Found this article on the diamond today. Traces the history and outlines the flaws of the formation....
The Question: Is the midfield diamond here to stay and how do you counter it?
Posted by Jonathan Wilson Tuesday 25 August 2009
It's been adopted by Chelsea and Inter, but will this curious tactic stand the test of time in its latest inception?
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.
