AceCream

Yeah, it was quite a blow, especially since Bayern sneaked in a 50% sale percentage. I actually have two players; both play in a similar style. Large, physical, and complete players who can perform the Complete Forward role. First off Hugo Ekitiké from PSG on loan with a very reasonable €6.75M optional future fee. He has been rather underwhelming, to say the least, with 14 games, 1 goal, 1 assist, and a 6.57 average rating. The other is the Albanian Armando Broja, also on loan. He has a hefty €75M optional future fee, which I will not afford. He started brilliantly, scoring a hat-trick on his debut. But then he tore his knee ligaments leaving him out for 3 months.

Unfortunately, Orsolini wanted to go to Saudi in the summer . The skin is FM.Zweierkette v24.0.55 by Norseman LP

The only thing I can say, is it just looks nicer in possession. But I feel it does sacrifice the defensive positioning. Only using 2-3 players with a defensive duty leaves us rather vulnerable on the counter. I would normally have 1 more player on attack and 1 more player on defend if I were trying to win at all costs as I feel that gets better results, but that's no fun . When looking at the current most "Meta" tactics they all have 4 players on support, 4 players on attack and 2 players on defend with a balanced mentality, resulting in a "Flexible" team fluidity. BTW: It seems like my luck at Bologna has run out! So don't take my word as gospel I am currently hovering above relegation zone in my second season after about 10 league games In my defense I had to sell Zirkzee for €56M (who had a 50% sell percentage clause with Bayern) and Orsolini for €42M to Saudi and only got 60% of the transfer revenue for my budget. I also got a really tough beginning schedule playing against Napoli, Roma, Juventus, Inter, Milan, Fiorentina and PSG by October.

Hi! Cool to see you use similar philosophies 😉. Yes I did use different combinations of roles when using different players to keep the fluidity. For example, Lewis Ferguson is my Shadow Striker (which is a really attacking role) so I only used him with a Complete Forward on Support (Zirkzee). However when rotating Ferguson with Nikola Moro (my other AMC in the squad), who is more of an Advanced Playmaker or a simple Attacking Midfielder on Support, I use an Advanced forward on Attack (Ndoye) to keep the balance and penetration up front. Same goes for the wide players. To have the label "Fluid" I need top have 6 outfield players on support. I don't do this because it is necessarily better, it just a fun little restriction to role-play as a manager that uses "Fluid" tactics. I have been experimenting with changing the right sided fullback into a fullback on support and instructing him to hold position and sit more narrow. This allows me to have an extra attacking player on attack, for example. Does that answer your question?

I used Hold Position on the left sided defensive midfielder and told my right sided winger (Orsolini) to cut inside when in possession.

I really love simple, intuitive and defensively-minded tactical styles and formations so this thread has been a revelation to me. Thank you @crusadertsar and everybody who has contributed! Over in the Calcio thread on the Good Player and Team Guide sub-forum I summarized my first season managing Bologna using a fluid counter attacking style. But I want to go into a bit more detail behind the tactics here, if I may. I wanted to emulate the how Bologna are playing in real life today. Thiago Motta plays a very fluid-defensive-possession-based approach for lack of a better word. So naturally, I decided to use the Fluid Counter-Attack tactical style with defensively-minded roles and enough support duties so that the Team Fluidity label was always at least Fluid or Flexible but preferably Very Fluid. My thought process was to start off with a cautious tactical style and use that for a few months before introducing more possession based instructions like playing out from the back and working the ball into box. I started with the 4-3-3 but changed to the 4-2-3-1 after having difficulties with positional play in the former. In both formations, I wanted to create the popular 3-2 build-up shape when in possession. I started off by using Calafiori as a Libero that would move into the DM position while in possession. I adore Calafiori in this game, and am excited to use him as a libero, BPD, inverted wing back or full back. A really complete player. However, when playing the 4-3-3, I found the DM and the right-sided midfielder (BWM) were always running into each other. So I opted for a 4-2-3-1 with a DM double pivot and the right-sided full-back inverting with a wingback on the left side. This also got the most out of left wing-back Kristiansen and Lewis Ferguson, who I played as a Shadow Striker in the AMC position. I kept with this formation and roles until tactical familiarity was 100% and ensured the players were also training in the role and position selected. This greatly increased the speed at which tactical familiarity grew, and I think it was a key reason for our success. Every player knew exactly where to be and how to behave. Regardless of the opposition, I did absolutely no tinkering and stuck with this system for about half a season. Then I decided to use the Control Possession preset when playing at home against teams where the odds were in my favor. I used exactly the same roles and formation and kept things really simple. I focused heavily on rotation and created a 22-man squad (2 players for each position and role), ensuring everybody's playing time happiness was always at least happy and ensuring that the player's match sharpness was always green. This guaranteed that any time any substitutions or changes were made, players were both ready tactically and physically. Control Possession and Fluid Counter-Attack synergize really well together with both of them utilizing shorter passing, mid-blocks and counter-pressing. This meant that the players were already tactically familiar with many instructions and I could switch seamlessly between the two styles. A problem that I have experienced before is that my team is maybe only used to play in, for example, a high-pressing style and then when narrowly defending a lead or playing against a lot superior oppositions suddenly switching to a midblock and low defensive lines left my players really confused with the new style, resulting in less than optimal performances. So this defensive first approach will help a lot with transitioning to a more attacking style in the future. Defensively we were superb, preforming well above average in almost every defensive metric. We actually managed to win the league with 84 points in our first season using the Fluid Counter-Attack preset for 90% of the matches, in the other using the control possession preset. In the XG table we overperformed our XPts by 26 . So a lot of luck was involved, and Inter, Milan and Napoli all had rather bad seasons for their standards.

Bologna FC 1909 - 2023/2024 Season Background I started the save wanting to create a European journey-man save, where I loaded the 7 best leagues in Europe: Holland, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and England. I read the book Zonal Marking by Michael Cox, which details how tactics evolved in Europe from 1992-2020 in these countries. So, I wanted to create a manager who would try to win silverware in each of them while using a specific tactical style. But where to start? After listening to The Athletic FC Podcast about Thiago Motta at Bologna, I was inspired to create a similar defensive-possession-based style in FM24, especially after the final 24.3 update with up to date transfers and player attributes. I decided to disable the first transfer window, so no transfer business was done. The Squad and Tactics Thiago Motta plays a very fluid-defensive-possession-based approach. So naturally, I decided to use the Fluid Counter-Attack tactical style with defensively-minded roles and enough support duties so that the Team Fluidity label was always at least Fluid or Flexible but preferably Very Fluid. I switched between two shapes mostly, the 4-3-3 and the 4-2-3-1. In both formations, I wanted to create the popular 3-2 build-up shape when in possession. I started off by using Calafiori and Lucumí as Liberos on support that would move into the DM position while in possession. However, when playing the 4-3-3, I found the DM and the right-sided midfielder (BWM) were always running into each other. So I opted for a 4-2-3-1 with a DM double pivot and the right-sided full-back inverting with a wingback on the left side. This also got the most out of Lewis Ferguson, who I played as a Shadow Striker in the AMC position. I kept with this formation and roles until tactical familiarity was 100% and ensured the players were also training in the role and position selected. This greatly increased the speed at which tactical familiarity grew, and I think it was a key reason for our success. Every player knew exactly where to be and how to behave. Regardless of the opposition, I did absolutely no tinkering and stuck with the system for about half a season. Then I decided to use the Control Possession preset when playing at home against teams where the odds were in my favor. I used exactly the same roles and formation and kept things really simple. Control Possession and Fluid Counter-Attack synergize really well together with both of them utilizing shorter passing, mid-blocks and counter-pressing. Away against weak opponents I often see us controlling games have high possession stats, even though we use the Fluid Counter-Attack preset. I focused heavily on rotation and created a 22-man squad (2 players for each position and role), ensuring everybody's playing time happiness was always at least happy and ensuring that the player's match sharpness was always green. This guaranteed that any time any substitutions or changes were made, players were both ready tactically and physically. It also kept injuries to a minimum, and we usually had better physical conditions late in games compared to our opposition. The stand-out players of the season were, starting from the back: Calafiori: A true modern-day all-around ball-playing defender. His attribute distribution and height make him a really complete footballer able to play nearly anywhere on the deep left and middle side of the pitch. His trait Runs with ball often was also a joy to watch. Kristiansen: An excellent attacking wing-back on loan from Leicester. He was the only player in the back four with the license to go as far up the pitch as he wanted, resulting in 15 league assists! Unfortunately, we couldn't afford his €15M optional fee at the end of the season, and he returned back to England. He will be sorely missed in season 2. Frueler: Ex-Atalanta tireless midfielder Remo Frueler was the team's engine, forming a sensational double pivot in the defensive midfield position. His excellent work rate, teamwork, and stamina, combined with his traits of dictating the tempo and bringing the ball out of defense, made him an excellent ball-winning / playmaking midfielder hybrid with the Ball-Winning Midfielder role on support. Lewis Ferguson: He is also a tireless midfielder with a good eye for goal. Ferguson is probably my favorite player out of the bunch. Scoring 10 goals in the league and assisting 5 from the AMC position, his combination of Dives into Tackles and Place Shots makes him a truly unique player able to play anywhere in the midfield. I have contemplated using him as a false 9 and training him to come deep to get the ball, but we will see how that goes. Orsolini: Mr. Bologna himself, Orsolini, has been at the club for 7 years. In my opinion Orsolini is a sensational player who deserves more plaudits than the likes of Chiesa and Leao both in this game and in real life. He possesses great speed, stamina, flair, and technical abilities and is a perfect goal-scoring winger. He also shoots from a distance and with power, resulting in many bangers. Karlsson: On the opposite side, we have basically the same player but on the left. He also likes to shoot from a distance and, with power, has high flair and technical attributes. Karlsson scored 12 league goals and assisted 6. Zirkzee: The description for the Complete Forward role is: A complete forward possesses all the technical attributes of a Deep-lying Forward, the goals scoring ability of a Poacher and the strength and power of a Target Forward. Equally adept at playing in others, fashioning chances and getting on the end of team moves, such a player transcends tactical instruction and should simply be allowed to do their own thing. Zirkzee is precisely that player: Results I have never been as lucky in a football manager save before. A combination of playing defensive football that suits our strengths, and other teams in the league having bad seasons, we actually won the league in our first year. On the final day, we needed to beat Napoli at home, which we managed in a 4-3 thriller after going behind twice. We beat Milan home and away, Inter at home, Lazio home and away, and Roma at home. We were of course underdogs in all of these games, and being so adept to play our cautious fluid counter attacking system helped us a lot. Data When I say we were lucky, I am not exaggerating. We outperformed our XPts by 26 points. We outscored our xG by 25 goals, and our numbers were massive outliers. Has anybody experienced anything similar? We were however excellent defensively: What next? As I said at the beginning of this post, the intention of this save is to try to win silverware in the 7 "Big" nations in Europe. Having overachieved massively in my first season, I do not know what to do next. Our finances are tiny for a Scudetto winning Champions League club, the balance being €30M and only being given a measly €2M for transfers for the 24/25 season. We are playing many more games next season and have already lost a few key players who were here on loan. I do not expect that we will be able to retain the league, with Juventus hiring Zidane and Milan getting Emery. I guess I will finish my contract, which lasts until 2026, try to get a Coppa Italia or a European trophy before moving on to Holland or Portugal. I am however excited to play in this beautiful kit next season with the Scudetto badge

Rijkaard‘s Barcelona 05/06 Mid Season Review (Rijkaard oversees training for Barcelona in 2006) During the winter-break, when the league is just about half-way done, we are rather comfortably on the top of La Liga with 42 points out of a possible 51. 5 points ahead of dark-horse Betis with Valencia and arch rivals Real Madrid both sitting on 34 points. Probably our most telling statistic is our impressive defensive record of only 8 goals conceded. However, our 2.4 goals per game also indicate how dominant we have been this season. (La Liga table on January 1st 2005) The stars of the show have been, you guessed it, Eto‘o and Ronaldinho. With the pair averaging an impressive 36 goals between them. Eto‘o in particular has been astounding, but he was unfortunately injured in December, leaving him out for 2 months If he hadn't have been injured for so long he could have challenged Hugo Sanchez's and Telmo Zarra's La Liga record of 38 goals. Records before the Messi/Ronaldo era were a bit more reasonable to say the least. Ronaldinho has been exceeding my expectations, which sounds ludicrous given how good he already is. His goal scoring has been phenomenal and I'm hoping he can reach at least 15 league goals, similar to how he preformed in real life in 05/06. (Eto'o's Stats) (Ronaldinho's stats) Talking about injuries, they are getting kind of ridiculous. Here is basically half my starting 11 injured during a period in mid-January. (Barcelona's injuries pile on) An aspect of this re-enactment I see as a relative failure is our poor results against Real Madrid. In the first half of the season we lost at the Bernabéu 2-1 with both goals coming from Brazilian superstar Julio Baptista, who has been fantastic for them this season scoring 9 and assisting 10 in 21 league games this season from a midfield position in a standard 4-4-2 formation. Of course in real life Baptista would never really live up to the hype and was later loaned to Arsenal where the only thing I remember him doing was scoring 4 goals against Liverpool in a league cup quarter final in 2007. (Baptista's attributes and stats) Wanderley Luxembergo's men also beat us in the Copa del Rey quarter final on penalties after a 2-2 aggregate score and we drew them 0-0 at home in a league game sandwiched between the cup-tie . However his poor league form saw him sacked in February and Director of Football Arrigo Sacchi has to find someone new to manage the Galácticos for the remainder of the season. An important aspect of the real 05/06 season was Barcelona's dominance over Real Madrid in the matches between the two teams, so not beating them at all this season is a bit of a disappointment. (3 Games against Real Madrid in 8 days) In the Champions League we secured the top stop in our group with Everton, Porto and Dinamo Kiev. Surprisingly Dinamo Kiev got 2nd place, advancing them to the round of 16. The Champion's League is one our main objectives for this re-enactment alongside La Liga. We play Italian giants Inter in the Round of 16 who have the likes of prime Adriano, lightning quick Obafemi Martins, stalwarts Stankovic, Cambiasso, Zanetti and Walter Samuel, as well as the brilliant Alvaro Recoba. This fixture will be our first real roadblock this season and Ronaldinho and Eto'o had better regained their fitness for this game. (UCL Group and R16 draw) (Adriano' Attributes) (Obafemi Martins' Attributes) (Recoba's Attributes) A refreshing part of playing these old games is the incredible distribution of talent the teams have compared to today's game. Every team seems to have at least 1 world class player. Look at for example Batistuta playing for Fiorentina for half a decade, even staying when the team was relegated, Alan Shearer becoming a record signing for Newcastle, the Parma team of the late 90s including Buffon ,Cannavaro, Thuram and Crespo to name a few. This TIFO video explains how times have changed really well, where world class players only realistically can join a handful of teams. Although the mid 2000s were maybe nothing compared to the 90s regarding how diversified talent was between teams, there are still incredibly talented players playing for what would be considered relatively small clubs. One such club and player is Villarreal and Riquelme. In 2005/2006 Villarreal managed to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League where they narrowly lost to Wenger's Arsenal. Riquelme and Diego Forlán were the stand-out players of that team. (Riquelme's and Forlan's attributes) In Italy relegation candidate Lecce had players such as Mirko Vucinic and Cristian Ledesma whom both played for over 5 seasons at the Pugliese club. (Vucinic's and Ledesma's attributes) Of course nostalgia plays a part of this, and Riquelme of 2006 could be compared to Yeremy Pino of today's Villarreal who also reached a semi-final in the Champions League in 2022. I am going to end this post on Zlatan Ibrahimovic's attributes. If a player had these exact attributes in today's game I am pretty sure he would far exceed 200 current ability . Those physical attributes are just insane. (Ibrahimovic's attributes) I am going to end it here, thanks for reading! I have been playing a lot of FM24 recently and am having a blast managing Thiago Motta's Bologna playing a very fluid defensive-possession based system, so please excuse how long it has been since my last update. This will still be my side project and I aim to keep playing 1 season in every game however long it may take. The next update will be the last for Rijkaard's Barcelona in FM2006 before we move onto Ancelotti's Milan in FM2007.

It would be really immersive if, when creating a new manager, you could customize, for example, the teams your manager played for in the past, the amounts of appearances and goals scored for said team, international appearances and goals, etc. Right now, it just randomizes apps and goals for the national team, and that's it.

Am I correct in assuming that every time you make a tactical change in the tactics screen during a match, only then does the ME recalculate how the remainder of the match plays out? However, you can instantly change the team's mentality in a match without going into the tactics screen. So my question is, does changing your mentality in a match quickly without going into the tactics screen affect the remainder of the match?

I believe it just increases the likelihood that your players will disobey your instructions and make more riskier (attacking) passes and movements. Using "Be more expressive" as a team instruction (TI) will therefore tell every player on the pitch to try something risky from time to time. So, unless you have a highly creative group of players and are a lot better than your opposition I would not use it as a TI except maybe late in the game trying to win against a team parking the bus. In my opinion it is more suited as a player instruction (PI) for players with high flair, technique, decision making and vision. You can think of it like a risk modifier. If you are already playing with an attacking mentality and play direct risky passes, like the gegenpressing preset, you probably won't see a big difference. If you were however playing a cautious methodical possession based system you would probably see players going off script and improvising more often and trying riskier moves. Conversely, "Be more disciplined" decreases the likelihood that players within your system disobey their PIs and TIs. Similar to how Guardiola or van Gaal want their teams to operate. They actively discourage players to use their imagination and make risky dribbles and want them to stick to the system. Look at Grealish when he was at Aston Villa and now at City. He has been creatively neutered. Which, to be fair, makes for very effective albeit dull football at times.

Thanks @bosque! I have been reading old threads on this forum and I came across this one from October 2006: Here he talks about mentality frameworks. The frameworks are based on the assumption that the mentality slider has a numerical value from 0-20 and that the combination of mentalities and the total sum of them dictate how the team plays. Therefore a team with 100 total mentality (10 outfield players with an average mentality of 10) is very balanced. Here are a few of these frameworks: Rule of two. The Rule of Two is based upon the assumption that players must have a variety of acceptable passing options available to them. If players are too close together they are too easy to contain, and passing breaks down. If players are too far apart, too many ambitious balls are hit, and passing breaks down. Therefore, each player must be able to pick out someone to pass too who has a mentality within two positions of his own. Total mentality: 112 (+12) 5x5 Defensive Line. 5x5 Defensive Line Theory assumes that teams have a basic philosophy of five attack and five defend. Originally, the thinking here was that 5 players should have an equal defensive mentality, and five should have can equal attacking mentality. There were problems employing this type of system as there were big gaps between the attacking players and defensive players. The solution was to ensure the defensive line setting was equal to the mentality of the attacking players. Total mentality: 100 (+0) And so on... It's a great read if you ever intend on playing the games that had sliders (FM05-FM09 I believe). I did not go into such detail though when choosing the mentality of my teams (Chelsea and Barcelona). I am of course managing the best teams in each edition of the game so tactics do not matter too much for performance. This is the mentality distribution: So with the mentalities as a numerical value my mentality distribution is: GK = 0 DCs = 2 DR = 10 DL = 14 CDM = 5 MCL = 10 MCR = 14 AML = 14 AMR = 10 ST = 14 Total mentality: 93. So according to that article I am playing rather defensively . I might need to reconsider my play style during the later half of the season if my aim is to play attacking Cruyffian total football!

Rijkaard's Barcelona: Player Roles and Instructions Continued As I was saying, Messi and Giuly have unfortunately been injured most of the season. Truth be told I am more frustrated by Giuly being injured because he played a bigger role than Messi in the 05/06 season. If Ronaldinho had ruptured his ACL I probably would have save scummed. But getting to use a 21 year old Iniesta in the AMR position is a fine consolation. (Messi's, Giuly's and Iniesta's attributes. Notice Messi's 20 tackling ) The season has started well and I feel like my team is playing attacking possession based football which Cruyff himself would have been proud of. We are on the top of the league having scored the most goals and even Guardiola is singing our praises: (A young Guardiola praises our Spanish Super Cup success) (We have scored over 2 goals per game) When creating the tactic I wanted to see Ronaldinho inverting with van Bronckhorst running into the empty space on the left wing. This pattern of play can be seen many times in Barcelona's games in the 05/06 season. This can be rather easily replicated in the match engine and results in some very nice attacks. Ronaldinho's 19 long shots and instruction to try long shots often was beautifully demonstrated in this goal below: (A great curling effort from Ronaldinho against Cádiz) There are 5 aspects that really please me with this goal. The playing out from the back by Marquez to find Edmílson. The short beautiful passing of the midfield. Ronaldinho cutting inside and shooting from distance. Bronckhorst running into the space left by Ronaldinho and keeping the width. The back 3 of Olegeur, Marques and Puyol. The team is ridiculously well equipped to play a possession based system. The technical capabilities of the whole team is quite remarkable and with thirteen players having 16 passing or more we often dominate matches. I would love there to be more team stats representing our style of play, but the only metric I have are match stats from individual games. (The squad's attacking attributes) (Match stats against Racing Santander) That concludes the player roles and a quick glance at how the team functions within the match engine. Next there will be a mid-season update, followed by maybe another team showcase like I did with Valencia in FM2005 and then we will wrap things up at the end of the season. Thanks for reading!

Rijkaard's Barcelona: Player Roles and Instructions In a previous post I mentioned that FM2006 introduces pre-determined player instruction templates for specific positions on the pitch. The player instructions available are: Goalkeeper Full Back Centre Back Defensive Midfielder Attacking Midfielder Winger Striker Target Man In 2005 tactics, statistics and player-roles weren‘t really that mainstream and usually people only talked about formations, especially in England. So, you will find no mezzalas, false-9s, segundo volantes and inverted wingbacks. No high-blocks, pressing triggers and counter-pressing team instructions. I however like the simplicity of the tactic creator. I just try to get my best players in the correct areas of the pitch, which I think was also Rijkaard’s coaching philosophy with his Barcelona side. Of course, managing the best team in the world helps. (Barcelona 05/06 team celebrating a goal in the Champions League) I want to emphasize that I am willingly playing these old games with the mindset that it is 2006 and I am acting as if I’m playing them “blind”, using the tools the game gives me without any prior knowledge or trying to exploit the match engine using tried and true methods in any way. I feel this makes me less biased when critiquing the games and it gives me more enjoyment with the limited tools and resources compared to today’s games. Anyways, let’s talk about the player’s attributes and their instructions. Starting with Victor Valdes I chose the pre-determined goalkeeper instructions but tweaked them to pass short and distribute the ball to the centre back. I feel like he goes shorter more often in open play, but I swear I have never seen him distribute the ball to Puyol or the other centerback during a goal kick. If anybody knows how to achieve this, please let me know. (Victor Valdes attributes and instructions. Just look at those physicals attributes!) On the left side I have the more attacking full backs. Gio and Serginho are both highly technical fullbacks with great creative, passing and crossing capabilities. I instruct them to run forward often, cross more often and cross from a deeper position. This makes them act like quasi-wingers running into the space created by Ronaldinho. (Bronckhorst attributes and instructions) On the right hand side, I have Oleguer acting as a defensive inverted fullback or Belleti acting as a more traditional fullback. Neither of them runs forward very often for more defensive stability resulting in a back three when we attack. I am surprised the level of positional play you can implement with the old match engine. (Attacking shape showcasing the DL (Bronckhorst) running into space and the DR (Belletti) staying back) The centre-backs (Puyol and Marquez) have the pre-determined centre-back player instructions; however Marquez has the permission to try more direct passes as well as dribble with the ball more often (run with ball slider), resulting in him being more of a modern ball-playing defender while Puyol is just the traditional centre-back: (Carles Puyol's attributes, a total of ten 20s ) In real life Marquez started out as a traditional centre-back in his early Barcelona career but because of his technical abilities on the ball as well as his vision he was often deployed as a defensive midfielder. Rafa was one of Rijkaard‘s unsung heroes acting almost as a Koeman/Beckenbauer-esque libero style defender. Wikipedia‘s article about his style of play sums him up to a T: I feel like Marquez was born a little bit too early and played in an era that didn't utilize ball-playing defenders enough. Imagine him playing today in Pep's City. (Quintessential Ball-Playing Defender Rafa Marquez) Just in front of the defence lies Edmílson, our defensive midfielder. And that is exactly what I want him to be, just a simple defensively minded holding midfielder who breaks up opposition attacks and helps with the build up in attack. Not as defensive as for example Makélélé in my Chelsea team in FM2005, but not as attacking as an Andrea Pirlo (who I can’t wait to use as a Regista in my next re-enactment in FM2007). Edmílson uses the pre-determined defensive midfielder player instructions with a rather defensive mentality and is supposed to press and close down more. La Masia graduate Thiago Motta is a suitable rotation option in this position. (Edmílson's attributes and player instructions) Xavi is our playmaker. I want the ball to go through him in basically all phases of play. He might not have been as influential in Rijkaard’s side as he was with Guardiola, but his technical and mental attributes are elite. Like I have stated, I’m not sure how playmakers work in this match engine, and I admit I do not see a difference when watching a match in the game. Unfortunately, there are no detailed player statistics to see if his passing numbers are higher than other players in the team. I tick the box “hold up ball” and ask him to often try through balls to utilize his amazing passing and creativity. Given his stats this season and what I have seen of him on the pitch I think I am correctly representing the way he played under Rijkaard. (Xavi's attributes and player instructions) Deco is our ball-carrier and chance creator, the most attacking of the midfield 3. He has unlimited creative freedom and I want him to run with the ball often as well as trying through balls for Eto’o. Deco is one of those brilliant forgotten players who was overshadowed by many of his teammates. I absolutely adore these kinds of players. Others, in my opinion, who fall under this category of quiet geniuses are for example: Guti Hernandez, Aimar (who I mentioned in my Valencia FM2005 showcase), Riquelme, Recoba and so on. (Deco's attributes and player instructions) On the left of the attacking 3 we have Ronaldinho. I have been experimenting with the Sarrows and Farrows as well as instructions with him. As @llado01 stated he saw him as a clear advanced playmaker, but he was also a prolific goal-scorer during his time at Barca. In 05/06 he scored 17 league goals, 26 goals in all competitions. In the mid-2000s it was almost unheard of for wide players or number 10s to score so many goals. Obviously, that changed later with the coming of Messi and Ronaldo, and most recently Salah. I therefore want him to both score goals and create chances, acting almost as a second striker / wide-playmaker hybrid. I started off by using a diagonal Farrow pointing to the striker position, but he ended up being to much in the way of Eto’o in that position and not creating enough. I then tried a Sarrow (side-ways arrow) straight into the AMC position, but according to my research of older threads from the forum Sarrows aren’t really understood and he wasn’t performing as well as he should. I ended up using a standard Farrow but with the “Cross Ball” slider turned down all the way to the left. I found he would dribble down the left more and then cut inside, because he wasn’t “allowed” to cross. This has resulted in some brilliant goals and beautiful attacking play, which I will demonstrate in a future post. Eto’o has been our main star this season, already scoring 16 LEAGUE goals before December. I just use the Striker pre-determined player instructions and that is it. His extreme pace and acceleration supplemented with his insane finishing and off the ball movement makes him probably the best striker in the world. (Eto'o attributes and player instructions) On the right side I have a traditional winger who hugs the touchline and creates width and crosses the ball often. I wanted to use Giuly and Messi there but unfortunately this happened: (RIP Messi) Giuly has also been injured for a majority of the 1st half of the season so I have been retraining Iniesta as an AMR. Due to space limitations I'll have to cut it short here. To be continued...

In an ideal world probably not. He obviously has the ability to be trying more direct long balls with his passing and vision. IIRC shorter passing is the default with the pre-determined Attacking Midfielder player instructions I used when creating the Ronaldinho role. I also started the save by setting up a possession-based system to see how it would work in FM2006, so I didn't want somebody in the team to be giving the ball away with risky passes. I have however tweaked the system a bit, allowing some players to try more direct passes. You can expect an update to be posted later today after I get home from work explaining all of the player roles and how they perform in the ME