Anonymous & Devil's Gun Trigger Man,
Smile!! Watching it at a bar with fans of the country playing is the ultimate party. Smile!!
Especially with Brazilian and/or Caribbean fans!! For the love of God!!
First it is similar to any sport, in particular football or basketball, it depends on what type of alignment, based on philosophy or personal a coach wants to put on the field. One can play a more offensive or defensive alignment.
Playing 1 striker with 5 mid-fielders, 4 defenders and the goalie (1-5-4-1) to better control the mid-field if your mid-fielders are smaller and are faster on the ball. This is a defensive poster that allows two mid-fielders to help defend, while two other may be forward type of mid-fielders that play on the offensive side of the ball.
Others like to play an alignment that allows for triangle movement that I would associated with Coach Phil of the Lakers to keep control of the ball by always providing the player with the ball a triangular option to pass the ball left or right. Playing 3 forwards with 4 mid-fielders, 3 defenders and the goalie (3-4-3-1) to better attack if your mid-fielders are big and strong. It is an offensive attacking style of play.
There are many, many, many alignments that allows for various style of play in soccer.
One reason there is not a lot of scoring in soccer is because like basketball it is just difficult to find a big man (a natural score Jordan) that can finish around the basket similar to finding forwards/strikers that can finish and score.
It is difficult to find players that has the unique ability like Pele (arguably the greatest), Maradona, Ronaldino, and Henry that can naturally (along with endless practice) has the one touch ability with their head, body, or feet (no hands - football) that can gauge a ball coming at them at various speeds, with different spin, and different heights (baseball) to finish and score against defenders body checking you (hockey/football) and a goalkeeper (basketball) that can use his hands to stop you.
Once one cares to understand this, then it becomes easy to view the beauty of the game when you literally view the strength a Ghana, Asamoah Gyan (6’ 1” 170) player stop a ball flying at them on a dime spin and smashes home his early strike in the lower corner of the goal just out of the reach an outstretched diving Czech Republic goalkeeper, Petr Cech (6’ 5” 13.2).
