Recreating: Marcelino's Valencia

[Jack722]

Last season, Valencia put themselves back on the map in European football. Having won La Liga as recently as 2003/04 in a country with 2 footballing juggernauts, Valencia can think of themselves as a big club. Sadly though, after consecutive 12th place finishes, they looked to be falling into midtable. However, last season, Valencia managed to both qualify for the champions league by finishing 4th in a league with Real, Barca and Atletico and winning the Copa del Rey, beating Barca in the final. Valencia have managed to turn things around dramatically.

Marcelino

Clearly a talented manager, Marcelino's name was going around after having achieved 3 top 6 finishes with villareal - a team that was in the second division as recently as 2013

 

The Philosophy

Valencia under Marcelino were known for surrendering the ball to opposition, while staying in a low and very compact block. Goals were scored mostly from counterattacks - an unusual style for a team competing for trophies and international football. The primary formation was a 442 with 'interiors' or inverted wingers in FM. The team in FM19 lines up like below.

The standout feature of the tactic is the defence. The moment the ball is lost, every player returns to there position immidiately, making an extremely compact, narrow block that is difficult to play through. An example of this is shown below against Barca. 

This narrowness means that the only way towards the Valencia goal is through the flanks. As most teams nowadays use inside forwards or inverted wingers, this means that the opposition wingbacks are needed to have a prescenece on the flanks. This can leave a 2v2 in the event of a turnover which is extremely dangerous. The narrowness also encourages teams to try and attempt a switch of play to try and break them down, which can be effective, but also very risky. A miss hit switch of play or badly controlled ball can lead to the ball being won back with an opposition that is extremely stretched as they tried to attack the open wide areas, leading to an easy counterattack through the middle. Players such as Guedes, Rodrigo and Gaya are very fast and can make a counterattack very difficult to stop.

One reason why Valencia are able to play this style while competing at the top and winning trophies, is due to the team having alternative methods of scoring, before they can sit back and wait to counter a team in need of a goal. Valencia attack as shown in the image below.

• Wingers cutting in and full backs pushing up mean that the whole width of the pitch can be attacked.
• Talented wide (especially left sided) players mean that the team can play combinations can hopefully opening up a full back on the overlap to cross for 2 natural strikers in the box who both have heading ability.
• Rodrigo is also good on the ball and likes to drop into midfield a bit to offer himself as a passing option, this can also open up space for Mina or Guedes to exploit.
• Parejo is a very talented playmaker who can dictate the tempo and pick out one of the 6 options ahead of him.
• Parejo also takes an aboslute weapon of a set piece. Valencia can also win set pieces in abundance with teams struggling to keep up with the pace and dribbling of Rodrigo and Guedes.

In FM

Key Players

• A very well rounded forward, is both a threat on the counter with his pace and dribbling, while also being a suprisingly big threat in the box for the overlaps with his good heading and jumping reach for a pacey dribbler

• A world class passer and a true asset to the team, he is vital for breaking down defensive sides
• Will still put in a shift so I'm comfortable playing him in a midifeld 2 while being on the backfoot for the most part
• Excellent free kick taking and the ability to hit a long shot give us important plan B's when we're against a team giving us no space

• Valencia's record signing costing 36m
• Pace and agility vital for getting us up the pitch quickly in the event of a counter
• Decent work rate for a flair player, which is important for getting him to track back and help create the low block

• Good work rate which is important as he will be running up and down the left flank all game
• Has great accleration, agility and off the ball, meaning that he should be able to find himself free on the overlap often in order to put in a cross or play a cut back

Tactics

This is how I believe Valencia would play in FM. I've played 4 games so far, against 2 big teams and 2 small teams. And afer a dissapointing start, I adjusted a little for the latest 2 games and we pulled off two 1-0 wins away at Napoli and against Levante and the tactic has started to play really well.

I originally played Rodrigo as a DLFa as I believe 2 attack duty forwards can help with creating a 2v2 when countering, but this wasn't working too well as firstly, Rodrigo wasn't dropping enough to create space when we had the ball, and secondly, when we won the ball back, there wasn't much of a link from midfield to attack. While both strikers are capable of holding up the ball, neither of them were at there best winning long passes and holding up. A DLFs made gave us a link to attack and allowed Rodrigo to carry the ball on a counter which he is excellent at due to his pace and dribbling. Also, it is clear form the defensive structure in the picture near the beginning of this post, that one striker was dropping back more to help with defence

• Positive mentality
  • Helps with the quick transitions
• Play for set pieces
  • not really sure what this does (increase dribbling/asks players to dive?) but it's a good idea to use it when you have Parejo stepping up to the dead ball.
• Exploit the flanks
  • This is where we are most dangerous, also increases the mentaility of our wingbacks to encourage the overlap - without using the instruction which slow down the play
• HIgher tempo
  • Gets the ball up the pitch quicker without having to play long balls to our strikers
• In transition instructions
  • Pretty much self explanatory based on the style we're trying to create
• Defend narrower
  • One of the few absolutely essential instructions, completely shuts down the middle of the pitch and helps us stay compact
• LOE and Dline
  • Set one notch closer to each other than standard to help be compact
  • These were set after watching a few games on comprehensive. While it's important to drop deep to recreate the style, I'm aware that FM19 likes to overpower longshots, and being too deep will just mean we'll concede too many from outside the box

*EDIT Realised I didn't talk about roles

• Rodrigo was fairly easy, he always drops deeper than his strike partner, so DLFs seemed a good fit
• The midfield duo of Kondogbia and Parejo was also quite easy, Kondogbia stayed further back and focused on defence, whereas Parejo was the team's main playmaker
• Wide midfield roles that looked to come inside a bit more with adventurous wing back roles to overlap. The specifics of the roles were more down to player suitability
  • Guedes was set to attack as an IWa looks to drive at the defence more and take on defenders than the IWs
• Mina as a poacher was due to his skillset
  • There isn't much info on Mina on the internet, most articles talked about Zaza, who has recently moved. Zaza was a natural no9 who was very physical and good at holding up the ball
  • Mina isn't as good physically, but is a natural poacher. It also isn't too different as the poacher looks to play it safe when on the ball, leading to hold up play for others
• Just your standard CBs, I used one BPD as this helps with the quick transitions and we have some natural BPDs in the squad

I

Looking at the match stats give us an idea of what we're in for...

 

Ideally, I'd say the goal would be to finish as the 'best of the rest' but I haven't set my hopes too high as in FM19 the longshots tend to hit the back of the net often and 1v1s tend to be saved more often than not. Both of these disadvantage a counter attacking side, but i've seen some promising signs so far.

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by Jack722

[coach vahid]

I just want to say thank you. 

Marcelino is one the best underestimated manager.

Great to see people thinking about some managers even if they sacked or dont have job. 

[Jack722]

Update..

things aren't going great so far, currently in 7th place half way through the season. What's interesting is that our tactic has actually been great, it's just that we are running into the predicted problems of conceding longshots while being dreadful at putting away 1v1s. This game against Villareal sums it up pretty well.

A couple of early goals from a long shot and a cross put us 2-0 up. We then created 5 clear cut chances and didn't put away a single one. Villareal then scored form an indirect free kick late on, and then scored the equaliser minutes later from another indirect free kick in the same place, luckily it was dissallowed. However, this happens far too often, and we also miss a lot of 1v1s that look like they should be a ccc, but don't get counted, so the stats don't really show how bad it's been to watch in game.

I've changed the tactic slightly by pushing up the dline and loe slightly, while making our CB's a stopper-cover combo. Although I don't think it recreates Marcelino quite as well, we have been playing a lot better as we don't let them quite as close to our goal, and we also compress the space in front of the defence slightly better with the stopper (which is the prime area for a long shot).

However, ignoring the goals scored, this match against Villareal is exactly what we should be expecting from a Marcelino side. Very little possession but not allowing too many dangerous oppertunities to the opposition. We were also tearing them apart on the counter with 20 shots and most of them being on target, suggesting that they were mostly good chances.

[denen123]

Excellent post.

Valencia isn't, entirely, a small team. So how do you adjust when playing very small teams?

[Jack722]

Tactical Switch

After being first in the media's sack race during a poor run of form.  We managed to move up to 5th following a good spell after changing tactics before Villadoid, like I mentioned in the first post. The higher line not only reduces the number of long shots we concede, it also gives us slightly more control over the game. Although we are still primarily a counter attacking side with little possession, the higher line allows us to win the ball slightly earlier and work chances down the flanks with our high ability wide players. And ironically, we seem to convert crosses more than we do 1v1s. Here is what we look like now:

The reason we dropped the higher tempo, is that when the counter isn't on, Valencia are happy to work chances with shorter passing, letting Parejo dictate the tempo. A positive mentailty also increases the tempo naturally. A higher tempo is also quite dangerous when we have the ball in the opponent's half, this is because we only leave to players back to defend, as both wingbacks join the attack. A misplaced pass can lead to a dangerous counter attack.

Also, these are the stats for against different reputation teams:

We've actually been playing the best against lower rated teams. Sadly we've so far been pretty bad against the big boys. Although, there has been an element of bad luck involved. Against Atleti, we conceded 2 goals in the last 5 minutes to lose 3-2, and in our most recent game against Barca (while playing away), they looked toothless in attack, and had to rely on a set piece to create there only really good chance. Luckily for them, they converted it to win 1-0.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Jack722

[Jack722]

10 minutes ago, denen123 said:

Excellent post.

Valencia isn't, entirely, a small team. So how do you adjust when playing very small teams?

I haven't tweaked the tactics once, other than the switch in the previous post. This is because, Valencia have alternative ways of scoring when not given space. 

When a team drops deep, they surrender us space down the flanks to whip in crosses to 2 good penalty box strikers. They also surrender sapce in front of the box which we can exploit with both centre mids having a powerful long shot. Finally, we are also dangerous from free kicks due to Parejo. This means we can play the same tactic against pretty much any side.

The only time that I would consider changing is when we face a back 3 system. Although I haven't had to yet, a back 3 could become a spanner in the works as we won't be able to get the 2v2 on the counter. The wingabcks in a back 3 system would also have absolute free reign down the flanks to do as they like, as we defend so narrow.

[Jack722]

Plan B

The remarkable run of form contunues, putting us in the top 4 having been miles off the pace half way through the season.

Suprisingly enough, we have been able to play this style of football to a good effect against every type of team, including wins against relegation threatended sides, as well as an assured win against Real Madrid, while getting to the CL semi finals.

However, there has been, and will always be times where a team will just refuse to attack us. An example of this was Alaves. A recurring theme of our games is that we get well below 50% possession, while maintaining a high proportion of our total shots hitting the target. Although, this wasn't quite the case with Alaves.

Alaves lined up in a 442 DM formation and gave us almost half of the ball, suggesting that they were playing a defensive style of football as well. We certainly struggled a bit here as you can see that our shots on target ratio was much lower than normal.

This is where it becomes important to fall back on your plan B. In this case, we shamelessly relied on Parejo's free kick taking ability, where he was able to hit the post and allow Diakhaby to turn in the rebound.

A reliable plan B is imo the difference between good defensive sides that stay in mid table season after season, and those who stay consistent and win trophies