What do roles ACTUALLY do?

[stopazricky]

Hey guys!
I believe that the question "what do roles even do?" is a much more complex and nuanced topic than it may seem at first. Particularly to very inexperienced players (like me - I've been through 5 or 6 seasons on FM21 and that's about it) and to very experienced players (that know full well, but maybe haven't been thinking about it from a perspective of a newbie for quite a few years).

Let's start with a bit of information I just don't trust: it is a widespread theory that player roles are just a collection of Player Instructions. I don't see how this could be true. There is no PI that tells Box to Box Midfielders to "both drop very deep out of possession and get forward when in possession", or F9s to drop deep to receive between the lines, or Target Men to engage in physical contact more, and so on. There is nothing on the PI screen that clearly states that a Playmaker will look to receive the ball more often and play it forward whenever possible, or BWMs not to be as involved in the attacking phase, and countless better examples that other people may come up with.

I have the impression that roles are twofold: they are associated with some mandatory PIs (that, as mandatory, are held more relevant than manually added ones by the match engine), but they also dictate player behaviour in a way that's completely under the hood and never communicated in the game with the exception of one location: the text that describes the role.
For example, you can read in the Trequartista's description that he takes no defensive responsibilities. This is not indicated in the PI screen or anywhere else but seems to be the case.

Am I right? If so, is there a spreadsheet that explains what each and every role actually does? What are their interactions, and so on?
Otherwise, what am I missing?

[CaptCanuck]

I mean they're pinned for a reason

This too: https://www.guidetofm.com/tactics/roles-duties/

But yes, roles have 'under the bonnet' coding to give them their role-ishness (such as playmakers being ball magnets); however, it still depends on who you put in that role, where on the pitch, and in the larger context of your overall tactic.

Put a player with the appropriate attributes, in a pressing system in the trequirista role and they are not going to ignore defending, for example.

I'm only in my second addition of FM, but reading through those last year enabled me to marry up the FM world with my own football knowledge (such as it is) and made everything make sense, ymmv of course.

Edited April 2, 2021 by CaptCanuck

[Experienced Defender]

Roles basically do what their respective in-game descriptions say. But the reason why people often struggle to understand roles and set them up correctly is that every role behaves differently within different tactical setups, simply because their behavior is also affected by roles and duties around them (besides factors like player traits, attributes and stronger/weaker foot).

Therefore, instead of thinking about roles in isolation, you need to think about them as integral parts of a tactical system. 

Many people think that they just need to play every player in his "best" role. But nothing can be further from the truth. First, every player can successfully play more than one role, so the question of what is is his "best" role is quite relative. But even more important is that roles work through interaction between themselves, which is what primarily defines not just your tactical style but also the overall quality and balance of the tactic. 

Another misconception is that a greater number of "exotic and fancy" roles (e.g. mezzala, TQ, CWB and the like) will automatically make the tactic successful from the attacking standpoint simply due to these roles' "attractive" nature. Absolutely not. Having too many roaming and/or creative roles is more likely to make your tactic lose its structure than make your attack really "dangerous". Which is another reason why striking the right balance is so important for successful tactical creation (apart from so-called plug'n'play tactics, which are an entirely different pair of shoes). 

A similar misconception exists about duties. People often believe that "the more attack duties you have, the more dangerous you will be in attack". Again - totally wrong. How you distribute different duties within a tactical setup is much more important than the mere number of them. A setup with fewer attack duties can be much more successful attacking-wise than one with more.

To summarize, there are 3 critical factors you need to take into account when picking roles and duties:

1. creation of space in the attacking phase of play through interaction between different roles

2. the utilization of that space

3. sufficient defensive cover/protection for more attack-minded roles within different lines of the formation

[stopazricky]

2 hours ago, CaptCanuck said:

I mean they're pinned for a reason

LOL I literally didn't see them, thank you!
I'll read about them and see if I'll still be missing something!