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Like war, soccer has both tactics and strategies. While a team will have one strategy going into a match (regarding how to win… or avoid losing), a team may employ many tactics in a single match. Often tactics will change throughout a game as well. While all coaches determine the team’s tactics before the game, at elite levels of play, sometimes it is the captain on the field who can decide to change tactics during the game.
There are three kinds of tactics in soccer: defensive tactics, offensive tactics, and time-wasting tactics. Here is a short list of the most common ones you will likely see in a game.
The offside trap is where the defending players intentionally try to trick an opposing forward into falling offside. This requires a very high level of trust, awareness, and coordination between the defenders. They must all be aware of the opposing forward’s position, who on the opposing team has the ball, and when the ball is likely to be played. Then, just before the final pass is made, all the defenders move forward in unison—exposing the forward in an illegal position.
Former Chelsea FC manager José Mourinho once expressed his frustration against a very defensive Tottenham side by claiming they “parked the bus.” He meant that Tottenham had placed most of their players in a defensive position, making it very difficult for Chelsea to execute any successful attacking plays. “Parking the bus” has since been used to describe excessively defensive tactics. It does not require much skill, and in fact is often used by weak teams against stronger opponents.
Under zone marking, defending players have a pre-designated area (or “zone”) with which they will defend any and all players in it. The weakness of zone marking is if there are more than one attacking players in one zone, then it may become too much for one defender to handle. Zone marking is best employed during set pieces (e.g., free kicks and corners).
The opposite of zone marking is man-to-man marking. Each defender knows at the start of the game a specific opposing player with which they are to mark. The strength of this tactic is that it is always clear who is responsible for which attacking player. The downside is that defenders will be more restricted as attacking options, since by moving forward they may lose their ability to quickly mark their man on the counter attack.
Tikitaka is a word often synonymous with Barcelona FC, especially during the 2000s when they were under management of Pep Guardiola, and players like Messi, Iniesta, and Xavi. Tikitaka play involves lots of short, accurate passes across the entire field, with the ball moving fluidly between all the players in the field. As you might have guessed based on the names like Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta, tikitaka requires extremely skillful players to be successfully executed.
The long ball tactic is virtually the opposite of tikitaka: instead of short passes and fluid play, the long ball is the soccer equivalent of American football’s Hail Mary: simply kick the ball from the defending half to the farthest player upfield, and hope that the opposing defenders don’t beat him to the punch. Although not the prettiest tactic, it can be especially effective when the attacking team has tall forwards that can dominate in the air. The long ball is most often used as a counter attacking play.
The “false 9” (or “false number 9”) is something like the opposite of the offside trap: instead of defenders trying to trick the forward into going towards the goal, it’s the forward trying to trick the opposing defenders to give him more space. The name comes from the fact that most player who wear the number 9 tend to be forwards. Since forwards tend to play off the defenders as much as they can, a false 9 is a player that is a false forward: he pretends to be playing off the defenders, but will frequently move back to collect a pass.
Synonymous with the Dutch team from the 1970s, total football is the game at its most intense: every outfield player can and should be interchangeable. Forwards move back to defend, defenders move up to attack, rightwing players switch to the left, and they all cycle through each position as the game goes on. It creates havoc among the defending team, as predicting player movements becomes impossible. Among the most difficult tactics to execute successfully, total football requires extreme fitness among the team, as well as players who are unusually well-rounded.
The through pass is a pass made by an attacking player that goes through two defending players, and towards where another attacker is running to. A through pass often results in the attacker having a breakaway—a free run at the opposing goal. It is a very dangerous pass, and therefore defenders work very hard to prevent such passes from happening during a game by closing down opponents as soon as they get the ball.
The goalkeeper does not have to stay in his box: he is free to move anywhere in the field (but then obviously he cannot use his hands while outside the box). While this can happen at any time, it mostly happens in the ending moments of a must-win game where the attacking team has a corner or other dangerous set piece. The goalkeeper will often run up and make himself available as an attacking option. While the obvious benefit is that the attacking team will have more players in dangerous areas than the defending team is used to, they are of course totally exposed to a counterattack. This is why this tactic is only used in those rare situations where the team must score at the end of the game.
“Time wasting” is officially a foul in soccer. However, since it is based on intent, and since knowing another person’s intentions is difficult to tell even in the best of circumstances, it is rarely called out by referees. Moreover, unlike most other professional sports, a soccer game does not have a hard ending time. Unlike hockey, basketball, or American football, for example, where the clock counts down, the clock in soccer counts up. This is because referees can add additional time based almost entirely on their personal judgement (usually, however, it’s between 3-5 minutes).
As a result of all of these factors, there is a lot of incentive for teams to employ specific tactics to subtly waste time. Here are a few examples:
Perhaps the most infamous tactic in all of professional sports, soccer players are famous for “faking” injuries. This gets the “injured” team possession while interrupting the opponent's flow.
However, it’s important to note that there are varying degrees of “faking”. Most of the time, a player will get legitimately fouled and merely embellish the pain from the tackle. This is often done as a method of getting sympathy from the referee to call the foul in the first place. (Remember, soccer is a contact sport: there is lots of touching, pushing, and shoving that happens during the regular run of play, and refs do not call foul on most of these.)
Then there’s the situation where a player does not get fouled at all, but pretends to be injured anyway. This is called “simulation”, and it is actually a foul. It is a yellow card offense.
During the game, both teams will do some embellishment. But towards the end of the game, the team in the stronger position will start embellishing a little more. This not only gets them more fouls called, but after a foul has been called, play must stop until the “injured” player has gotten up. Since the clock keeps ticking regardless of the injuries, embellishing at the end of the game (especially after the ref has announced the time added on) not only breaks up the flow of the game, but also serves to run down the clock.
When a team is awarded a throw-in, there is no law about who on that team must throw the ball back into play. When a team wants to waste time, sometimes a player will run to grab the ball, pretend to go for a throw, then simply hand it off to another teammate to do the throw-in.
Take too long to take a free kick or goal kick
After a team has been awarded a free kick, they have several opportunities to waste some time. First, they can demand the referee to enforce that all opponents are a minimum of 10-yards away. This requires the referee to first measure out ten yards from the ball, then go up to the defending players individually to ensure they are at the required distance.
Another common tactic is that they may move the ball out of the position that the referee declared the free kick to be taken from. Players are given some leeway here due to pitch conditions, so that they may move the ball a few inches to avoid clumps of dirt and so on. But sometimes players move the ball too far, and the referee has to spend time arguing with them to move it back.
Goalkeepers can waste time, too. While they must take a goal kick within 6 seconds, they are allowed to place the ball anywhere in the 6 yard box. Usually, they simply place the ball on the side closest to where the ball was kicked out of. But when trying to waste time, they use their right to move the ball to the opposite side of the 6 yard box instead.
Not all time wasting happens at the end of games. Sometimes it can happen much earlier as well, often in order to break up the focus of the opposing team.
This is the case with “professional fouls”—fouls that a defender makes intentionally to stop a dangerous play by an opponent. Most frequently, these happen when an attacking player is ready to make a run towards the goal, and a defender fouls him to force the play to stop.
