Scrapping team mentality

[Xander2000]

Hello,

One thing that I've been pondering upon in recent years is whether team mentality is even necessary to keep "over the hood". I think we all can agree that team mentality has been widely debated over the years, and even today there are managers who struggle understanding the concept of it. I don't want to scrap mentality as a concept, but I think team mentality has become redundant, and so, I think it's time to reconsider mentality as a whole. It makes little sense to tell our players to play with a high-block, urgent pressing and a higher tempo type of football and then choose a "defensive"/lower risk mentality. I understand that this is because of the logic FM operates within, but I think it could be done better.

Some editions ago, we got rid of team shape/philosophy. Or so - SI didn't remove it. It got put under the hood. Team shape was to me a great feature (once I figured out how it worked) as it allowed me to be more tactical precise (poor wording I know). But it got put under the hood, and I think SI made the right the decision nonetheless. It was confusing and only made the TC more mysterious.

Team mentality should get the same treatment. 

I don't have the correct answer as to how SI should overcome this. Again, I don't wish to scrap mentality as a concept, but I'd like to see it revamped. One thing that came to mind was, instead of assigning the team a mentality, we should assign each player a mentality. We can already do this to an extend with duties, but we're still limited within the framework of the mentality we chose to begin with, and because we do not have team shape to compensate an aggressive or non-aggressive mentality, we're limited. 

If we could simply assign our players their individual mentality, without having to worry about team mentality, it'd for example be easier to set up a side that plays a low-risk brand of football (assigning defensive/cautious mentalities), that also includes some forward players having license to play with a lot of risk (using attacking/very attacking mentalities). Currently, I can use the cautious mentality and try to balance it by adding a few extra attacking duties, but those attacking duties never exceed positive. I find that this makes it very difficult to set up such sides, as those players aren't aggressive enough for my liking. 

I'd like to hear what any of you have to say about this. Hopefully we can have a fruitful conversation about the necessity of team mentality, because I think it's time to take a look at it. 

[kingjericho]

I don't go into deep analysis of my tactics but IMO it should be the other way around - only the team mentality is shown and the roles and duties are hidden.

You can't change individual mentalities by themselves, you need to change something else. So it acts as a visual aid to your tactic, at best.

I believe that a tactic with a good balance of roles and duties spreads the mentalities evenly and you can assess that just by looking at the tactic and the overall mentality (or better, RISK) you want your team to employ.

A quick example, old fashioned 4-4-2:

GK/D

FB/S - CD/D - CD/D - FB/S

W/A - BWM/D - B2B/S - W/A

TM/S - AF/A

Risk: attacking

Just by looking at it you know the team will pump the ball forward with no regard for the Jogo Bonito, and you also know the wingers and the spearhead poacher are looking for the opportunity every time.

[Zachary Whyte]

We appreciate the detailed feedback. This is going to be reviewed.