Tactics: The Diamond Formation

The Question: Is the midfield diamond here to stay and how do you counter it?

It's been adopted by Chelsea and Inter, but will this curious tactic stand the test of time in its latest inception?

Didier Drogba and Deco during a training session at Stamford Bridge today. Photograph: Steven Paston/Action Images

After years of being out of fashion in western Europe, the midfield diamond is back. Chelsea have rumbled to three straight league victories at the start of the season, despite pundits pointing out their lack of width, and wondering just how effective they can continue to be. Internazionale manager Jose Mourinho, who is regarded in the UK as a high priest of 4-3-3, reverted to 4-4-2 with a diamond midfield during his side's 1-1 draw against Bari at the weekend. Previously its popularity has proved fleeting - will this time be any different?

A history lesson

The diamond is curious in that it emerged piecemeal over time; it is not part of the grand sweep of tactical history. It never seems to have been anybody's big idea, but was rather a bi-product of other forces and, generally speaking, it has never hung around for long, which suggests it may have limited applicability. The first team self-consciously to arrange their midfield four with one deep, one creating and two shuttling seems to have been Flamengo, where it began as an expedient compromise in a process that began shortly before the second world war.

As part of his plans to develop the club, Flamengo's president José Bastos Padilha sought a European coach. He found one in the Hungarian Dori Kurschner, who was only too glad to escape anti-Semitism in his homeland. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1937, but his attempts to introduce the W-M (3-2-2-3) were scuppered by a football culture suspicious of anything that might stifle natural creativity and improvisation.

Players, fans and journalists were openly mocking, their doubts fanned into rebellion by the assistant coach, Flavio Costa, who had been moved aside to make way for Kurschner. Having finished second in the Carioca championship in 1937, Flamengo lost 2-0 to Vasco da Gama in the opening game of the following season, the inaugural match at Padilha's new Estadio da Gavea, and Kurschner was sacked. After a brief time at Botafogo, he contracted a virus and died in 1941.

Costa, meanwhile, resumed his role as Flamengo coach. He had slowly become convinced of the merits of the W-M, but having been so scornful, could not admit as much, so claimed to have come up with a whole new system – the diagonal. Essentially, he took the central square of the W-M and tipped it so it became a rhombus, with the inside-left advanced just behind the centre-forward in the ponta da lanca (point of the lance) position Pele would make so famous, the inside-right a little deeper, the left-half a little deeper again, and the right-half sitting just in front of the back three (or of course, the formation could be flipped on its y-axis to make the right side more attacking).

Of course, even within the W-M, it had been common for one of the inside-forwards to be more attacking, or one of the wing-halves to be more defensive – at Arsenal in the 1930s for instance, the left-half Wilf Copping played deep, allowing Jack Crayston, the right-half, more licence. But Costa formalised it, and as Flamengo were successful, his rhombus midfield spread. Gradually, though, the rhombus was tipped a little more, until 3-1-2-1-3 became 4-2-4, the system with which Brazil won the World Cup in 1958.

The diamond then disappeared from view, only springing up again in the sixties. It became common within the 4-2-4 for one of the midfielders to sit, as cover in front of the back four – Antonio Rattin of Argentina being a fine early example. Gradually, forwards began to drop deeper. Argentina, reacting to the shock of being beaten 6-1 by Czechoslovakia at the 1958 World Cup by experimenting with defensive tactics, were among the pioneers. Their obsession with the No10 remained, though, and so by the 1966 World Cup, with Rattin holding, and Ermindo Onega operating as a playmaker, the diamond was beginning to re-emerge.

England lost 1-0 to a defensive Argentina in the Maracana in 1964 in the Mundialito, a four-team tournament also including Brazil and Portugal. Alf Ramsey would never have admitted it, but that defeat seems to have persuaded him down the route of pragmatism. He abandoned 4-2-4 for 4-3-3, before ultimately adopting what Nobby Stiles termed a 4-1-3-2. The Manchester United midfielder anchored in front of the back four, with Alan Ball, Bobby Charlton and Martin Peters all given licence to push on and join the front two.

That formation, a close cousin of the diamond, had already been common for a couple of years in the USSR, where Viktor Maslov, developing the notion of pressing at Dynamo Kyiv, deployed the veteran defender Vasyl Turyanchyk to 'break the waves' in front of the back four. In a team in which every player had defensive duties, only Andriy Biba, Maslov said, "retained the full rights of democracy". He was, in other words, the equivalent of the Argentinian playmaker, given a free role in what was effectively a 4-3-1-2.

It is that shape, with a holder and a playmaker flanked by two shuttling players – carilleros, as they are known in Argentina, the only country, seemingly, to give the role a specific name – that really forms the basis of the modern conception of the diamond. Strangely, though, only Argentina adopted it on a wide scale. Elsewhere a club side may play a diamond for a year or two, but it is a fad that soon fades; in the Argentinian league, although there are experiments with double-playmakers (such as Huracan played last season: a 4-3-2-1) or two holders (which I've seen described, rather neatly, as a double-Pacman), 4-3-1-2 remains the default formation.

Problems with the diamond

To European eyes, unused to seeing an artist provided with a three-man midfield stage on which to perform, that is, at least initially, refreshing. Argentina's historical notion of the default way of playing, equally, with its ready division into playmakers and holders has equipped them well for the modern trend towards four-band formations (which makes it all the more frustrating that Diego Maradona seems so reluctant to use one with the national team).

But there are difficulties. The first game I saw in Argentina was River Plate against Independiente in November 2007. Both teams played 4-3-1-2, and both teams cancelled; each seemingly waiting for their respective playmakers, Ariel Ortega and Daniel Montenegro, to do something. Neither did, and the game ended in a tame 1-1 draw that probably would have slipped from the memory had it not been my first visit to the Monumental. It was admittedly, a mid-table fixture, but the wider point was clear: the danger of playing through one creative source (in River's case in that game, bafflingly, for Diego Buonanotte was playing as a support striker and surely could have dropped deeper), is that a single stream is easily dammed. The diamond's lack of width only exacerbates the problem.

You wonder as well whether Argentina remains so caught up in the debate over the viability of the playmaker, and with producing creators (and thus Pacmen to stop them) that other areas get rather overlooked. Playing a 4-2-3-1 – and ignoring the spats that have ruled certain players out - Argentina would have, by some distance, the best middle five in the world (two of Javier Mascherano, Esteban Cambiasso, Sebastian Battaglia and Fernando Gago; three of Leo Messi, Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez, Juan Román Riquelme, or even Javier Pastore), but are deficient in every other area.

My own doubts about the diamond crystallised one night in Belgrade in October 2002. Yugoslavia had played a diamond against Italy the previous Saturday, and had succeeded in frustrating them, drawing 1-1. They set out with the same shape that Wednesday against Finland, and found themselves outplayed in the first half as Finland's two wide midfielders in an orthodox 4-4-2, Mika Nurmela and Joonas Kolkka, revelled in the open spaces on the flanks. Yugoslavia may have enjoyed the bulk of possession, but they became so paranoid about their vulnerability to wide counters that they were able to do little with it, and were fortunate still to be level at half-time. A quick switch to 3-5-2 soon solved that (and freed Sinisa Mihajlovic - playing by that stage of his career as a centre-back - from actually having to do any defending), and they won 2-0.

Can Chelsea make it work in the Premier League?

Given the tendency within the diamond to predictability, it seemed to me fine as a defensive formation, but of less use to a team who needed to take the initiative. Gradually, though, particularly from watching Argentinian football, I've become less sceptical. The issue really is thecarilleros. If they get too narrow, as Yugoslavia did that night, then a team is vulnerable wide, and its numerical advantage in the centre is outweighed by the fact that everybody is packed into so tight a space that passing options become limited.

If they can retain some width – and it is notable that Chelsea this season have twice in the league, and in the Community Shield, used Florent Malouda, a winger, as the left carillero – and so ensure the system is a 4-3-1-2, then that is less of a problem. If those carilleros and/or the full-backs (and Chelsea have two – three if you include Yuri Zhirkov – attacking full-backs) can also get forward, given confidence to do so by the central midfield holder, that relieves some of the creative burden from the player at the tip of the diamond.

Chelsea also have the variation offered by the asymmetry introduced by Guus Hiddink. The second striker plays slightly to the right of Drogba – that was clear when Kalou partnered him at Sunderland, and still evident in Anelka's role at Fulham – which encourages the left carrillero to advance, something that is difficult for orthodox symmetrical formations to pick up, and which stimulates a very necessary flexibility.

How to smash the diamond

So, how can the diamond be countered? The lack of width remains the flaw, and the key is to try to shift the battle from the centre to the flanks. Hull rode their luck to an extent on the opening day, but it is no coincidence that it was their 4-5-1 rather than the 4-4-2 of Sunderland and Fulham that came closest to stopping Chelsea.

Midfielders played wide and high stop the advances of the full-backs, while a hard-tackling trio in the centre will at least make Chelsea fight for possession, while shielding the back four when Chelsea have possession. In addition, a team's wide midfielders block Chelsea's full-backs, their own full-backs should be free to either become an extra man in midfield or provide additional defensive cover.

The narrowness of the diamond is a flaw, but no system is without them. The issue really is how many sides are able to engage them those wide areas. So far the inherent weakness in the system has been over-ridden by Chelsea's dominance in the centre. It's all very well pointing at where the space may be, but largely irrelevant – from an attacking point of view – if you can't get the ball, and by playing with, effectively, four central midfielders, Chelsea are ensuring they enjoy the bulk of possession.

Their football may never produce the geometric rhapsodies of, say, Arsenal at their best, but certainly while Didier Drogba remains in form (and in the country: he, Michael Essien, Salomon Kalou and Mikel Jon Obi will all be in Angola in January for the African Cup of Nations), Chelsea look capable of overwhelming opponents, that frontline of attack backed up by a prodigious second wave from midfield.