Wings

Let's take a closer look at how the wing formation works. It is important to position your wingers correctly; otherwise they will play like regular midfielders or attackers.

Here are two examples of playing a wing tactic. The first is narrower, but both will function for wings (player 6 and 7 will act as a winger).

The first formation is less wide, but players 6 and 7 will play as wingers. As they are closer to the central midfielders, they risk becoming caught in central midfield play.

In the second example, where the wingers are set wider, players 6 and 7 will behave like pure wingers. The further your players are positioned from the side of the pitch, the less like out-and-out wingers they will play. You will notice that the fullbacks have been pushed further up the pitch in order to compensate for the space in the defence that the wingers will leave.

Wingers can be played from midfield or attack depending on how far up the pitch they are positioned.

It is important to keep player skills in mind when playing wings. Skills like speed and stamina are important, passing and aerial passing in particular will affect how your wingers play. Wingers want to cross the ball, but if their aerial passing skill is low, their air crosses will be poor. If their passing skill is low, they will make fewer good ground passes and they will not deliver many good balls to your strikers. Wingers also can cut inside and shoot on goal, so shooting is also important.

As with all players, technique and intelligence play a key role. A good winger will have many different skills, but a great winger will have many secondary skills as well.

(Old Simulator)

• First sequence: you can see that the wingers are passing the ball from side to side and are not effective at getting the ball towards the goal. The ball goes out for a throw-in.
• Second sequence: this is similar to the first sequence and the wingers make no real progress.
  
• Third sequence: here you see a player trying a short aerial pass to the winger, he misses the pass completely (due to the passing bug) and the ball goes out of play.

(New Simulator)

• Fourth sequence: the winger is moving towards the goalkeeper and has the opportunity to pass the ball to a player in the box or to shoot. The player decides to shoot.
• Fifth sequence: the winger receives the ball and moves towards the goal before passing to another player. That player runs with the ball and passes to the central striker, who converts the chance and scores.
• Sixth sequence: a midfielder intercepts a loose pass and then plays it to the wing. The winger then runs with the ball up field before crossing the ball to the striker, who scores with a header.

Below we will show how different wing formations work compared to others. There are many possible combinations, these are two to inspire you.

Wide wings

• First Sequence: in the top right corner you can see the formation. The wingers are positioned near the side line. Blue no. 11 gets the ball, runs along the sideline and passes the ball to the striker, who is running towards the penalty box.
• Second sequence: the winger gets the ball, instead of running towards goal he runs straight down and passes to the central attacker.

Narrow wings

• Third sequence: in the top right corner you see that the formation has switched from using wide wingers to narrow wingers. The tactic is still “wings”, but when the wingers are this narrow they tend to strive towards goal much more often than when the wide wing formation is used. The narrow wingers draw the wide defenders closer to the penalty box and the striker gets less space to manoeuvre.
• Fourth sequence: The winger runs towards goal instead of finding the open striker in the middle.