The space between the lines 🎯

Villa Dálmine lined up in a 4-4-2 against Deportivo Madryn last season, with Lucas Jofré and Francisco Molina on the flanks. The shape looked compact on paper. It was not.

Madryn played with two strikers, Leonardo Marinucci and Lucas González, and they kept splitting the centre-backs. That pulled Facundo Gómez and Dante Cardozo apart. The moment the full-backs pushed forward, the channel between centre-back and full-back opened. Madryn's first goal came from exactly that lane, a cross from Nicolás Sánchez that Jofré turned into his own net -25-38.

When you see a 4-4-2 with wide midfielders who do not track back, ask one question: who covers the full-back when he leaves? Villa Dálmine never answered it.

Look at the gap between the centre-back and the full-back, not the ball.

Question: When two strikers split the centre-backs, is it the wide midfielder's job to drop, or the holding midfielder's job to slide across?