Man marking vs zonal marking

[reddeviljohn]

In order to apply man-marking your defenders and defensive midfielders must be good at marking and also good in all defensive attributes. They must be able to stop the attacker in 1v1 situation, otherwise it causes very significant problems in your defense. What I understood is that man-marking means that the defender follows the attacker who enters his zone even after attacker leaves the zone and thus leaving it undefended against other enemy players stepping in the zone. For me it means that man-marking is unacceptable against highly mobile and technically gifted teams such as Barcelona and Arsenal, because a player like Messi will just drag your defenders out of their zone while his teammates tear you apart(Messi is at the Right Inside Fwd position, drags your left defender with him to the middle and passes to Dani Alves, who is free to do whatever he wants, because your left defender is gone). Man-marking is also more suitable if your team has a lot of defending units and the formation is very defensive minded so that even one of your defenders gets beaten there is always someone nearby for backup.
Overall, Zonal marking seems to work best for me. Whenever I want to stop a key enemy player who is very good with the ball in his feet - then I tight mark him from the enemy instructions. Tight marking as I read means that your defender will be marking the attacker tighly(charging him for first ball or not letting him have much time to think what to do with the ball) when he is in his zone but will defend his zone when the attacker leaves the zone. Of course zonal marking doesn't require as high marking attr as man-marking, but it requires a decent teamwork from all defensive units and an anchorman or defensive minded midfielder.

[Piyush Ravi]

How do we tight mark an enemy player?