Understanding Pep Guardiola’s 3-2-2-3 Formation : A Tactical Breakdown

Over the years Pep has shown his versatility when it comes to managing his sides using various shapes and formations while maintaining his footballing principles. Midway through the season Pep altered his teams shape from a 4-1-4-1 which often saw one of his full-backs invert into midfield during the first and second phase of play to form a 3-2-4-1 to a 3-2-2-3 shape in possession.

Speculations suggests that the change from Pep was inspired by Brighton’s head coach, Roberto De Zerbi. De Zerbi’s side who Pep has praised for being the best at bringing the ball out from defense to the final third use a double pivot instead of a single or lone DM in the first phase, that is reported to be what inspired Pep’s change of shape midway through the season. In this post I’ll look at how City build up with this shape, maintain possession to break down their opposition and finally how to possibly counter it.

Build-Up

Man City build up with a 4-2 shape, the 4 includes the goalkeeper Ederson and the back 3 while the 2 consists of the DM Rodri and Stones who steps up from the defense to play in midfield, this allows Man City to often outnumber the opponents press as well as possess superior ball playing abilities with all of the Man City defenders being elite at ball progression through passes.

Manuel Akanji

John Stones

Ruben Dias

Nathan Ake

Man City progress or play out from the back in two ways, either by central progression or by wide progression.

When progressing centrally they use the overloads created in midfield and because of their box shape they have a spare man in midfield which allows them to progress the ball with triangle passes using their spare man.

While when progressing through the wide players they often play through the LCB or RCB who has an array of passing angles created by the goalkeeper, center back on the inside, the 2 defensive midfielders, the 2 attacking midfielders or the winger holding the width.

Also when there’s a slight difficulty in playing out from the back one of the advanced 8’s drops into the pocket or half-space that an inverted full-back would occupy in order to increase the numbers involved in the build-up which can also cause problems for the opposition fullback who would either have to follow him or stay with the wide attacker.

dotted lines indicate player movements while arrowed lines indicate ball movement

In this scenario the number 10 drops into the left back space and the opposition right back (number 3) follows him and City use a 3rd man run (number 7) to get in behind the space that was left.

Ederson can also kick it long to Haaland and attempt to win the second balls due to their numerical advantage in the final third given by the presence of the 2 advanced 8’s.

In Possession/Breaking Down The Opponent

When Man City are in possession they maintain a box midfield comprising of the advanced 8’s and the 2 deeper midfielders, this allows them to recycle possession effectively through the middle of the pitch while outnumbering their opposition. They use 3rd man combination plays to create passing triangles to beat the opposition press and enter the final third, coupled with constant movement that pulls opposition players out of their position and create 1v1’s especially for the wide players who are adept dribblers.

The wide players in the front 3 give them width in the final third as well as in defense with the likes of Silva and Grealish especially putting in work defensively all season, this width allows for an extra box presence/threat through the advanced 8’s which makes cut backs very dangerous, Gundogan especially has chipped in with a couple of important goals in and around the penalty area.

Against extreme low blocks or teams that use a back 5, Man City employ a 3133 shape (a variant of the 3223 shape) which sees one of the defensive 2 step up to play between the advanced 8’s to gain numerical advantage in final third.

With a team as dominant as Manchester City you’d imagine that they’ll have a lot of problems defending transitions but with their 3223 set up they play with a rest defense of 3-2 which allows them to control transitions and counter attacks, this shape saw them concede only 3 goals to counter attacks all season.

Countering The 3-2-2-3 Shape

Since the tactical change was made by Pep, City only lost 2 games (Spurs and Brentford) with a lot of their opposition being blown away or simply just couldn’t cope. However there has been some instances where their opposition have employed what I believe to be the right idea but it just lacked masterful execution.

First instance was Bayern Munich away where Tuchel used a narrow 4231 shape

another instance was Southampton away where they employed a 424/4222 shape

and lastly Manchester United’s 4312/4222 shape used in the FA cup final.

Now all these different formations have the same underlying ideas behind them, the only way to cope with City’s box midfield and their unpredictable movements is to use the combination of static and dynamic markers, that is a midfield that has players that’ll mark the space as well as the player eg. Fred and Bruno being asked to mark De Bruyne and Gundogan respectively while Casemiro marks the space.

The idea of using a narrow midfield is to closely mark City’s defensive midfielders who are the main reason for City’s dominance in possession eg. Southampton using their advanced midfield 2 to do so.

The press on City’s build up has to be effective as well forcing them wide, making them play sideways and backwards and forcing errors (which is highly improbable).

And finally having a player (or two) to play touch tight to their advanced 8’s in order to minimize the amount of entries they make into the final third (Kimmich and Goretzka).

The ultimate reason for playing narrow is to close down City’s passing lanes as well as match them in terms of numbers in midfield in order to win the ball back. But the most important thing is bravery, just winning the ball back isn’t enough you have to commit to the attack and risk being done on the break.

stats are from fbref.com