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Japan's Tactics Fell Behind the World's Trends

original Football

Last time, I wrote an article called Ancelotti’s Homework, asking what Japan could have done in response to Ancelotti’s tactical change in the second half of the Japan-Brazil World Cup match. After thinking about it for a day, I landed on a back four, 4-5-1.

I offered that as a personal hunch, and said myself it was a stretch.

But as I kept watching the knockout stage afterward, it stopped feeling like a passing idea. Wasn’t a back four actually the trend of the tournament as a whole?

So I counted.

FIFA has posted analysis data for all 104 matches, free of charge

Worth flagging up front: FIFA’s Technical Study Group has published Post Match Summary Reports as PDFs for all 104 matches of the 2026 tournament. No login, no payment required. Surprisingly few people seem to know this.

The contents are genuinely impressive. The first page carries both teams’ formation labels and starting lineups, and from there it includes the following.

The URL follows a fixed pattern like PMSR-M76-BRA-V-JPN.pdf. That makes it possible to build a dataset of 208 records — 104 matches × 2 teams — in a single day.

There’s one snag in extraction. The characters “FORMATION” appear vertically in the PDF, so text extraction breaks them up into something like F O R M A TIO N. A straightforward search won’t catch it, but a rough regular expression picking up a sequence of digits and hyphens near “FORMA” gets past it.

For all 48 teams, the Associated Press had already tabulated the first round based on FIFA’s match reports, so I used that as a base. I designed the aggregation so each team’s opening-match formation is fixed as the label, and the only variable as the stage progresses is who survived. That way, changes in formation and survival don’t get mixed together, and only the selection pressure is visible.

Whether it’s a back three or a back five sometimes splits depending on how you count

Before the numbers, one thing needs flagging.

Whether it’s a back three or a back five is usually obvious just from watching. Still, the count sometimes splits depending on method. Anyone used to watching football knows this instinctively, but once you’re tabulating, you have to decide in advance which way you’re counting.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Round of 32 match against the United States is a clear example. A commercial app I checked first displayed it as a back five, and indeed the starting lineup registers five defenders. But FIFA’s official label was 3-5-2.

Counting Bosnia’s back line along two axes, the same eleven players come out as a back five if you count by the number of registered defenders, and as 3-5-2 if you count by the wing-backs’ forward movement. Counting by headcount Counting by behavior

Five defenders registered

Back five Both flanks were pushing forward

3-5-2 Dedić pushed forward 33 times. Not a player planted in a deep position

The same eleven players, but the answer changes depending on how you count

Same match, same eleven players. Neither side is wrong here. The app counted headcount; FIFA counted behavior. That’s the only difference.

Looking at the data, FIFA’s reasoning for counting it as three holds up. Dedić, on the right, was not a player planted in a deep position — the number of forward runs makes that clear. So FIFA judged this wasn’t a back five, but three center-backs plus two wing-backs.

The reverse could happen in theory too. Even with four defenders in the starting lineup, a full-back constantly stationed high could conceivably get counted as part of a back three.

So in this article, I count by the leading number in FIFA’s label. It’s consistent, and it lets readers open the same PDF and check for themselves. To be clear, in this classification the only case where the two counts diverged was that one Bosnia match, and even there, both counts agree it “isn’t a back four.” The conclusion doesn’t fall apart.

I counted every back line at kickoff

StageNBack fourBack threeBack fiveBack-four share
Overall48358572.9%
Round of 3232263381.3%
Round of 16161600100%
Quarterfinals8800100%

Back-four share by stageAcross all 48 teams, back fours make up 72.9%; at the Round of 32, 81.3%; at the Round of 16 and quarterfinals, 100%.

Back four

Three-center-back systems All 48 teams

72.9% (35/48)

27.1% Round of 32

81.3% (26/32)

18.8% Round of 16

100% (16/16) Quarterfinals

100% (8/8)

As the stage advances, three-center-back systems disappear

Three-center-back systems — back threes and back fives combined — go from 27.1%, to 18.8%, to 0%.

The eight quarterfinal teams were France, Spain, England, Argentina, Morocco, Norway, Belgium, and Switzerland. All eight played a back four. And for these eight, it comes out 8/8 whether you count by their opening-match formation or by their starting lineup in that particular match.

Not a single three-center-back team reached the Round of 16

This is where the effect really shows up.

Thirteen teams used a three-center-back system as their base formation. Seven were eliminated in the group stage: South Korea, Czechia, Tunisia, and four unspecified teams playing 3-4-3. Six were eliminated in the Round of 32: Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, DR Congo, and Australia. Thirteen in total. In other words, all of them.

Germany and Australia both took their matches to penalties, so it’s not as though they were one-sidedly beaten on the pitch. Even so, not one of them got through.

3-4-3 in particular was used by seven teams, five eliminated in the group stage and the remaining two in the Round of 32. Not a single 3-4-3 team reached the Round of 16.

The structure has two layers. At the population level there’s already a skew of over 70% toward back fours, and on top of that, the first round of the knockout stage applied decisive selection pressure.

The teams expected to come out in a back three didn’t

Another curiosity: nearly every side expected before the tournament to line up in a back three instead started in a back four. The Netherlands played 4-1-2-3, Morocco 4-2-3-1, Argentina 4-3-3, Scotland 4-4-2.

Morocco was the symbolic case for me. This is the same Morocco that reached the semifinals at the 2022 Qatar tournament behind a solid back-three block, becoming an analysis subject worldwide, a textbook case. After coach Regragui’s departure three months before this tournament, that Morocco came out in a back four instead: ahead of Bounou, Mazraoui, Shadi Riad, Issa Diop, Hakimi. They reached the quarterfinals playing that way.

The side that wrote the textbook put the textbook down under its new coach.

But this isn’t a story about “the back four being strong”

Here’s the real point.

The theme FIFA’s Technical Study Group put forward in its review at the end of the first round was, precisely, “building up in a back three.” The example given was France, which switched from a back-four build-up to a back three in the first half against Senegal: the anchor, Rabiot, dropped between the two center-backs. The TSG explained that this let France increase its control in possession and gave it resilience against Senegal’s high press. The TSG went on to organize this three-man build-up into three types: two center-backs plus a defensive midfielder, two center-backs plus a deep full-back, and three center-backs.

Defend in a back four, build up in a back threePhase-dependent variable defenseOut of possession, four players stand in a line. In possession, the anchor drops between the two center-backs to make three, and both full-backs push forward.

Out of possession: back four In possession: back three

Anchor

Four in a line

Full-backs push forward

Anchor drops in to make three

Defend in a back four, build up in a back three

In other words, here’s what’s happening. The “variability” of 2026 isn’t variability between a back three and a back four. It’s phase-dependent variability: defend in a back four, build up in a back three.

So the substance behind the nominal dominance of the back four isn’t that the back four is strong. It’s that operating with the back four as the baseline, while varying the number of players on the back line by phase, has become standard equipment.

A mid-match switch from three to four was nowhere to be found

Having gotten this far, there was one more thing worth checking. Were there any cases of a team switching from a back three to a back four as an in-match adjustment?

I couldn’t find one.

Every case I found went the other direction, or was a reshuffle within a back four. Argentina in the final started with 4-4-2, dropped to 4-4-1 after Enzo Fernández’s red card, and brought on Senesi in extra time’s second half to go to 5-3-1. England in the semifinal, defending a lead, made defensive substitutions to line up six defenders, ceded control, and were overturned. Brazil, against Haiti, switched from a flat 4-4-2 to a 4-3-3 mid block, but that didn’t change the number of players on the back line.

I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think it’s a structural asymmetry.

When a back-three team wants to attack, it doesn’t need to restructure its back line into four. Pushing the wing-backs forward turns it into 3-2-4-1: the nominal back line stays at three while the number of players in front increases. Conversely, when a back-four team wants to close out a match, it becomes five simply by dropping the full-backs back.

In other words, moving in the direction of “adding” is cheap, and moving in the direction of “reducing” is expensive.

Asymmetric cost of changing the back lineChanges that increase the number of players were cheap and seen many times in the tournament, but changes that reduce from a back three to a back four were expensive, with zero instances in the tournament.

Cheap to change (many in the tournament)

Back four → back five Drop the full-backs

Back three → 3-2-4-1 Push the wing-backs forward

Expensive to change (zero instances in the tournament)

Back three → back four Everyone’s reference point is swapped out

Adding is cheap, reducing is expensive

I already gave the reason reducing is expensive in the previous article. The reference points for the center-backs and full-backs all get swapped out, so you can’t do it on the fly unless you’ve prepared and drilled it in advance. It’s exactly the same structure as saying Go Watanabe has almost always played as a right center-back and isn’t used to the left side.

And this tournament, at least, offered the most favorable conditions in history. At the 2026 tournament, regardless of weather, every match had a three-minute hydration break in the middle of each half, effectively splitting the match into four quarters. Coaches had, including halftime, three pre-arranged moments per match for giving instructions.

There’s a historic example that fits exactly. At the 2014 Brazil World Cup, Van Gaal’s Netherlands used the water break against Mexico to switch from 3-5-2 to 4-3-3, then scored two goals late to win. He said clearly: “we switched to Plan B during the cooling break — that’s a smart way to use the break.”

Three moments for instructions were available. Even so, no coach moved in the direction of reducing.

The one team that moved in the direction of increasing was Bosnia, mentioned earlier: a back four in the group stage, then 3-5-2 in the Round of 32 against the United States, an attacking design premised on pushing the wing-backs forward. The result: 47.7% possession, exceeding the United States’ 44%, but only 0.21 xG, ten shots, and no goals in a 0-2 loss. The United States even had Balogun sent off in the 64th minute, playing with ten men for more than 30 minutes.

Bosnia had the ball but couldn’t create anything. Even once the opponent went down to ten men, they couldn’t break them down.

You can restructure in the direction of adding. But restructuring doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

The answer check was Paraguay

In the previous article, I wrote this.

I think the option available in that moment was something like Paraguay — building a persistent, tenacious, resilient defense. And looking for that one chance on a long counter.

Here’s the data from that Paraguay-United States match.

Exactly the profile I described: don’t hold the ball, be patient, win it back and go quick.

And Paraguay did this in a back-four 4-4-2.

That same Paraguay beat Germany’s 3-4-3 on penalties in the Round of 32, then lost 0-1 to France in the Round of 16. Aside from not beating France, they executed the plan in full.

In other words, what I wrote last time — “defense like Paraguay’s” in one paragraph, “maybe a back four” in another — turned out, luckily, to be saying the same single thing twice. I had, independently, pointed at the same real profile of a real team from two different angles.

Laying it all out like this, one thing stands out.

The back four wasn’t the right answer in itself. It’s that the teams keeping the back four as their baseline had the option of variability available to them. The teams that made the back three their baseline could add to it, but couldn’t reduce it.

So what Japan lacked that day wasn’t a back four. It was the option of a back four.

And that’s not something you can prepare in 15 minutes at halftime.

My conclusion from last time — that I can’t bring myself to blame coach Moriyasu’s management — seems, if anything, reinforced rather than undermined. The tournament itself wrote the answer to the homework.

References

By the same author

This piece was planned and directed by Kuzuryu, with the writing done by AI.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2026/07/1716/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.