An attacking 3-4-3 Gasperini's Genoa 2013-16 emulation

[tikitakamaster]

Hi everyone

I am Italian, I play Football Manager and other similar games since 1998 (when I loved playing CM and PC Calcio) and I always loved the tactical aspect of Football, I read many famous managers interviews (Sacchi, Capello, Guardiola, Klopp, etc) to understand the way they play and how they keep their players motivated and determined. A great manager who did not achieve all the results he deserved is in my opinion Gian Piero Gasperini.

He started his career as manager at Juventus where he took over the manager seat of young squad (now it's called Juventus Next Gen but at that time there was not a second squad, but only the Juventus Primavera team, which played with other same age teams, under 17, it's a bad trait of Italian system that does not allow young players to play in more competitive leagues against older pro players, that's also one of the main reasons we do so bad with national team) then he left and tried to become a first-squad manager. His first experience was at Crotone in Serie  C (3 rd division) where he won the play-off and got promoted to Serie B (2nd division). Then he got hired from Genoa in Serie A where he stayed from 2006 to 2010. In 2011 he got his first chance with a big team, Inter Milan, but he got sacked after a few games, Inter had won the treble in 2010 with Jose Mourinho and it was very difficult for the managers who followed him (Benitez, Leonardo and Gasperini) to ask players to follow their instructions as they did with Mou, at the same time, Inter chairman, Massimo Moratti was not willing to sell those players who made his dream come true (win the Champions League as his dad Angelo Moratti did twice) and this finally lead to Inter nearly go bankrupt and Moratti sold the club to Erick Tohir, an Indonesian businessman. Gasperini was not lucky to get the first big team opportunity in that particular period of Inter history. After getting sacked from Inter, in 2012 he went to Palermo where he stayed for only 1 season and in 2013 he came back to Genoa, where he stayed until 2016 finishing 13th, 6th and 11th. It's the 3-4-3 he used at Genoa that I tried to emulate with this tactic. 

I tested it with Genoa with new updated database (Genoa got promoted to Serie A so I started with Genoa in Serie A) and finished 5th, just 1 point behind Milan and won the Italian Cup. As you can see from the screenshots, it's a extremely good tactic in attack but lacks in defense even if I am not sure it will be the same if I test it with stronger teams with stronger defense, I did not made any great change to the squad, I just bought some younger players for the second team, and the starting eleven is the same of the beginning, I blocked the summer 2022 transfer session and just managed to buy younger players in the January 2023 session. Retegui is already at Genoa, and he scored 22 goals in Serie A, with also 14 assists, while the poacher, Flavio Junior Bianchi, a Genoa wonderkid, scored 20 goals even if he did not play a lot of games in the first part of the season. The third forward on the left, Mattia Aramu scored 9 goals with 6 assists, Another player who really played well in this season is Aaron, the left wing-back, he did 21 assists in 37 apps and was the top assistman in Serie A. On the right side, Sabelli (24 apps, 7 assists) and Hefti (23-2) alternated as wing-back.

It's a 3-4-3 with a positive mentality, it works better than a balanced mentality that I intended to use at first. The width is fairly wide, and in possession we have: much shorter passing, higher tempo, focus play down left and right and overlap left and right, pass into space, low crosses and run at defence. In transition: counter-press, counter, distribute to center backs and take short kicks. Out of possession: high pressing, standard defensive line, trigger press much more often, prevent short gk distribution.

Let's examine now the player roles and instructions. First of all, we have a sweeper-keeper on defend with the instruction to take fewer risks. In the defensive trio: we have 2 ball playing-defenders with defensive task and with the same instruction to dribble more and a libero on support with the instructions to dribble less, hold position and tackle harder. On the two sides we have two wing-backs on support, both with the instruction to stay wider. Then, as central midfielders, we have 2 segundo volantes, this is how I tried to replicate Gasperini's two CM. Both of them are set on support and have same instructions: pass it shorter, take more risks, get further forward, mark tighter, shoot less often. Finally, the forward trio, we have 2 advanced forwards set on attack with the instructions to shoot less often and take more risks, and a poacher on the centre with the only instruction to shoot more often. 

That's all for this tactic, please tell me your opinions thank you very much

GASPERINI GENOA 3-4-3 TRIDENTE.fmf

[Mutumba]

What makes this a Gasperini-tactic, would you say? Besides the shape. Gasperini usually defends really high up the pitch, and does so with a high back line. But you have standard.

I dont see any real connection to Gasperini here.

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Mutumba

[tikitakamaster]

you are right but I had to adjust it to Genoa situation. If I conceeded 45 goals with standard defensive line, you can just imagine how many goals I would have conceeded with an higher defensive line. In fact in some matches against stronger opponents when he was Genoa manager he tried to adjust his defense more.

Gasperini defends higher up the pitch  with Atalanta and I am making his Atalanta tactics too, the first he used also in UEFA Champions League 2019-20 when he won 4-0 against Valencia is a 3-4-2-1  (the "2" were Alejandro Gomez and Josip Ilicic") then the second is the tactic he uses now a 3-4-1-2.