As a follow-up to Josh Bagriansky’s excellent analysis of how the 3-5-2 formation worked for Atlanta United so well last weekend, we thought is a good idea to give you, Gentle Readers*, a broader overview of the formation, taking a look at its history, strengths and weaknesses.
Let’s start off with a bit of math. It might seem that a coach’s choices of formation are virtually infinite. Ultimately, that is effectively true, but the vast majority of those formations are variations on a relatively few basic themes. Indeed, if you break a team down into the three basic groups – defenders, midfielders and strikers – mathematically that reduces the potential formations down to just 66 (n(n=1)/2 where n=11).