wpdavid
Hall of Fame Member
After your previous post about Italian sides in the late 1960s/early 1970s, I looked at the line-up in the 1970 WC Final.From a formation perspective I thought their 1978 side reflected the shape quite well but the personnel were off.
They played with midfielders more than wingbacks back then, which is likely because the player most suited to playing wingback for them was transitioning to sweeper. Neeskens was a good fit whenever he played there but he's a weirdo and tried to be Cruyff Lite far too often in my view..
1970 FIFA World Cup final - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Now obviously this is just one person's take on the side, so it doesn't necessarily follow that they played four at the back. Bertoni may be wrongly described as a 'DM', whereas other places describe him as a defender or a midfielder. The former possibly makes more sense if the Italians were playing catenaccio in 1970. I can honestly say that I had no idea when watching the final as a ten year old. My understanding of that formation was a sweeper behind four defenders, which, I think, fits with your description of how Inter played in that era. Of course, Italian football had such a negative reputation in those days that the attacking contribution of the full-backs/wing-backs was less than obvious.
Looking at other sides, Beckenbauer's sweeper role seems to be behind three defenders rather than four, so I don't think the German full-backs would really have been wing-backs at all.
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