The Sarri Experiment - Napoli 4-3-3

[Ji-Sung Park]

Manager profile:

Legendary coach Arrigo Sacchi:

Quote

“When you see Sarri’s teams play, you know how they train,” Sacchi effused. “He is a genius. When I was technical director with the Italy youth teams, I always went to watch kids in Serie B, and I was already impressed by his Empoli. He looks after the players, they understand him.”

Sarri has truly worked his way up, starting at non-league teams in Tuscany, to the Serie C2, Serie B and now a Champions League fixture with title ambitions.

Before going to Napoli he revolutionized the Empoli way of training by using drones during the training sessions. That way he saw the game from a birds eye view and were able to plug any leaks and tighten up the banks, much like we do with 2D view. His final season with Empoli only Chievo of the bottom half teams conceded less and they staved off relegation comfortably. At Napoli, with a lot more individual talent, he switched from a 4-3-1-2 with emphasis on defense to a more dominant and attacking 4-3-3. A chain smoking, former banker, tracksuit manager who once called Roberto Mancini a finocchio. Let's have a look at the real life Napoli and what makes them so good.

The tactic:

As of today, the Napoli setup looks like this, with and without the ball:

Some key traits:

• 59% possession on average for the 16/17 season
• 87% pass accuracy
• 94 goals scored in the league, 72 of those goals from 4 players; Insigne, Mertens, Callejon, Hamsik

Important: They do not have possession just for the sake of it. In some games against similar sized teams they had only 45% possession. A lot of teams in Italy will gladly defend and let the home side have the ball, so don't get carried away by the impressive possession stats. It is not a tiki-taka style football. 

The idea of Sarri is that both CDs should be technically gifted, while still being physical and rough. Most of the time the buildup starts from Reina to Albiol, although at times Koulibaly will also launch from his position. The CDs will look for Jorginho, the deep lying playmaker and from there the attacks will be launched. Jorginho does not sit in front of the defense and this is the key part that separates this 4-3-3 from a more traditional 4-1-2-2-1 that you'll see other managers use today. He will however link up with Albiol/Kouli to allow that buildup play. Here are some heat maps of Jorginho (included Reina so you can see the direction of play):

The left side of the team is the real creative force in this tactic. Ghoulam on the leftback is further up than his slightly more conservative counterpart in Hysaj. He links up with Hamsik and Insigne, both of these two gets in to the area a lot and get among the goals. IRL, Insigne is more of a wide playmaker without the constant cutting inside, but the FM role is so hard coded that this role will only sabotage more than create. Below is a complete heat map from their latest game against Atalanta (3-1 win):

Okay, I think you got it by now, let's try to translate this into FM terms next.

The FM version of this tactic:

I started a save with only Serie A loaded and holidaying in between matches to speed things up. Retrained Mertens to a become a striker, other than that, zero man management. No pressers etc, just focus on getting 100% familiarity.

The hard part here is to achieve possession while being attacking. A very tricky task in both real life and FM. Kudos to the ME. You need to replicate the front three movement, you'll need them and Hamsik to privode 75% of the goals, and there must be many goals. IRL, Napoli creates a lot from through balls and that can be hard to do in FM. 

As you can see above I made two sets of TI's to go with the tactic. Both of them will render a high d-line, but the attacking version will not yield a 55%+ possession. It will instead give the lethal attacking play you're looking for, with quick combos from the midfield to the front 3. The default one is the 'control' setup, which has lower tempo, but still aggressive enough to create heaps of CCCs. I always start off with the control setup, but being an attacking side we will concede the odd goal from passes behind the defense; quick forwards can get some goals here. In that case I go for the attacking one, or against the more stubborn sides where more quick play is needed. In short, it is not uncommon for me to use both during the course of a match.

Roles/duties:

GK: Reina. I think you can use a SK on defend here, I found him to be all over the place tho. Standard GK with fewer risky passes. roll it out and distribute to center backs.
RB: Hysaj/Maggio. Stay wider and mark tighter.
CDR: Albiol, the defensive playmaker. Close down much less.
CDL: Kouli. Close down much less.
LB: Ghoulam/Rui. Slightly more advanced than Hysaj, I chose a WB for him on support. Stay wider, run wide with ball, mark tighter.

CMR: The Allan/Zielinski role. Mark tighter, more risky passes. I want him to look for Callejon/Mertens in space and also be able to defend. BBM makes sense, but I am open to suggestions.
CM: Jorginho/Diawara. Mark tighter. This role can also be deployed with a defensive duty, depending on the opposition. Diawara will be an absolute beast here over time.
CML: The Hamsik role. This role needs to be in or around the box, making deep runs and arriving late in the area. Mark tighter and more risky passes.

AMR: Callejon. We need him to be closer to the center forward, but also to fall back in to MR when defending. He must also offer movement off the ball, to draw out defenders. Tackle harder, mark tighter, sit narrower, roam.
ST: Mertens. I gave him a F9 role because it suits his attributes and it works well with the other two. When playing with Milik I go for a DLF(s). Tackle harder, mark tighter.
AML: Insigne. Like I mentioned, he is slightly more involved in the buildup and IRL he's probably a playmaker. A playmaker role is far too passive for him, so we go with IF(a). He will not tuck in though. Mark tighter, tackle harder.

Notes: I use tighter marking because we need to win the ball back quickly and create transitions. The forward players also have harder tackling, this is because I want them to press more. The risky passes in midfield are entirely optional. I imagine getting a higher poss %, but you also need those killer balls and direct, forward passing in this setup. 

Next post will be about how it works. Stay tuned!

[Ji-Sung Park]

Let us begin with the heat maps, that way we can see if they line up like we should. From left to right, Insigne, Mertens, Callejon:

Well this is promising! Looks like the little wizard Insigne is in love with the ball. There is more movement from Callejon and Mertens is where he should be.

Here is one concrete and recent example of mixing up the play, where we are up against a very defensive side (Atalanta). Their plan is to leave the possession to us, and go for counters where possible. This is an excellent opportunity to test both mentalities in one sitting:

Atalanta formation:

We start off with control/lower tempo to probe things a bit. Here I snapped a SS from the match stats after the first 10 minutes:

Our shot/shot on target ratio is rather bad, but we have managed to create two clear cut chances (three by my standards). We could continue and see how it goes, or we could go for the attack. I choose the former and we will reassess at half time. We go 1-0 up through Insigne, but the overall shot/on target ratio is still bad. I change to attack/normal tempo at halftime and pay attention to what is going on on the pitch. We grab the decisive goal through Insigne again after 67 minutes, this time from a transition. I maintain the attacking outlook throughout, but no more goals:

Completely crazy, but still managed 4 CCCs against a very defensive team. I am pleased by this, although we should have scored more.

I had two very interesting games against Liverpool in the CL group stage. First one at Anfield I went full attack and we lost 5-3. In Naples things went differently:

I went for a control/slower approach here and absolute crushed them. 8 CCCs. This game ended 5-4! Very weird result where we deserved to win at least 6-0. Still happy to win.

Pass combos against Torino (1-0 win):

Not the best match stats for us this. Still with lots of clear cut chances, two/thirds of our attempts are wide. We manage to win, but here I should have gone for the attacking outlook at halftime.

Defeats:

Bologna away; 1-2. Juventus away, 1-3. Liverpool way, 3-5 (!).

 

I have had some matches were I didn't want possession, I just wanted to win, and it has been by far the most pleasing to watch. Devastating football at times:

Destroying Inter 4-0 at home. Destroying Lazio away 0-4. RB Leipzig away 1-4.

 

Look at this beautiful specimen:

[Zeman's tactical child]

Altough I didnt particulary like the whole finocchio incident with Mancini you have to admire Sarri-he is a good coach

[TheJanitor]

One of my deepest regrets is not watching Napoli more. From the few I've seen under Sarri they are fantastic.

Another quality post, you did well making things work in the game similarly to rl.

[Ji-Sung Park]

12 hours ago, Zeman's tactical child said:

Altough I didnt particulary like the whole finocchio incident with Mancini you have to admire Sarri-he is a good coach

Apart from this incident, he seems to say all the right things to gear up his surroundings. For the love of sweet baby Jesus I hope he stays at Napoli at least one more season. I see that West Ham view him as an ideal replacement (understatement of the year!) for Bilic, same goes for Newcastle. Probably nonsense journalism, still. 

 

1 hour ago, TheJanitor said:

One of my deepest regrets is not watching Napoli more. From the few I've seen under Sarri they are fantastic.

Another quality post, you did well making things work in the game similarly to rl.

@TheJanitor you're too kind, really.

You should probably see them against City in the CL, should be two cracking games. I won't get to watch since I am currently in Korea, the time difference is too brutal. 

In a bit I will do a write up of the full first season and throw some stats in there.

[22764636]

I am a Napoli supporter so I am very happy to see in recent times a grown interest in my team and their style of play. I have to admit that it's a pleasure to see them playing and in the last 2 games even though we have played a less beautiful game we still managed to win scoring 6 goals in total.

Your tactic @Ji-Sung Park seems to work quite well but I have a few points: Ghoulam (D L) is way more attacking in my opinion I would rather have him playing with an Attack duty; in recent times Koulibaly aka K2 is the ball playing defender, in yesterday match he's been the player to touch the ball the most so I would switch his role with Albiol's one; Insigne and Callejon's roles are really hard to replicate in FM: Callejon is a Support Raumdeuter as he always tries to beat the offside trap and cuts inside without the ball (see Napoli 1st goal against Bologna) while Insigne plays wide, quick one-twos with Hamsik or Ghoulam, cuts inside with the ball but very rarely without. I currently play them as AP S and Rau A but in doing so Insigne plays most of the times in the middle while Callejon comes deep not as often as he does IRL.

In my tactic I have your Allan/Zielinski (note that in recent games the Polish star is taking Hamsik role) playing as a Ball Winning Midfielder, I like the way it suits the tactic more but he scores a lot of goals opposed to the real life tactic where as you said most of the goals come from the magic 4.

Looking forward to see more on this anyway

[Ji-Sung Park]

Ciao @22764636, nice to see a legit Napoli fan in this thread!

Having Ghoulam on attack, along with Hamsik and Insigne, will be suicide against some of the more talented teams. Your left side will be completely haywire. I compared Ghoulam IRL and in-game (my interpretation) here:

Note that on the rightmost image he is on support. This image is from an away game against SPAL. The image to the left is from yesterdays match against Bologna IRL. Because of Insigne's attacking mentality he will surge forward, but not be silly about it.

Against Bologna Napoli had 65% possession and 17 attempts. In my game against SPAL I had 60% possession and 20 attempts on goal. So very similar, but not perfectly similar. (it was amazing that Bologna didn't score yesterday!)

The true challenge with replicating this is to get the possession while at the same time have that urgency in attack that they have IRL. I haven't succeeded 100% with that.

 

Edit: here's a couple of videos of Callejon:

 

[jc577]

Brilliant thread @Ji-Sung Park , got a feeling i'll enjoy this one more than your work on Mourinho's Inter which was equally as brilliant. I wouldn't be too concerned by differing possession stats as they are calculated different IRL and in the FM17 match engine. I also had a go at replicating this; results were good but we didn't create nearly as many chances as I'd like or play rapid one touch football like how Napoli do - as you say that is the true challenge. The only real difference is that I saw Insigne as an IF-s/AP-s, but i guess PPM's do play a part in how they perform on the pitch. Looking forward to more analysis 

[FMWolf]

If I could add my two cents as recent Sarri fan (Seria A doesn't get much love from me nowadays):

• I would try and play Insigne as an IF-S. This way we drops deeper while you're building your attacks, making him much more involved in the build up. Maybe add the PI's Roam From Position to increase his movement a bit;
• Play Callejon as a Raumdeuteur. I see him mainly as an off the ball threat, a guy who his willing to run all day long to find pockets space. And, since he's right footed, you should still see him acting a bit winger-ish when on the ball, and I feel this really replicates his role well;
• For midfield trio, I'm just curious about using and AP-A for Hamsik. Wouldn't it make him more available when building from the back? Or is the CM-A offering enough support already?

I really like your system and you seem to be getting good results, so just some food for thought

[Ji-Sung Park]

Okay, it's time to wrap this season up. Things went better than expected in some areas - spoiler alert = the results. The style of play had to be sacrificed at times when we went a goal or two down, or when we were underdogs. Overall possession in the league ended up being 4 points below real life, which is a disappointment. Not really sure how whoscored.com calculate possession compared to FM, but still, 4.4% or so difference is a little bit:

Serie A final standings; note the goal difference.

IRL Napoli scored 95 times last season, conceding 39. So it's fairly close. We did however win more matches than they did IRL, and lost one more

As far as player roles are concerned, the big issue is to find the right combos with the front 3. In an ideal replica Mertens, the center forward would be the most scoring of the 3, this was not the case. As such, it must be seen as a failure in that regard. I did not find the right duty for him; everytime I changed it would effect everything else in attack. Here are the cold, hard numbers for the 4 attacking players:

The Callejon role I am very happy with. In the end he scored as many goals as real life, and he was lethal from his inside forward role on the right. This stat is very telling of his role:

Almost 10% (!) better than number two on the list. It tells us that his scoring opportunities came from very good positions, a testament that the attackers have the right duties/roles.

We ended up winning the Champions League as well, however not by using the control setup. Instead, due to facing better teams the whole way to the final (Monaco, Juve, Barca and Tottenham) I went with the attacking setup. Even though we equaled all of the teams in possession, we never dominated the possession stats like we should when playing like Sarri. We beat Barca 3-0 at home, then almost pulled an Unai Emery away when going down 5-1 at half time. We got it down to 5-3 by the end though. Then we tore Tottenham apart in the final, winning 5-2.

Strengths of the tactic:

Pretty fast and penetrating tactic with the right players in place. Very safe against weaker opposition.

Weaknesses and bogey formations:

The #1 weakness is that when facing pressing sides, in my case AC Milan and Inter, they hit you super fast on the counter. Through balls and passes over my back line and Bob's your uncle, 0-1. If they successfully close you down, you start to dwell on the ball, you can be in trouble. Both Milan and Inter played a 4-1-2-2-1 against me, and I lost 1-4 at home to Milan (Coppa Italia) and 1-4 away to Inter in the league. I did however beat them later on, by then using the attacking setup and allowing less time on the ball.

I will retire this save, but might revisit this later. I would like to find a setup that gives Mertens more scoring chances and the holy grail that is possession and urgency rapped into one. Thanks for reading.

[davehibb]

I do love threads like this!

Great work @Ji-Sung Park I'm a little surprised that the thread hasn't had more attention, it certainly deserves it. 

[Ji-Sung Park]

Thanks @davehibb!

I couldn't actually stop playing with this tactic, so I am trying it one full season on a different save with Man City. Much better players, but it also goes to show how much PPM's and opposition factor in. Kudos to SI and those guys for making such a delicate ME. I sometimes make fun of stuff that happens in the ME, but it really has made great advancements over the years.

For instance, I could not for life of me understand why Dele Alli couldn't perform as well as well as Marek Hamsik did in my Napoli save. After all, Alli's attributes are superior. Then I started watching the matches in full and saw that Alli (who has PPM 'run with ball') was closed down all the time. On top of that, him running with the ball all the time slows the attacking play down. Leroy Sane is no Insigne and Gabriel Jesus can't compare to Callejon. So there's that.

On top of that 75% of the PL teams play a 4-2-3-1, which could be kryptonite to my formation if played right. I'm not done yet with the season, and we are currently leading, but we have a lot of crazy results. 

[alinp]

I wanted to ask how you're finding the flat 3 in the middle... I had a similar flat 3 in my save, although I had (LtoR) APa, DLPs, CMs.  I was finding that with the DLPs in the middle, the opposition were finding too much space between them and the d-line (even tho I was playing quite a high line) as he was getting quite high when supporting attacks.  I found that changing his role to DLPd helped resolve this as he wasn't caught high up the pitch so often and was more available to re-cycle possession if/when attacks broke down.

[Ji-Sung Park]

10 minutes ago, alinp said:

I wanted to ask how you're finding the flat 3 in the middle... I had a similar flat 3 in my save, although I had (LtoR) APa, DLPs, CMs.  I was finding that with the DLPs in the middle, the opposition were finding too much space between them and the d-line (even tho I was playing quite a high line) as he was getting quite high when supporting attacks.  I found that changing his role to DLPd helped resolve this as he wasn't caught high up the pitch so often and was more available to re-cycle possession if/when attacks broke down.

With Napoli in Serie A  I didn't see any obvious issues (playing only key highlights), but now in BPL and City Gundogan is constantly out of position, or in between lines. Now I am playing him or Busquets as (d) and it is much better. That would explain why I was raped by Milan and Inter, who both used 4-1-2-2-1 or 4-2-3-1. 

I did set him to close down less in Napoli (Jorginho and Diawara), that might have eased the problem a little bit.

[kandersson]

Very interesting thread, your interpretation of mentality+roles/duties looks spot on. No question Napoli plays the most entertaining football in Italy at the moment.

The Mertens role is tricky because he's such a special player, it's probably a toss between F9 and SS (AMC), personally I'd go with SS because I consider his role more 'Attacking' than 'Supporting', with lots of forward runs and aggressive otb movement.  Also this could potentially help him score a few more goals, as he did in his amazing 2016/17 season

 

 

[scorpionis1]

I agree with kandersson. I think Mertens would definitely benefit from being given an Attacking role rather than support. I think moving him back into AM-C as a SS or even (depending on how important he is to your press) making him a Trequartista in the striker slot. It should let him operate in the same way but slightly more aggresively.

[Dickie Greenleaf]

mertens only averaged 20 passes per game in serie a 16/17, having him in the am slot even though it is attacking it wouldn't be the mertens role. the game is too limited for a real insigne/mertens role

[Dickie Greenleaf]

also by turning off work ball into box and with some PI's such as shoot less often and dribble less if you aren't already using that as a TI you will be amazed at the speed of which the team will move the ball and attack compared to having it enabled, it's a shame that certain things can't be better adjusted 

 

edit: by doing so, of course, it will reduce possession slightly but the sarri attack speed will be more similar 

[Ji-Sung Park]

I wouldn't be too hung up on the Mertens thing. I tried this tactic (with slight variations) with a City save and Volland as F9 grabbed 19 goals in 18 matches in the league. 24 goals in 27 matches for the season total. A lot of things might factor in here, but the PPMs of the two players are likely important in this:

Mertens:

Volland:

 

 

 

[jc577]

8 hours ago, Ji-Sung Park said:

I wouldn't be too hung up on the Mertens thing. I tried this tactic (with slight variations) with a City save and Volland as F9 grabbed 19 goals in 18 matches in the league. 24 goals in 27 matches for the season total. A lot of things might factor in here, but the PPMs of the two players are likely important in this:

Mertens:

Volland:

 

 

 

Good observation  Have you noticed that Volland takes up slightly higher positioning due to the 'beats offside trap' ppm? If so, I think Mertens (the actual player) should be a SS, so that he starts deep and links up with the team, but the burrs into space and aims to finish off moves. An attack duty will definitely help *him* score more goals.

[Ji-Sung Park]

On 15.9.2017 at 12:36, jc577 said:

Good observation  Have you noticed that Volland takes up slightly higher positioning due to the 'beats offside trap' ppm? If so, I think Mertens (the actual player) should be a SS, so that he starts deep and links up with the team, but the burrs into space and aims to finish off moves. An attack duty will definitely help *him* score more goals.

Volland had more shots on goal than Mertens, that much I remember. However, Volland had better teammates also.

[spagni222]

Download link?

[Ji-Sung Park]

It lives on in FM18 Beta Mode.

I am only at my first friendly, against OFI. Noticed that we have 80% possession after the first half, it's a bit much, no? Did anyone of you try the beta yet and notice high possession numbers for tactics like these?

[FallenAng3l]

download link?

 

[Gegenklaus]

I am having so much fun in a test save with Napoli using this. I dont experience 80 % possessions - or well, I did but that was preseason against crap teams. Started out roughly barely managing to qualify to Champions League. Drew Hoffenheim and got 2-2 away. In the second leg it was 0-0 up untill the 89th minute - before the boys has missed 4 CCC's. Hoffenheim gets on a second boal right outside our penalty box and makes it 1-0 through a screamer. We go all out, throwing the backs even more forward and the midfield and we get 1-1 in the 92th minute.

Gonna be tough though. Up against PSG, Real Madrid and Feyernoord. But after that, we have cruised in the league. Got 4-0 against Milan at home. 

Also Callejon injured his foot, so he is out for 2 months, missed the whole pre-season - luckily Milik has stepped up and Mertens is doing fine on the right wing.

Most importantly, it is so much fun switching between the control setup and the attacking one. Its like shifting gears. I have though switched DPL role to defend, as with support he seemed a lot out of positions. Hamsik, Insigne - once he got back from an injury where he missed half of the preseason - has been insane. 

Once the beta is over I am going to play with Napoli. They have a very interesting squad and got some future challenges in replacing five key players who are getting old; first and foremost Hamsik. I am thinking about using Zielinski as the new Hamsik. Then there is Reina (oh, how I dream about you Donnarumma), Albiol (oh, how I dream about you Rugani/Romagnoli), Mertens - that one will be tough, but maybe Milik is up for it or Leandrinho - and last but not least Callejon. That one is going to be tough. I have my eyes on Kevin Volland, but I am very much open to suggestions.

[Ji-Sung Park]

4 hours ago, Gegenklaus said:

 

I am having so much fun

 

Very cool Gegenklaus. If you continue I would love to hear how you get on. I had to abandon my save because of a crash and I had autosave for every three months...

What I did notice was that I could win 7-1 against Inter away, and then lose 1-2 at home to Genoa the next week, but that was very early on in the season.

[FMWolf]

@Ji-Sung Park I haven't had the opportunity to play around with FM18, but maybe changing the Hamsik role from a CM-A to a Mezzala-A could be worth a try as it's in-game description really seems to match Hamsik's real life movement. Also, the more I see Mertens play, the more I think of him as a CF-S. IMO, the most difficult player to replicate would be Insigne. He has a lot of freedom in his movement, but one thing I've been noticing is how wide his starting position is. There's a lot of times he's in a vertical line with Ghoulam, with Hamsik placed in-between them to form a passing triangle. Now, the tactic you created seems to work rather well, so there's problably no much need to change it a lot

 

 

[Ji-Sung Park]

There will shortly be a new thread on the FM18 version of this, currently tuning and testing. I need to get a 20 league game sample size first and then hopefully it'll be up.

[bdixon]

looking forward to it. It is a style of play I have tried to replicate with Ajax and I think I'm close. I'll hold off posting until the next thread is posted.

[Lobaeux4]

Looking forward to it as well.  I’ve been playing around with my own Sarri tactic on FM18, it works quite well, but not really the same as I see from Napoli.  Might be the players, might be my instructions.  

[BrickCommo23]

Been really struggling with FM18 as Arsenal (I know I'm probably the only one) so have been trying to create some sort of heavy pressing 433 type set up and only just stumbled across this.

Really looking forward to an updated thread!

EDIT: Just found It!!

[sherifdinn_]

Seems to be an impressive tactic but I don't think its one thag replicates how Napoli play IRL. Firstly one of  napoli's goal is to congest the left half space in ord3r to create overloads. Ghoulam is a more attacking fullback and insigne stays away from the byline in order to allow ghoulam to overlap. I'm unsure of the hamsik role, but callejon is a raumdeuter as he hardly takes part in play, but instead cuts inside by beating the offside trap or finding space between fullback and center back

[Jean0987654321]

On 12/30/2017 at 07:51, sherifdinn_ said:

Seems to be an impressive tactic but I don't think its one thag replicates how Napoli play IRL. Firstly one of  napoli's goal is to congest the left half space in ord3r to create overloads. Ghoulam is a more attacking fullback and insigne stays away from the byline in order to allow ghoulam to overlap. I'm unsure of the hamsik role, but callejon is a raumdeuter as he hardly takes part in play, but instead cuts inside by beating the offside trap or finding space between fullback and center back

You should go on Rasho's YT channel if you want to emulate overloads. It is tough to ask the game to overload from one flank to another without changing tactics midgame tho

[sherifdinn_]

15 hours ago, Jean0987654321 said:

You should go on Rasho's YT channel if you want to emulate overloads. It is tough to ask the game to overload from one flank to another without changing tactics midgame tho

Creating overloads aren't really difficult, you just have to understand what they mean and how to create them. I currently use a tactics that creates overloads on the right side of the pitch which results in a RB being released for a cross or the left midfielder being free. For a 1v1 against a defender (fm17 tho).

[Jean0987654321]

9 hours ago, sherifdinn_ said:

Creating overloads aren't really difficult, you just have to understand what they mean and how to create them. I currently use a tactics that creates overloads on the right side of the pitch which results in a RB being released for a cross or the left midfielder being free. For a 1v1 against a defender (fm17 tho).

Trust me I know how to create them. But you can't tell your players to overload one flank and then do the same on other without changing tactics midgame

[sherifdinn_]

On 1/3/2018 at 23:42, Jean0987654321 said:

Trust me I know how to create them. But you can't tell your players to overload one flank and then do the same on other without changing tactics midgame

Of course you can't, but its all about making good use of an advantages, it could be that your most creative players play best in the left flank, you can choose to focus majority of your play on that flank in order to give the opposition a thought time. Overloads are very difficult to deal with. 

[FM_Tactitien]

Hi everyone,

First time i read on this tactic, was on Tea&Busquets by @Cleon (it's my news paper with a cup of tea morning stuff) and i wanted to try it straight because i'm a big fan of 4-3-3 in any style of play but specially Tiki-taka style, like Barca at the top of glory of course huh.

I'm playing on FM14... i know 

But this tactic! Waow! What a amazing one! Transitions in attak are very lethal and surgical. AML/F9/AML scrores at every match. Central Defenders scores at every corner kick... 

Of course i add some Team Instructions but it's nothing...

 

So what can i say? Just One thing. Defensively it's a nightmare! 

My team take too much goals but i think i know why so this is why i keep using this tactic and try to fit my team in.

I really don't like take goals, 20 max per season for me is a good statistic.  But this one, it's based on attak side so even if you take  2 or 3 goals in the the first-time you can be sure your players will scores double in the second-time with the good coaching talk.

So, it's a good tactic, and i think it can be better with work on the team shape and players duty...

Thank you @Ji-Sung Park and good work !

 

Here a video   F.C. Cartagena vs Girona F.C

 

Some screenshots...  

 

Trainning plan based on this article thanks to @Rashidi 

 

 

A view on my team: locals players, young, high PA, Professional...

 

 

Match 1 analysis

 

 

 

[zeybek]

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