As much as anyone loves the majestic performances of Maldini, Baresi and Bonucci, there’s nothing quite like a well-scored goal. Much like everything else in football, though, attacking and scoring are about movement as well as skill. What players do with the ball at their feet you can’t control, but you can control where they do it. Create overwhelming attacking movement on Football Manager with what I call the Five Channels..
Football tactics are a constantly evolving aspect of football. They always have been and they always will be. Over the years the tactics of our beautiful game have been revolutionised, by managers, players, teams, and nations. It’s something we maybe take for granted; revolutionary football. Take the 4-4-2 for example, someone had to be the first to use that, someone had to revolutionise football and play a formation never before seen on the green grass. So just how do we…
It’s not a stretch to say that every FM player is, to some degree, a football fan. But even as we all share the love of the beautiful game, everyone has their favourite style. Be it a possession heavy style or a deadly countering team, we all want our side playing a certain way. When the time comes to take inspiration from our favourite real-life managers, however, the job can get tricky. Fear not, for help is on the way,…
This is the follow-up to my last piece, which was the first part in the Zona Mista tactic guide. It can be found here. Whereas that article gave an introduction to the Catenaccio roots of Italian Game, this one will examine the player roles you will actually need to set up the Italian counter-attacking style in FM21.
It’s an argument as old as football statistics: is it more important to play possession football, or can you get away with letting the other team control the ball, and taking your chances on the counter? If you’d asked me six months ago, I’d have said no. Possession football was a king in FM20’s match engine, making Tiki Taka and Control Possession enormously useful tactical styles. In FM21, though, I’ve found it’s quite possible to play well without controlling…
Different football styles inspire many things in us. There is Brazilian Jogo Bonito with its almost sexual joie de vivre. Makes you want to dance samba just watching it. Then there is German Gegenpress with its cold-blooded efficiency. And Italian Calcio which to me personifies romanticism of a simple bygone era. Also Italian football just made sense to me, even as teenager who knew little about football. Score goals and don’t let the other team do it. Actually Calcio from 70s-90s is one of the best jump in points to learn…
Every manager in the ‘real’ world (we all know that exists, right?) has his quirks. Those little habits on matchday; from Antonio Conte maniacally thrashing his arms, or Neil Warnock being angry at, well just about everyone. Pep Guardiola’s sauve demeanor or Marcelo Bielsa’s superstitious bucket sitting. Well, they all have one thing in common, they all make tactical decisions. I’m talking in the moment, tactical decisions during a game of football, that influence the game. Funnily enough, Football…
The following article is Part 1 in a multi-part series of guides on developing Possession-focused tactic in FM21. It is inspired by Pep Guardiola’s style but is not meant to be an accurate recreation of Pep’s tactics. Instead the tactic in this guide is largely inspired by Total Football and continues my quest to bring this style in all of its beauty to Football Manager games. Read on if you love Total Football and would love to see how it…
Three strikers might seem an extreme way of going about things but there are many ways to break down a defence. Sometimes the creation of space, overlaps and overloads are less about tactical refinement and more about brute force. We don’t all manage a team of La Liga or top-flight superstars so sometimes a more direct approach is needed to force the issue for smaller lower league sides operating on a budget. In this article, we float the idea of…
So far in my Total Football Journeyman series, I had covered some pretty great historic teams like Ajax, Barcelona, and Liverpool. But I feel that in recounting the stories of these giants, I lost track of something important. All those sides played beautiful fluid football but were already established world-class clubs. Yet the question remains, can a Total Football style be achieved by a club that is good but not world-class? And can Total Football be achieved on a budget?…
