Frigyes Becske: W-formation
Frigyes Becske | 28/03/1936

Is there a W-formation at all? The style prophets swear by it as a “new system” as a fundamental factor in the new “modern” football.

There is a W-formation, but only as a formation, a game formation, as there are or can be in a football game. Football is beautiful because it changes its shape, order and tactical line-up minute by minute.

However, the theories that a football team has to play on a pitched W-formation or play this from start to finish are just empty words. A team can take on a W-formation for a shorter or longer period of time, but this is always the exception and not the rule, it is always a forced move and not an independent, purposeful football system, tactics.

The standings of the football team: five strikers in front, three covers behind them, two defenders behind them, and finally the goalkeeper in the goal, - in a position in the known triangles.

The W-formation position: three strikers up-front, in front of the goalkeeper between the two defenders the centerhalf as the third back.

There is not one but two lines between the defense and the truncated strike line: the two halves are more for defense, while the connection between attack and defense is provided by the two withdrawn connectors.

The two connectors are usually in line with their own place, with only the Germans playing one of the connectors (currently Szepan) in front of the centerhalf.

⬤               ⬤               ⬤

⬤      〇      ⬤

The circle represents the location of the connector in a German W-formation.

The abuse of the W-formation, or its misinterpretation, occurred when the International Board, the international football-governing body, switched from a three-men offside to a two-men offside. The main target was to increase goal scoring. Chapman, the late brilliant manager of Arsenal, then implemented the W-formation.

Chapman had at his disposal Jack and James, two phenomenal forwards of unparalleled ability even in English football, who had excellently learned the W-formation based on three forwards as an antidote to the threat of a goal shower due to a change in the offside rule.

This also happened at Arsenal, because they had excellent football artists. But the W-formation as a general “elixir” also failed in England. Chapman himself admitted that his colleagues made a big mistake when they made a W-formation out of a W-formation that matched Arsenal’s players perfectly and hid their own players in it.

The fashion of the W Formation spread to football countries with a lower game culture, where the forward-football was a renaissance on a defensive basis, while the Viennese school retained the classic guideline of "the best defense is the attack" and the Wundermannschaft reaped its world-renowned triumphs when the W-formation was a fever.

Today, Arsenal and all of English football have returned to constructive offensive play, recognizing that football was and will remain: a game of chess with live figures.