Replicating Paulo Fonseca's tactics (future AC Milan coach?) in FM24

[sonnevillejr]

Paulo Fonseca is probably about to become manager of AC Milan in the following days 

As a Lille fan, I tried to replicate how we played this season, with 3 tactics that (I think) we used depending on the players available.

Former manager of AS Roma and Shakhtar Donetsk, he did a video on the CoachVoices Youtube channel a few years ago, to explain how he likes to set up his teams.

 

Paulo Fonseca, like many other managers, aims to have at least one player in each channel in possession, and attack in a 3421 shape from a 4231 defensive shape. During his time in Rome, he had to adapt to the league and start with a 3421 defensive shape since he was facing defending troubles. While positional play is a new feature in FM 24, I don't think it's possible to replicate 100% the way we played with the new rotations. 

In Lille, it was no different. Here, our double pivot Nabil Bentaleb x Benjamin André was key to both building up our attacks and providing balance to the team. Since most of the time we had two attacking full backs (Ismaily and Tiago Santos), either Bentaleb or André was sometimes dropping in the defensive line to start building our attacks. The width was keeped by our left winger and our right full back (sometimes the other way around depending on the players). The play was mostly taking place in the left hand-side of the pitch in order to isolate our most attacking player Edon Zhegrova on the right HS, supported by the no less attacking Tiago Santos our main right back.

In the following picture, I want to show you the average position of Lille players against Aston Villa in the Conference League quarter final. 

As you can see, this time it's the number five Gabriel Gudmunsson who was in charge of getting behind the defenders while the play was being builded on the right HS, since Edon Zhegrova was injured for this game and was replace by Yusuf Yazici, a more playmaker type of player.

To replicate this in FM, here's what I thought :

Here, André sometimes drops back between CBs to collect the ball, play with Bentaleb who progresses the ball thanks to Angel Gomes or Gabriel Gudmunsson who keeps the width. Ismaily can overlap or underlap as FB on attack duty, since Bentaleb will not be too adventurous. On the other side, we will then have Jonathan David and Edon Zhegrova unmarked.

I just played 2 games with this tactic : one game vs Toulouse at home (very unlucky draw 1-1) and vs Lyon away (4-0 win despite not being favorite).

Here's the stats against Toulouse :

Control of the game with 62%, 2 clear cut chances and 4 half chances (0 and 0 for Toulouse).

But the best result was against Lyon, where we dominated all of the match :

 

We even managed to shut down the 2nd best attack in the league (just behind PSG). Their only shots were following set pieces :

 

Now, IRL, we didn't have a proper replacement for Tiago Santos or for our double pivot. When Santos was unavailable, Bafode Diakite (a CB) used to play there, so it might look like this :

 

Here, Diakite forms a back three and allows Ismaily to attack the left HS, and Haraldsson can be narrower in a inverted winger role. Since Edon Zhegrova keeps the width on the right, Jonathan David, just like IRL, can drop into AM strata to help Angel Gomes, and we now have these two to be at the end of crosses.

 

Last year, and sometimes this season also, Angel Gomes played alongside Benjamin André/Nabil Bentaleb, in a regista role like this :

Now, it's the same principle than the previous one, but here, Ismaily is now a wing back on support since Gomes does not provide sufficient defensive cover in a Regista role.

 

Thank you for your reading, let me know what you think of these tactics and what would you change.

Note : I did not test the last 2 tactics yet

[TheMartello]

Great read!

 

Did you use any player instructions in your first tactic?

[sonnevillejr]

25 minutes ago, TheMartello said:

Great read!

 

Did you use any player instructions in your first tactic?

Thank you! 
 

No I did not use any player instructions 👍

[davideACM]

Hi, nice thread and nice work! AC Milan fan here.

95% of the fanbase is very skeptical about Paulo, I'd love you to change our mind 

[sonnevillejr]

7 hours ago, davideACM said:

Hi, nice thread and nice work! AC Milan fan here.

95% of the fanbase is very skeptical about Paulo, I'd love you to change our mind 

Thank you!

Yes I saw that you guys were reluctant. On the other hand, we are very sad to see him leave. 

For the last two 2 seasons, we were one of the most exciting team to watch in the league. Last year, we were even « champion » of Ligue 1 on expected points! We only finished 5th but honestly it was mostly because of the squad limits (Remy Cabella once missed a 0.96 xG shot…)  

This year, we almost knocked out Aston Villa in Conference League after 2 really good games but we lost on penalties after a late goal from Villa.

But even I know Fonseca isn’t perfect. Last year, we had control of almost every game, but we were leaking goals because we didn’t have any balance, especially on our left side with Angel Gomes and Ismaily.

This season, we had more balance but finished 4th. We were the best team of the league at home, but we were really different away from home (even against the worst teams).

The in-game management from Fonseca would be his worst weakness I guess. Sometimes, we lost total control of games we were winning and that cost us many points… I think we were the team (or one of the team) who lost the most points after scoring the first goal. The best exemple I can give is that game against Lyon at home a few weeks ago : we were winning 2-0 comfortably but we just stopped playing. And then, Fonseca made a change he often made that I hate : he subbed off Edon Zhegrova, the only player who got behind defenders, to bring in Alexsandro, a CB, in the 65th minute, to play a 5221. Of course, we lost that game 4-3 in the last minute. This scenario happened a lot since he’s here.  

Apart from that, we were still very happy with him, and I think he can do even better with a better squad

 

 

[davideACM]

Thanks! Any update of the tactics?