My Tactical Counter-revolution (Long read)

[Gianni Brera]

(This is a longread about my tactical thoughts and experiments in FM, I hope you enjoy it, and I welcome everyone to share with me their thoughts and suggestions)

 

In 2017, Ultimo Uomo published a longread about the ''Tactical Revolution'' taking place in the Serie A between 2010 and 2016, led by avant-gardists such as Eusebio di Francesco, Vincenzo Montella, Antonio Conte, Luis Enrique, Paolo Souza and Maurizio Sarri.

The article begins with the epicentre of the Revolution in today's football: Guardiola's Barcelona, 2008. Central to this revolution is the idea of ''Fluidity'', the constant movement of the squad, constantly shifting shapes to remain unpredictable and to maintain compact positioning near the ball - and therefore to dominate it wherever it is. To the proponents of ''Fluidity'', whether you ask Cruyff, Sacchi, or Ancelotti, formations and numbers are meaningless and irrelevant to the modern game: like random telephone numbers.

Sacchi would say his formation is ''movement'', and to this school of thought we can add the German Revolution led by the high priests of Gegenpressing and organized chaos Jurgen Klopp, Joachim Löw and Thomas Tüchel. In the Premier League, especially the top teams have embraced fluidity. If Arsene Wenger was a pioneer in that respect with Arsenal, nowadays many teams have imported foreign managers that have put the ancient 4-4-2 long-ball game to rest in favor of a fluid game. But in Italy, so the article goes, things have remained rather quiet. For years, there were no signs of revolutions or subversive activities seeking to overthrow the old, and established order of ''rigidity'' and ''counter-attacking'', or as Sacchi would call ''Tyrannical football''. Except from individual cases such as Zdenek Zeman, Cesare Prandelli and Massimiliano Allegri, the Serie A staunchly held on to the sacred principles that promised certainty. Italian football, so obsessed with tactical detail and ''systems'' (or meaningless numbers), was a hostile environment to the broader, more strategic aims of the Guardiola's, Klopp's, and Pochettino's. While they employed their entire squad to manipulate, control and exploit space, such ideas remained under-developed in the Serie A.

The season 2010-2011, perhaps in the wake of Mourinho's Inter Milan Treble the year before, is considered the darkest year. With only 955 goals scored that season, ''reactive'' and ''speculative'' football of the Old Italian School dominated. These principles included: Defending the central areas of the pitch, closing off passing lanes, fouling and long balls. The article takes Stefano Pioli's Chievo as example of this school: a 4-3-1-2 formation, Chievo ended 20% of their games in 0-0. They led the league in defensive interceptions, number of fouls, least amount of ball possession in the attacking third, long balls and crosses. Chievo has one of the worst attacks in the League, but ranks 4th for best defense.

 

Im taking a leap forward. Nowadays, the tide has turned in the Serie A. Fluidity is fashionable. The most succesful teams in Serie A of the recent years, Juventus (Allegri), Napoli (Sarri), Roma (Spalletti, Garcia, Di Francesco) have all done so whilst controlling ball-posession, fluid movements, and even high pressing. Since even smaller squads like Pescara and Empoli managed to avoid relegation by going forward and trying to control the space through positioning, many Serie A teams now accept fluidity and ''pro-active'' football as a way to success. Atalanta under Gian Piero Gasperini, for example, has achieved European football and is one of the few squads in Italy that Juventus can't beat, thanks to his tactical innovation. With Simone Inzaghi at Lazio, Spalletti at Inter, and Gattuso at Milan, even the old giants are converting to the fluid philosophy - although AC Milan have arguably always been loyal to that philosophy since the 1990's (Sacchi, later his pupils Capello and Ancelotti, Zaccheroni, Allegri Seedorf, Montella - all of them propagating a fluid game).

 

Counter-revolution in Parma

Being rather nostalgic to the bygone era's when some of the most talented teams in the world in vain attempted to save their title by trying to break down an organized Italian defense that was sitting on a 1-0 lead, I have decided to try and see if I can succeed in FM resorting to the Old Italian School: Rigidity, tactical discipline, fouling, and a speculative long ball forward and see if we can get a penalty kick or something. For this experiment, I have chosen AC Parma. Why? Pure nostalgia and theyre fighting against relegation, so I won't be troubled by my conscience of making Dybala or Cristiano Ronaldo track back to their own box and stay there for 80 minutes.

 

My assistants recommended me using a 4-3-3 formation, and as an arch Reactionary ''4-3-3'' is not a meaningless number to me, as it is to Mr. Sacchi, but its a means to an end. Marcello Lippi once said 4-3-3 is his favorite formation, because in a 4-3-3 all the individual roles are very clear and understandable to the players - and its the manager's task of making things ''as simple as possible'' for the players. This 4-3-3 is now of course to be rigidly implemented, with no room for deviance.

 

There are however two ways in which one can understand tactical ''rigidity''. In my understanding, it can mean that the roles of the players are strongly defined by their relative position. So a ''rigid'' take on 4-3-3 would mean that there is 4 defenders, 3 midfielders, and 3 attackers. The defenders stay back, the midfielders shuttle up and down the pitch, and the attackers lead the attack. Translate this to FM, it would result in picking the most straightforward roles, and selecting Defend duties to defenders, support duties to midfielders, and attack duties to attackers. On many occassions, FM would judge that to be a ''flexible'' arrangement actually, depending on your formation.

FM has a different idea, which is tied to the number of support roles and duties. The more support duties you employ, the more fluid FM says your shape is. Select the Tiki-Taka preset style, you'll notice the abundance of support duties FM has implemented, with only 1 central midfielder having an Attack duty. It makes sense though. If fluidity is about movement, compact positioning, and collective transitions, there is a number of things that contribute to this. First is having a lot of support duties, allowing players to determine themselves when and where to move up, drop deeper, move wide or cut inside - but always taking the positioning of their teammates into account. Attackers drop between the lines to make themselves available and participate in the build-up, defenders push into midfield or overlap to help the team progress up the pitch. To make this movement even more fluid, we can select a more attacking Team Mentality - encouraging more movement and forward runs, and ''be more expressive'', allowing for greater roaming movement.

To achieve the opposite, a highly structured formation in which positions and roles are sacred laws to abide by, we have to do the opposite. Lets begin by banishing as many Support duties from our system as possible. Initially, I set all my Parma defenders to a Defend duty - since they're all useless with the ball anyway. I set my defensive midfielder on Defend as well, and all my attackers on an Attack duty. Two central midfielders played as BBM's on support, to link the two departments. With only 2 players on a support role, FM considers that to be a Very Structured system. Its a myth that Fluidity is ''merely'' a label and has no effect under the hood anymore - you'll notice that the individual player mentalities will either raise or drop a notch along with Fluidity. A Defend duty on a Flexible shape has ''defensive'' individual mentality, but ''Very Defensive'' on more structured shapes. On Highly Fluid shapes, a FB on support will have a higher individual mentality than a winger on support.

 

To complement my ''Reactive'' style of play, I dropped the Team Mentality to ''Ultra Defensive''. Take no prisoners, I want to drag down the mentalities of all my players as much as possible to make them track back and defend. Since my attackers are on an Attack duty, I was a bit scared they would not track back. A defensive mentality further increases rigidity, because less movement and less forward runs are expected. To complete the package: ''Be more disciplined''. There can be no misunderstanding anymore that I want every player to think of nothing but his role, his position and his instructions.

Formation (note the roles are set how I ended the game, not how I started it)

Attack & Defend

Having basically split my players between attack or defend duties, lets proceed to the instructions for both phases of play. In Attack, its fairly simple: Much higher tempo, and long balls. Since we lack support roles, this team is badly positioned to pass-and-move its way forward, and if it does, it will probably go at the tempo of a dying dog. In order to have an attack phase at all, it is necessary to just knock it forward immediately and let the 3 forwards sort it out. Above all, we hope to exploit the spaces and mistakes of the opponent. Indeed, it is nothing but speculation.

In defense, I aim to drop my Line of Engagement as deep as possible. This is to encourage the attackers to tuck in, creating a 4-5-1 shape, and have the team minimize the spaces within the defensive block. Added to that is tight marking and get stuck in, combined with a lot of pressing. The purpose of these instructions is to ensure that opponents within our defensive block are constantly harassed, kicked, beaten and spat on. If he doesnt have the ball, breathe in his neck. If he has the ball, block him. If he gets past you, take him to the ground and concede a free kick.

 

First experiment: Parma vs Eintracht Frankfurt

I got exactly what I asked for in the first game. With ball possession averaging 25% in the first half, Parma did pretty much nothing but conserve energy and block the penalty box. Eintracht Frankfurt had the ball, but only one shot on target in the entire first half. I did have to make an adjustment though. After 1 minute, I could see happening what I was afraid of. My wingers did not track back to defend on an attack duty, and Eintracht Frankfurt was immediately making use of that. Having a Fluid shape and Positive mentality, Frankfurt represented my arch nemesis, and this initially gave them the upper hand down the flanks.

In order to make the wingers contribute to defending, and withdrawing 9 players behind the ball (8-9 players behind the ball has always been the norm in Italy), I had to switch them to support duties. There I was compromising on my Counter-revolutionary principles after just 1 minute. My shape went to structured - how soft and weak! In order to restore iron tactical discipline, I switched the 2 central midfielders to CM-Attack. Midfielders after all, regardless of duty, come back to defend. This changed my shape from 4-3-3 to 4-1-4-1. Both when defending and when attacking, it remained exactly this shape. Numbers matter!

 

In the image above, you can see the problem if the wingers are on Attack duty. The image below, from the second half, shows the defensive 4-1-4-1 shape I wanted, with 9 and occasionally 10 players behind the ball. Putting the 2 central midfielders on attack, and later having one of them play as BBM-Support, was not a defensive risk at all. They in fact ensured that a significant triangle was maintained in front of the defensive line, controlling the central space in such a way that opponents could hardly get into the Golden Zone with the ball.

 

Futile, speculative, reactive attacks

While Frankfurt kept circulating the ball around my defensive third without finding openings, Parma awaited for opportunities to intercept and well... knock it forward. Because Inglese was alone up front, most counter-attacks resulted in nothing. Futile attempts to get him into a spot to earn a free kick or corner kick. Occasionally, if the wingers were involved, the counters looked a bit more threatening but it wasn't something that could scare anyone. But it did contribute to fooling Eintracht Frankfurt into thinking there was no danger for them.

 

Germans in control, Italians steal the win

Eventually in the 80th minute, the inevitable lapse in concentration, the inevitable defensive mistake was made by the German team lulled asleep, thinking they could not possibly ever concede a goal against this static Parma. I wanted to speculate on scoring from opponent's mistakes, and the Gods seemed to favor that approach today. Parma earned a free kick on Frankfurt's half, a unique opportunity to bring all players on their half. After passing it around a few times, Ball-playing defender Bruno Alves knocked it over the top for Inglese to run into, and the Frankfurt defenders - caught by surprise - abbandoned the center of the defense to close down Inglese, leaving an enormous gap for the central midfielder to run into and score.

Things only got worse for Frankfurt in the 89th minute after as a counter-attack down the right flank resulted in another goal being scored, this time by the other central midfielder. Rigidity beat Fluidity this time, not because of any superior attacking play, but because of its superior capacity to avoid mistakes. And that is the culture that has dominated the Serie A for so long according to Ultimo Uomo. For years teams have focussed on risking nothing and avoiding mistakes.

 

[carloshcorbalan]

Hola.....

Se ve interesante....

Enlace de descarga para probar tactic....??????

[andre62]

can you share the tactic for test please?

[Raymond85]

Wow.... he just showed it there, he explained choices and changes from experience during the match, and still you ask for a donwload guys???? Is that just plain lazy or adversion to reading stuff and just looking at pictures? Still, looking at pictures would lead to the tactic, so i'm a little baffled

[Experienced Defender]

An enjoyable read, mate 

I like the thought process that led you to creating a tactic that produced exactly what you wanted to achieve. That's the right approach to the game, no matter what particular style of football one personally prefers. 

[Robson 07]

A pleasure to read.

[djpdavey]

Did you stick with this? How did you do come the end of the season? Excellent article. Love the Defensive shape. I might use this for shutting up shot at the end of a game.

[davidbarros2]

Excellent article and well thought.
It might work with Parma due to the space other teams concede against you, but I'm curious on your thoughts about breaking a defensive team down or when you are 1-2 goals down against you...

[craigd84]

ah thats reall cool. Nice read.

[Gianni Brera]

On 08/04/2019 at 10:16, djpdavey said:

Did you stick with this? How did you do come the end of the season? Excellent article. Love the Defensive shape. I might use this for shutting up shot at the end of a game.

I plan to try various versions of the same system, playing around with roles and duties, but sadly I haven't found any time to continue this experiment. But I'll give an update when I can.

On 09/04/2019 at 18:42, davidbarros2 said:

Excellent article and well thought.
It might work with Parma due to the space other teams concede against you, but I'm curious on your thoughts about breaking a defensive team down or when you are 1-2 goals down against you...

Well, typical of the old Italian school is that there basically is no plan to pursue a goal - hence the motto ''prima non prenderle''. Do not concede, next priority is do not concede, and then try some more protecting the goal. When you go down a goal, the options are limited. Maybe allow an extra full-back to charge forward, take a little more risk in mentality, more speculative shots, allow the players more creative freedom, or if necessary, switch to an emergency formation that enables more attacking. Go down 2 goals, and the new priority is ''damage control''. Perhaps its a bit of a pessimistic mindset, then again, this is a journey to the pessimistic Italian football of the past. Trapattoni once explained what Catenaccio, the mindset (not the system), means: it means ''ruling out defeat''. Its a take no prisoners mentality of maximizing tactical certainty, predictability, and control, and literally waiting for the opponent to commit an error and basically defeat himself.

Defending requires tactical planning and organization, and can be perfected and then executed. Attacking is an entirely different art. It requires creativity, and then it requires technique to carry it out. As a lower league team, you posess neither. So if you must score, youre trapped. Lets just stick to the old plan, contain the damage, and hope we can pounce on the complacency and score a late equalizer. If I go down a goal, I often change nothing. Usually, the opponent changes something. Theyre gonna give you more time and space, and scoring chances will come your way.

[ramie]

Really enjoyable read

[Last resort]

On 07/04/2019 at 17:47, Gianni Brera said:

Its a myth that Fluidity is ''merely'' a label and has no effect under the hood anymore

So true. So many seasoned FM pro's on these very boards have tried to convince everyone else that this is not true.

The only difference between this and previous FM's is that we (the user) can no longer set this manually. SIGames will have you believe that it was because "the label" was confusing. I can in part agree with this if I was looking from a new users perspective as it's more familiar for people that have played the game for many years and understand that Fluidity is a nod towards the mentality sliders we once had in earlier renditions of the game where we actually had to set the Fluidity ourselves. However Team Shape was removed so we, as users, could not 1 up the AI and make the game terribly easy.

For long time players of the game to honestly come onto the boards and say that Team Shape has no effect on tactics is actually quite insulting. But I guess they do it just for the same very reason Pep Guardiola comes out in the press and says he has never told his team to tactically foul other teams. A certain documentary on Amazon would debunk that. As would the familiarity bars in the game when the indicate a change in familiarity once you change Team Shape via roles.