Sometimes you’ll see two 8’s and a 6. Think of Man City (Rodri-6, Gundogan-8, De Bruyne-10), Arsenal (Rice-6, Partey-8, Odegaard-10), Madrid (Casemiro-6, Modric-8, Kroos-8), Barcelona (Busquets-6, Xavi-8, Iniesta-8), Tottenham (Bissouma-6, Sarr-8, Madison-10).

BYU seems to play 4-1-2-1-2 diamond. And the middle 2 midfielders are asked to push really high up. Our FB’s are asked to play really wide, and it seems to only play forward passes. In both the USC and MSU games, if one of our FB’s got the ball, they almost never played the ball back to the CB’s to retain possession. They try to force the ball into the channels for one of the higher up midfielders/forwards, or a square ball into the dripping 10 (Katoa) or the 6 (Shepard).

It’s hard to argue against this strategy for BYU because we score lots of goals and win a lot, but it leads to predictability and often unforced errors with bad passes and/or bad touches, resulting in turnovers. I’d personally like to see some variability and cycle the ball around the back line to open up space sometimes.