So again, in summary, we have here our basic concept 4231. We've got that midfield triangle, which is what we're

focusing on. And we're talking about how it works almost like a snow plow in defense to push the play out wide and make it predictable. But again, we have

given a job to everybody in this formation so that we know what to do when we have the ball, when we lose the ball, when we're defending our area, and

when we win the ball. So, there you have it. Kind of a threein-one video. We talked about the 42-31, so we understand a little bit about 11v1 tactics. Uh

again, I really strongly recommend this formation for young players going into 11v11 for lots of reasons as we talked about there, but really because it uses the strengths of those players of we

built through 11 uh 77 to 99 playing and staying connected and playing the ball and playing possession. It just means they can continue to use those skills on

a bigger field without having to deal with the double the size from 99 and having to deal with 70 yard runs and 60 yard passes which they're just not ready

yet in grade seven and eight. Also, I hope that you got a sense as to again another example of why it's important to not let the numbers dictate how you

play. You can't just tell a team, hey, we're going to play a 4-33. We got four defenders. You got a left, a right, and a center midfielder, and a left and a

right and a center attacker. That isn't enough information for your players to be successful because as far as they know, they're just going to stand in the

spot. They don't know what the relationships are between players, when they should do when we lose the ball, win the ball, how they should work together. They just think, I'm on the

left, I'm going to stay on the left.

That's not really what you want them to do. And lastly, having that clear, concise plan in all four phases of the game, defending, transitioning to attack, attacking, and transitioning to

defense. If you can have those rules and responsibilities for your players, you'll be much more successful because all your players will be on the same page. They'll know what to do. Well, I

hope you enjoyed this. I hope it's super useful for you. If you get any comments or thoughts about it, I'd love to see them. Again, subscribe, like, uh, share.

Everybody's been fantastic about that. Sorry about last week. I'll be back to at least another 99 video uh with playing out of the back once I uh you

know re-record that video. I have some other stuff that I want to do as well.

It is uh the season. We're into our third game here. Uh we've lost one and tied one. We moved up a division. So, it's a good challenge for my boys. But

anyways, until next time, I hope you're enjoying your season of wherever it is in the world that you're doing it. Until next time, I'll see you out in the state

of fields. Bye-bye.