Totti and De Rossi

I have a huge problem with FM in the last 3 versions of this game these two have progressively gotten worse statistically while not actually declining in real life. This doesn't really bother me as much as they are tactially impossible to make effective.

Totti:

I have spent numerous games trying to make him successful surrounding him with different types of players in different types of tactics. He never seems to score anywhere near his real life pace. I know he is slow, but this is italian football, and he is a genius. He misses every important penalty he takes and never scores on free-kick. His ratings for both are 15+...as well as having good finishing, composure and decision or whatever else would matter. DeRossi has also never met a penalty he didn't want to shank either for that matter. I know he is a bit of a choke artist, but a league game against Chievo is not the World Cup.

He plays awfully as a AM, and he isn't even natural at it even though he was on the team of the tournament in Italy's World Cup winning campaign playing exactly that role.

I thought maybe I could convert him to a CM in a 5 man midfield, so he wouldn't have as much physical responsibilities chasing after balls in space or running at players in space. He could act as a passing and shooting pivot while being a set piece maestro. He ended up being none of the above.

Italian football is full of great geezers like Del Peiro, Totti, Inzaghi, and Di Natale

I want to know if it is possible to make him work as a player in this game? Has anyone been successful with him producing good numbers?

The best I ever did was 40(6) games 15G 11AST 6MOM. This was with him being partnered by Mandzukic as physical specimen, and a midfield loaded with excellent technical players with passing ratings of 17+. In a 5-3-2 with two wing backs fully attacking. I know that this is a the ideal formation and compliment of players for Totti, but in real life he has a much less ideal situation often being partnered with slow mildly competent attacking midfielders playing by himself up front. He has out performed in real life his football manager end of season results every single year no matter how you sim it. This needs to be fixed!

Totti creates space not with his speed or agility or even his technique. He knows when to go down, when to move, when to dribble, when to shoot better than any other player in the world. He creates separation using his mind rather than his physical gifts that should be given more merit in FM.

De Rossi:

What a shame that it is impossible to replicate his real life form that has Mancini drooling over him. His display as a SW in the Euro's was nothing short of brilliant against Spain. He and Chiellini are by far Italy's best two players. He never plays above a 7 for me as a midfielder. I have tried to use different systems and different midfield partners to accommodate for his lack of pace, but it really changes very little. He is an extremely intelligent but brutal player. These attributes are downplayed in football manager in their influence on a game, and they are too easily handed out. Because they have minimal impact on someones' overall rating and impact on the game every favorite player of the people who determine the ratings now becomes a tenacious genius of football.

The only thing that I have found to be successful is to retrain him as a center defender and put his training focus to jumping. He has played above a 7 for two season for me using that strategy. This is very odd that I have to make him play that role for him to be reasonable successful.

I love playing the Italian game for what it is. Each league has it's own distinct flavor in real life. It seems unfortunate that in FM they all melt into one being dominated by physical attributes.

the current match engine is very bad at doing justice to players who have low pace. Whatever the merits of their mental or technical attributes, low pace makes them underwhelming on FM11+12.

The only thing to do is to hope that the coming match-engine rewrite is sophisticated enough to simulate the difference between technically good and technically poor, mentally good and mentally poor players well enough that it reduces the current emphasis on pace and the be-all and end-all of effective play.

Don't hold your breath...

SI hates serie A and italian players and underrates them all

there are no good young italian GK's or creative AMC's unless they're regen. even giovinco has less than 16 creativity. it's also an injustice that gerrard/essien still gets beast stats after several bad seasons, but de rossi becomes **** immediately after one sub-par season. pjanic's PA was also slashed by 25 points after he joined Roma. menez's stats got boosted after he left roma even though he had a bad season IRL. anyway, i'm pretty sure talking about stats is not allowed on this forum so i'll stop

i did manage to get some good performances from totti and de rossi though. totti plays better as an AMC than as a FC. play him as an attacking midfielder/attack. play de rossi as a B2B

below is totti

SI hates serie A and italian players and underrates them all

Firstly, the Italian Data is done by Italian football fans, not SI.

Secondly, that's just outright wrong.

For AMCs I raise you Verrati just off the top of my head.

this all stinks of fail...

OP is wanting one of the greatest dmc / b2b midfielders in todays game to play AMC and another poster is claiming grand conspiracy ...

The Italian league in game has some of the best players in the world and is a good indicator of the league in its present state.

Certainly , the league has stopped its downfall but that improvement will be implemented in the next edition.. not this one.. and rightfully so.

Di Natale, at 33, is still one of the best strikers in the game. scored 18 goals first season for arsenal in one of my old saves.

Totti... you just have to be wary of his physical stats.. he also has a below average pressure stat.. so penalties will be an issue..

De Rossi .... bought him to liverpool 3rd season in an old save and he was top of the charts for pass completion and tackling and ended on something like 7.89 avg rating (i cant remember exact figure)

youngsters:

AMC'S

El Shaarawy

Bonaventura

Bertolacci

Verrati

forestieri

petrucci

GK's

sirigu

consigli

pellagotti

and tbh.... list me some brilliant prospects irl in both of those positions ... frankly.. Italy isn't blessed with standout prospects in either at the moment

i'm not calling it a conspiracy. i'm just saying they did a poor job with the ratings. don't know how you conjured up with conspiracy... if you hire some wall painters and they miss a spot on your bedroom, is it called a conspiracy?

yes, raw data is collected by football fans not associated with SI. but in the end, SI is the one that performs the final reviews

i'm not going to go into each of the individual players you mentioned, but most of them are wingers or have poor potential rating, verratti especially. i'm not saying there should be more prospects added to the database. but players like verratti, giovinco, bonaventura, etc. should be rated higher

this all stinks of fail...

OP is wanting one of the greatest dmc / b2b midfielders in todays game to play AMC and another poster is claiming grand conspiracy ...

Where did he say he wanted to play De Rossi as AMC?

There's no conspiracy, just a mediocre ME that treats every game as if it was 1980s Second Division, with physical skills (namely pace) being the be all end all of every game.

The Italian league in game has some of the best players in the world and is a good indicator of the league in its present state.

Certainly , the league has stopped its downfall but that improvement will be implemented in the next edition.. not this one.. and rightfully so.

With the likes of Thiago Silva and Zlatan leaving, I hardly think the downfall has stopped, at all. But that's another topic

youngsters:

AMC'S

El Shaarawy

Bonaventura

Bertolacci

Verrati

forestieri

petrucci

Apples and oranges in that list... And I'm willing to bet half of those guys will never fulfill whatever high potential they're supposed to have. I call that now, Forestieri will hardly become Serie A material and Petrucci can be the next Macheda/Lupoli

But for debate's sake, even in the outlandish case they'd ALL turn into world beaters in real life, in FM some of them would still be severely hampered by lack of pace unless the ME will get tweaked (or rather rewritten completely)

GK's

sirigu

consigli

pellagotti

You forgot Bardi, Leali and Perin, while Sirigu really doesn't belong there... but I could also call Fiorillo and Taibi to put the whole list of "promising keepers" in doubt.

Funnily enough, I've been playing a fiorentina save these past couple of weeks, and currently have a first team line up of this :

----------------Viviano

De Silvestri------Astori----------Renzetti

-------Bertolacci------Marrone

----------------Poli

Bonaventura-------------------Marilungo

----------Paloschi-----Destro

Just off the top of my head : Casarini, Parolo make awesome MC/AMC's and Giuseppe Rossi is a beast if you treat him right.

On the original two players mentioned :

Totti 2011-12 29 games, 8 goals. A down year after 17 the year before, but if you look at his career he has consistently been around the 15 goal a season mark.

De Rossi, he is a beast as a DM or a BWM.

Italian football is different to English, but they've got some great players in there, if you're smart, you can actually get Astori, Bertolacci and Paloschi for next to nothing at the end of the first season. You can get Destro and Poli fairly cheap when they come off of their loans, and Poli can turn into an awesome and highly creative player if you know how to use him.

Its great to see that you were able to get 17-16-7 out of Totti in 32 appearances but that is the best I have ever seen in FM for him in the last 3 versions of this game. That resembles his real life average without the inflated assist total which is directly related to FM having an insane amount of corner goals. In a great year he should be scoring 20-25 goals. I know that I may be splitting hairs or complaining, but I remember Messi and Ronaldo scorring 10 goals a season in previous versions while they were scoring 40+ goals in in real life. I am glad that they have went a long way to fix those two although I never play with them.

Out of all the Italian geezers maestros Di Natale has been fixed recently to where he actually does score in the game. You ask how they did it? They made him much faster! hahahaha I don't think that speed has anything to do with it.

I disagree on Menez. I though he was actually very good last year, and I was finally coming around as I was very disappointed when he was first signed. He was extremely selfish when he first came with very little end product. I feel like he matured a lot in his time at Roma. He was definitely France's best player at the Euro's. I thought it was criminal that they sold him for so little especially after in my opinion he was finally starting to show a lot of promise. I think a lot of the ratings have to do more with the real life performance of the team rather than the player. In order to make Roma a top 4 team Mexes used to be rated as a top 5 center defender in the world when he was never that. Now that he is at Milan where they had Thiago Silva it was not necessary for him to be that good, so he got downgraded to his real life abilities. Even then his ratings aren't overly accurate as his only real problems are a lack of composure and concentration other than that he is incredibly gifted. He should have high stats for everything including Flair and 7-9 rating for concentration and composure.

How do you get De Rossi to play as a B2B midfielder. He has very poor stamina and natural fitness as well as being a hot head who is injury prone. Where did he have the time to score 11 goals? If I play him in that role then he plays 60 minutes per game for 11 games picks up a red card misses two games then comes back for a game only to get suspended for yellow card accumulation then comes back and proceeds to get hurt for a month or two. I also thought that would be a good role for him from a statistical standpoint, but it is so far away from the way he plays in real life. For Italy he drops back into a back three in most games like Bosquets for Barcelon and Spain. For Roma he usually sits deep floating long balls into the flanks and shooting every ball from 35M with ferocious power and of course missing the net. What I am trying to say is that his offensive contribution is rather limited although he is a good passer. It is his tackling and interceptions and overall reading of the game that is what makes him great. I wonder who does the ratings for players as I think his certainly don't correspond to his real life attributes.

I too really like Casarini, Parolo and Poli. Cagliari's 3 defenders are also good cover Astori, Cannini, Ariaudo. Bochetti at Rubin Kazan is a little expensive but still good. I am currently winning everything with

3-5-2 with the wide players being wing backs

Stecklenburg

De Rossi Javi Martinez Bochetti

Ansaldi Santon

Montolovio Parolo Banega

Jovetic Mandzukic

I converted both Javi Martinez and De Rossi to CD and they are performing brilliantly.

Thanks for all the responses...I am always trying to learn something.

How do you get De Rossi to play as a B2B midfielder. He has very poor stamina and natural fitness as well as being a hot head who is injury prone. Where did he have the time to score 11 goals? If I play him in that role then he plays 60 minutes per game for 11 games picks up a red card misses two games then comes back for a game only to get suspended for yellow card accumulation then comes back and proceeds to get hurt for a month or two. I also thought that would be a good role for him from a statistical standpoint, but it is so far away from the way he plays in real life. For Italy he drops back into a back three in most games like Bosquets for Barcelon and Spain. For Roma he usually sits deep floating long balls into the flanks and shooting every ball from 35M with ferocious power and of course missing the net. What I am trying to say is that his offensive contribution is rather limited although he is a good passer. It is his tackling and interceptions and overall reading of the game that is what makes him great. I wonder who does the ratings for players as I think his certainly don't correspond to his real life attributes.

i've been watching roma for a while. de rossi actually started his youth career IRL as a striker. then he spent most of his earlier career as a box to box attack-minded midfielder like perrotta/gerrard/khedira. he was never an anchor man or a deep lying playmaker. it was only last season when Roma hired a spanish manager when he converted de rossi to play as a sweeper, which is the role we've come to see him play recently (including the first few games of euro 2012). however, this new role doesn't make good use of de rossi's energy, drive, and determination, which was much needed in our midfield (see de rossi during the knockout stages)

in FM, i play de rossi as box to box because he's an all around midfielder and i want him making late runs to the box. but the only problem (like you said) is his stamina. i'm always forced to sub him off every game around the 70min mark. this is what i've been talking about with the unfair stats. de rossi should have at least 18 stamina and better natural fitness. he plays 90min for roma and starts every game. it really isn't fair that players like essien and modric have higher stamina than de rossi. he, and like many italian/serie-A players are underated in FM is what i'm trying to say

and P.S., menez was good this season at PSG after the release of FM12, but he was poor at Roma. he was poor before FM12 was released, yet they increased his FM attributes between FM11 and FM12