PES 2008 Tactical Tips – An Overview of Formations

Understanding different formations will help you adjust your game according to the weaknesses of your opposition in PES 2008. While this means you may have to realign your players and change the way you play, it could still prove beneficial to you if you end up winning more games. The added incentive here is that you could catch your opposition unaware, especially if they know you are playing a certain formation time and again.

Before we do a series that will be about giving you technical tips on how to play around with different formations, let us understand what are the different possible combinations. While we say that, we also ask you to make a note that you could arrange your 11 players in the way you want to, depending on the game of your opposition.

• 4-3-3: 4 in defense and 3 in the forward line. This is the mantra of this attacking formation, mostly used by teams like Spain and Brazil.
• 4-4-2: The conventional European style; it gets 4 in defense and a rather strong midfield with 4 midfielders. One of the midfielders could be used as a Center Forward, much like Michael Owen of England.
• 4-5-1: This is known as a defense-prime combination, which will ensure that you protect anything thrown at you by the opposition. Having 5 midfielders of which, 3 play in prime midfield, 1 of them dropping back to Center Back position and 1 moving ahead, much like Andrea Pirlo does for Italy. This gives tremendous amount of flexibility for the team employing this combination by having a robust defense and a strong midfield.
• 4-3-1-2: Alright, some think this is one of the weirdest combinations to have been ever tried on a soccer field. Nevertheless, this combination can take opposition by surprise, with most of the action happening on the midfield and the forward line. In this formation, you have 3 midfielders of whom 1 couples up as a Center Back. You also have 1 midfielder who patrols the 60 meter area and is used as a feeder to the forward line.

What formation you use should depend on the player attributes and the playing style of your team. However, whatever you do - be sure to throw something new at your opposition, just to catch them off-guard.