Tactics – Man Marking

A football team’s defence is primarily employed to prevent the opposition team from scoring goals. Various team defences approach this task with different tactics. Some teams turn to “man marking” the most dangerous opposition players to achieve their aim.

Man marking or man-to-man marking is a defensive tactic where defenders are assigned a specific opposition player to mark rather than covering an area of the pitch as opposed to zonal marking where defenders cover zones of the pitch.

This tactic can be very effective in closing down a particularly dangerous player by cutting off his ball supply – effectively marking him out of a match.

However, man marking should be well thought out by the coach as mismatched man marking assignments can spell disaster for the team. A slow defender will be overrun if given the task of man marking a pacy striker. A technically deficient player will be destroyed if given the task of marking a tricky dribbler.

Man marking goes well when deployed in a formation with a sweeper as a sweeper sits in behind the other defenders and helps out any defender having trouble marking their man. A sweeper is also able to clear any long or through balls played over the top for opposition strikers to run onto.

The sweeper – combined with man marking – tactic was made popular by the Italian teams of the 1960s and 1970s. The Italians deployed four man markers in a defence complemented by a sweeper covering any defensive mistakes – a tactic dubbed as catenaccio football. This tactic was very effective and was made popular with teams across the world – some say it was to the detriment of football as a spectacle as it was very stifling and boring to watch.

Some say the greatest man marking performance ever was that of the Italian Claudio Gentile who completely marked a young Diego Maradona (Argentina) out of the match in the 1982 World Cup.

Modern teams tend to deploy a mixture of man marking and zonal defense. A lot of teams tend to play with one or two defensive midfielders deployed in zones mainly deployed to break up defensive plays as the opposition attacks.

One of the defensive midfielders may however be given a man marking role to mark a particularly dangerous opposition player out of the game. Flair players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Ronaldinho, Kaka are often subjected to man marking attempts – attempts which are not always successful. Flair players need only a moment to get away from their marker and change a game with a moment of brilliance.

Generally speaking, man marking is fairly simple to understand and deploy. It is up to the coach to assign the right player the task of man marking an opposition player – based on the player’s defensive capabilities, speed and discipline. A well disciplined and technically gifted defender can do a great job of man-marking a dangerous player but should be aided by his team mates as they need to take on more defensive responsibility.