Best Soccer Tactic Books to Become a Better Player

Soccer is often referred to as the beautiful game and for good reason. The game frequently features deep knowledge of tactics, formations, and plays to better assist in triumphing over the opposing team. These tactics and formations, when complete successfully, often lead to a beautiful game in action.

However, learning how to become a better soccer player inherently requires understanding the various tactics and formations that the game calls for.

And if you are looking to become a better soccer player, then we would definitely recommend the below best soccer tactic books.

Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics

A review by the Sunday Business Post claimed Inverting the Pyramid was, “An outstanding work [and] the [soccer] book of the decade.”

Inverting the Pyramid is a pioneering soccer book that chronicles the evolution of soccer tactics and the lives of the itinerant coaching geniuses who have spread their distinctive styles across the globe with their revolutionary take on the game.

Through Jonathan Wilson’s brilliant historical detective work we learn how the South Americans shrugged off the British colonial order to add their own finesse to the game; how the Europeans harnessed individual technique and built it into a team structure; how the game once featured five forwards up front, while now a lone striker is not uncommon.

Inverting the Pyramid provides a definitive understanding of the tactical genius of modern-day Barcelona, for the first time showing how their style of play developed from Dutch “Total Football,” which itself was an evolution of the Scottish passing game invented by Queens Park in the 1870s and taken on by Tottenham Hotspur in the 1930s.

Inverting the Pyramid has been called the “Big Daddy” (Zonal Marking) of soccer tactics books; it is essential for any coach, fan, player, or fantasy manager of the beautiful game and an absolute must read for any player looking to further their understanding of the multiple tactics available on the pitch.

Coaching Transition Play

This incredible book helps coaches improve their training sessions in the most important phases of the modern game – the transition phases. Understanding how to translate the transition phase into one fully capable of exploiting the defenses lack of preparedness can make your team more deadly and efficient on the offensive side of the game.

Utilizing tactics and examples of some of the best coaches in the world, Coaching Transition Play will make your team more informed and better able to execute after a successful defensive play.

Pep Guardiola – 88 Attacking Combinations and Positional Patterns

The 88 Attacking Combinations and Attacking Positional Patterns of Play included are taken direct from Pep Guardiola’s training sessions at Manchester City, Bayern Munich and FC Barcelona. You will find out why Guardiola marks out zones on the training pitch and how he uses them to practice his unique positional patterns of play, maximize space, disorganize the opposing team, and move the ball into dangerous attacking areas.

With 88 attacking combinations, this book will give you and your team plenty of material to begin your offensive tactics and exploit the opposing teams weaknesses.

The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics

If you want to be a better soccer player, then understanding the tactics utilized by players and coaches at the Premier League is essential.

The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics explains just how the creation of the Premier League coincided with one of the most seismic rule changes in football history: the abolition of the back-pass. Suddenly defenders had no-get-out-of-jail-free card, goalkeepers had to be able to field and play the ball and the pace of the game quickened immeasurably. Tactics evolved dramatically, helped by an increased foreign influence.

Coaching 4-3-3 Tactics

Whether you coach an amateur team or a professional one, Coaching 4-3-3 Tactics provides in-depth, well-researched, and detailed examples and how-tos for coaching the 4-3-3 formation at all levels. The level of detail and tactical solutions included will also help you to emulate how top coaches utilize the 4-3-3 tactic in live game situations.

Soccer Mastery: The little things that make a big difference

Soccer Mastery: The little things that make a big difference isn’t a tactical soccer book, per-se. But it does discuss how small, incremental changes in ones habits can make a difference on the pitch. One of the best reads we’ve had in years, the book discusses a plethora of topics, with many of them widely off of the sport, that the reader is left wondering how this even relates to soccer.

But the author does a great job brining everything back together and making it all make sense. Honestly, one of our favorite soccer books of all time and one we highly recommend to players of all ages and experiences.

Soccer Strategies: Defensive and Attacking Tactics

Aimed primarily at intermediate and advanced coaches, Soccer Strategies: Defensive and Attacking Tactics examines the principle formations used in modern soccer and the need to fully understand them all if one is to adapt to game situations using counter-active tactics.

The authors discuss such offensive topics as support, width, penetration, mobility and improvisation. Defensively, they provide insight into depth, delay, concentration, team balance, cover and restraint. With dedicated chapters on specific offensive and defensive tacts, this book is one of the most in-depth soccer tactic books.

Soccer Smarts: 75 Skills, Tactics & Mental Exercises

Soccer Smarts: 75 Skills, Tactics & Mental Exercises to Improve Your Game is another great soccer tactic book. While not only discussing offensive and defensive tactics, the book takes a look at mental and physical aspects and attributes that can help you to become a better player.

And while training on the offensive and defensive sides is a must, being mentally and physically prepared are nearly just as important and are discussed in-depth in this book which we really enjoyed reading.

Jürgen Klopp Liverpool Attacking Tactics

This book, Jürgen Klopp Liverpool Attacking Tactics, focuses on the period of 2018‐2020, in which Liverpool became one of the most lethal and dominant attacking force in Europe, winning the Premier League and Champions League. In this period, Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool found tactical solutions against opponents that used many different tactics.

Some tactical analysis utilized by Klopp include the following, which are all fully reviewed and discussed in the book:

• Build‐up against a high press and play forward quickly
• Break through pressing and play in the space between the lines
• Switch point of attack to weak side of ball oriented opponents
• Technical lofted passes into the box against deep defenses
• Fast break attack after winning the ball in the high zone