ceefax the cat

You'll win because you're counterpressing and closing down all the time. It will have nothing to do with your target man, who will mostly be ignored. There is pretty much zero chance that any of your defenders will ever try to launch a long pass to his head / chest as part of your buildup, no matter what instructions you use. He exists only as a target for crosses, which will only ever be delivered from the final third, and goal kicks. He will tend to attract passes through midfield, much in the same way a playmaker does, for what that's worth.

doesn't look like it

That's not really the point. The point is that you should at least be able to try and play that way, at any level. In FM the style just doesn't really exist And tbh, if some incredibly rich club did assemble the world's biggest, strongest tallest strikers, the world's most deadly out-and-out wingers etc etc, and tried to play route 1 at the highest level possible, who knows how far they'd get? Roger Schmidt and Gian Piero Ventura have played a style based around long forward passes to a congested area of the pitch at a very high level with some success...

Refer to the flippant answer

The short answer is absolutely not and don't waste your time trying. Check the 'Route One' thread for lots of examples of people trying to get this to work and failing.

Same here... board and supporters insisting on a defensive, direct counterattacking style, which is exactly what my instructions are. Man-mark, defend deep and get it forward quickly, TM starting every game. There is absolutely no way to keep them happy

I had some success in FM22 or 23 with a tactic a bit like that. Very little closing down but a relatively high line of engagement seemed to be the way. I wanted the team to prioritise dropping back into a solid shape, but not to let the opponents into our half unmolested, so to have a little bit of closing down starting in their half was useful. High mentality, passing and tempo, narrow width.

Mourinho's Madrid spring to mind

Yes, it needn't be harder to put those tactics together... there should just be more of a downside to it

And at Milan he had Gattuso to the right of him. He still has to go and occupy a zone right in front of the defence when he's out of possession though, and you don't want to be letting Wesley Sneijder find space there. I guess my point really is just that in FM you'd say someone at his level, capable of screening the defence vs the world's best attackers, would have very good scores for positioning, anticipation, concentration and probably marking. Your chances of retraining practically any AM in the game to be that player are zero, because the game treats attributes and positional familiarity as things that are slowly tweaked and sculpted over time, and which don't really change that much over the course of a career, when in reality a lot of these things are just a matter of practising a system in training and knowing what your job is. Lahm didn't need ages to figure out how to play in the middle, Pirlo didn't need ages to figure out how to play DM, Giggs didn't require retraining to play in the middle... there are loads of examples. They didn't need to go away for months and learn the gentle art of positioning, they just had a new job explained to them and, because they were good footballers, they did it very well. In FM it'd be almost pointless to bother with any of those

Naaaah. You don't get to defend in the middle of a midfield 3 or 4 in World Cup finals and Champions League games if you're awful at standing in the right place, closing down at the right time and marking whoever is in your zone. He was more positional - more Xabi Alonso than N'golo Kanté - but he was clearly an extremely competent defensive midfielder. It's not really an option to 'not bother with such things' if you're occupying the zone directly in front of the back four - the bit where all the Zidanes and Bergkamps pop up. He didn't constantly try to win the ball and was probably not the best in the air or in a 50/50 challenge, but that is not the same thing as being weak defensively. Michael Carrick didn't run around battering people either but he was one of the best in the world at screening the back four.

It'd be handy if you could have a meaningful impact on players' attributes by retraining them. IRL, you can take a no. 10 like Pirlo, encourage him to play at DM and, as he learns his job, his ability at positioning, marking etc will significantly increase. Of course they do, he's having to think about them and practise them every day. In FM, that's never in a million years going to happen. He'll just remain a guy with an AM skillset who happens to be 'accomplished' in a different position - whatever that means. If becoming 'accomplished' at playing DM doesn't mean you're better at positioning, marking, anticipating, etc then it doesn't mean an awful lot, does it.

Totally.... because when you have the very best players, a really good manager and coaches, and some time to set it up, it's worth the risk. If not, you'll concede loads of goals either on the break or while trying to play out from the back, and your players will get really tired from trying to press all the time. If those risks were a factor in FM, the game would be a hell of a lot richer. You'd have to really think about building a setup that would allow you to play that kind of football, and until then you might have to water it down a bit. The situation in the game as it stands is kind of like: new manager walks into Random FC dressing room, whips out his whiteboard and says, "So you know Man City yeah? Pep Guardiola la la la etc. I think we should do that." And they just go out and do it. Job done, congratulations, you're one of the best managers in the world.

The difference being that he has to be a very good manager to get them to do it, whereas in FM the opposite applies! The hardest thing to do is play zero-risk, back-to-basics football of the type that every pub footballer who ever lived knows, while the easiest thing to do is ask your team to run constantly, counterpress, defend on the halfway line, play intricate short passing football and rotate your centre-halves into midfield.

I find that odd, because you can play a TM with direct passing etc and they still won't necessarily funnel much of the play through him