Rashidi

The RPM will rotate from the DPM to CM tier in the buildup and then into the AM tier in the next stage of transition. Roles in those tiers will form partnerships by the arriving RPM by moving to the side. Unless a role has been listed here ( the list was provided by the match engine team) they don’t rotate. You will need to try things out, cos the movement of a lot of roles is more intuitive than a simple “go here” if “he comes”. The halfback at the moment is one such role, his rotation looks a bit strange when he is playing in an offset 4231DM and then looks fantastic in a single pivot system.

Looking forward to it!

OTHER FORMATIONS Its interesting to see close we can get to replicating some formations from real life, what follows is my interpretation of how some teams play. Its important to realise that managers can react to different opposition by changing their formation. They can also adapt their system when an injury happens. As always please feel free to use them as they are meant to be, sharing what can be done. ANGE POSTECOGLOU - SPURS I daresay this may become one of the most popular tactics for FM24, simply because of its attacking bent. In real life Spurs play a 433 with two inverted wingbacks, and 2 free eights in midfield who depending on the buildup can come in narrow or go out wide. The manager expects his team to play out of defence all the time and their fowards are expected to work the channels or come in from wider positions. They have been very attacking this season and also play quite high up the pitch. Buildup Phase | In the midfield phase their free eights can go wide or narrow. I could provide defensive lines, heatmaps and key pass plots but that would make this an inordinately long post. I just want to be brief. This is how I see them play, with the IWBs coming inside, there may be a greater need to put the stay wider instruction on the inside forwards, this will encourage them to take up better positions from which to drag out opposing fullbacks. Maddisons heatmap typically places him on the left side of most attacks. And I know he doesn't attack the box nearly as much as he would as a CM(A), if I wanted to be closer in my interpretation, i would probably turn one mid into a box to box and another into a mezzala, but in this case I wanted to see Maddison score a lot of goals, so this is the interpretation I am going for. Klopp - Liverpool Strengths and Weaknesses of a 433DM Features The 433Dm is a versatile system that is solid defensively. It is commonly used when a side has explosive wingers or inside forwards they can utilise. With 3 in attack, the system usually requires a role from central midfield attacking the halfspaces near the penalty area. Top managers like Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have used the system before, over time both managers have adapted it in different ways to show how versatile it can be. In attack it has 2 wide attacking roles and a striker in the middle. Variations of this attacking pattern have included, wide playmakers who create overloads on one side of the pitch to release the inside forward diagonally on the opposite side. We’ve also had systems where the lone striker plays as a deeper creative role dropping deep to draw opposition teams out. Sides would then attack the channels or get behind the fullbacks. In the last few years we’ve also seen variations of the 433DM that include using a ball playing central defender who pushes into central midfield areas to dictate play and seeing fullbacks inverting. Ange Postecoglou uses a 433DM with two inverted wingbacks and two roaming central midfielders. Ultimately the 433 is one of the more commonly used systems in the world today because of its versatility. Weaknesses Perhaps its biggest weakness can be the lack of goals. If a 433DM is designed without considering how attack patterns can form centrally, then the system becomes a simple flank attacking formation, where the most common attack patterns involve crosses. When this develops, sides start running up low xG opportunities and since the fulbacks are surging up the pitch, it leaves the flanks vulnerable. When this happens it can sometimes suffer from conceding cheap goals against the run of play. It requires very good technical players who can attack the wings and it needs a strong, smart central striker. In order to play the variations of the 433 it also requires fast fullbacks who can recover quickly if needed. STYLE The 433DM can be played with wingbacks or fullbacks. Its important to understand what each role brings: Complete wingback - Aggressive, likely to dribble at defences, since it roams it can move centrally. It uses space very well. Wingback - Mainly stays on the wing, unless you play someone on the flank opposite his preferred foot. May try to take on defences with a dribble and might lose the ball. Ideal in setups that do not feature any other players on the flank (eg 4312). Wingback Defend duty ; Underrated role, will hold position, does not try to be too adventurous and will go down the flanks when it makes sense to and isn’t too risky. It is a role that I would recommend if someone only plans to get the wingback to cross from deep. Fullback - A role that will pass inside and then run before waiting for the return pass. This is a very good role for pass and go tactics because he will not try and beat a player with a dribble. Inverted Fullback - This role does play a bit like the wingback on defend duty, It will sit back in defence like a central defender. If the play shifts to his side of the pitch, he will go towards the flanks and if its not too risky he may try and go as far as the edge of the final third. He however will not go towards the byeline, which makes him an excellent role for systems that want to attack exclusively with their wingers. Inverted wingback - This role will move into the defensive midfield tier during buildup. If the player is a support duty he will also move slightly higher up the pitch during the midfield phase. It can now be used in dual defensive midfield scenarios, however they will be times when he just plays narrow like a wingback if there is no space for him to move into. To play the LFC system I will require an IWB and a IFB in defence. Currently Andy Robertson plays the role of the IFB and Trent Alexander Arnold does the job of a IWB(S). Dominik Szoboszlai usually attacks through the half channel space on the right and can be seeing making final third entry runs near the edge of the penalty area. Mac Allister may do the job of a 6 for his nation, but he hasn’t been too convincing as one for Liverpool. With injuries to Bajectic, Liverpool added Wataru Endo to the side. It is still early days for LFC so I have set up a midfield partnership that I thought would be the best for the side. UNDERSTANDING COUNTERPRESSING AND THE PRESSING GAME The best counterpressing sides have always attacked with narrow width. Bayern Munich and Liverpool in their prime both played narrow with counter-pressing. When sides are playing defensive systems you have two options: You can play your normal game and hope or try and draw them out. Electing to move the ball around and try and create goal scoring chances, or, you can try and push the game into their half put them under tremendous pressure and take advantage of any mistake they make. Counterpressing is about winning the ball back 12 seconds after you have lost it. This means they will avoid dropping back, but instead those players who lost the ball will attempt to win it back. Here you want to take advantage of the fact that you already have your players in advanced positions. To counter press well, sides like Bayern and LFC would always be a bit narrow in the attack so that the players would be closer together, their zonal marking areas would overlap, leading to wolfpack pressing. When you increase width your are increasing the distance between players and increasing the chance that you might not win the ball back. So whenever I see a team sitting back and defending with a 5212 for example, I will push my defensive line up to maximum, reduce my width, setting pressing triggers to maximum, have my opposition instructions to trigger press the backline and hard tackling the backline on. While Liverpool do not always ask their central defenders to dribble more with the ball, I do, especially against weaker sides that have set up to defend. In this tactic, there are several player instructions. Since we want TAA to push out as an IWB, it could leave the 3 at the backline offset too much to the left. To counter this we get the BPD on the right to stay wider. In attack we want the IF(A) to stay wider, close down more and mark tighter, we repeat the same with the other IF(A) on the left,. In attack we also ask the CF(A) to close down more and tackle harder. The box to box midfielder has been told to dribble more, the mezzala is left alone along with the defensive midfielder. Those are all the player instructions in use. When we are playing against very defensive teams, I may elect to make these changes which I find useful. If the opposition normally play with a deep defensive line ( information that can be found out from the data hub) I put our defensive line to maximum and change the role of the IF(A) on the right to a winger on attack with the same player instructions added. - Increase width - Add Work ball into box - Play with a high block Tactical Variations If you add focus play through the middle and change the roles of the IF(A) to W(A) you make the Mezzala more explosive in the final third PEP GUARDIOLA - CITY In the absence of John Stones, City have had to adapt. They are playing slightly differently this season than they are now, but I will be using my interpretation of how they played last season to build this tactic. And it will feature John Stones as a Libero. My City replication article is actually quite long so I will be brief here. This is their buildup pattern this season notice how the backline is positioned. This season Kyle Walker looks as if he is being asked to play exclusively as a wingback. Just before they enter their attacking phase, Rodri and Akanji can usually be seen around the opponent's box. And when that happens the last man is almost always Gvardiol. With Rodri in the middle and the two centre backs flanking its a 3-1 diamond shape. I am after last season's system where John Stones was a libero, this system can easily be adapted to fit a wingback. This version depends entirely on whom I want seeing scoring goals, the roles on the flanks are interchangeable. If i want to stretch defenses, its wingers, otherwise I can play with Inside forwards much like how they operate in real life. De Zerbi - Brighton Why stop at 3? Brighton are playing an interesting system in real life. Two strikers who drop deep allowing their wider players to come inside and attack, a double pivot for control and a serious desire to play out from the back. It's a 424 in my eyes. Some say they play a 4231 others say they play a 424. I say they try to have their cake and eat it too. This is a team that seeks to play a brand of football thats exciting to watch for an underdog. And to do that they like to draw teams in and slap them hard with goals. It doesn’t always work, but its definitely drawn some attention. Not all sides are created equal, weaker sides sometimes sit back, soak and try and hit on the counter. However in top tier leagues like the premier league, this means sitting back and defending against top tier talent that do have the ability to create chances against a low block. So what can some sides do, they can bait the press whilst sitting in a low block and then look to attack teams rapidly through the transition. When a team is sitting in a low block it will naturally create space behind the attacking team and between the lines. Sitting in a low block and baiting the press is fairly difficult to do, because the amount of space a defending team can use is also reduced simply because there are now more players there. How do you get from a low block into a counter transition. A central defender could play balls into space, ie playing longer passes behind the opposition’s defensive line, but doing this will cause sides to potentially lose possession. Managers like Roberto De Zerbi, don’t seek to have their defenders play it long. He gets his defenders to transition the ball into the central areas of the pitch where they can generate more dangerous. Build up play In order to counter teams that might man mark or tight mark the defensive midfielders, Brighton’s side’s find ways to create a free man for the pass by drawing pressing players on to them. Brighton’s tempo at the back isn’t very fast, central defenders attract the press, the defensive midfielders drop into space so that they are available for the pass. Brighton use a double pivot in midfield that move the ball up the pitch. So how can sides do this dismarking of the two pivots 1. Using a BPD to bring up the ball and draw the press 2. Using DMs that come deep to get the ball 3. Play out of defence Brighton’s goal is to get the ball to central midfield from where their to strikers actually come deeper to draw defenders higher, this creates space for the wingers to attack. In central midfield, one of the or either defensive midfielder needs to be able to spring the transition pass out wide. This isn’t an attempt to replicate Brighton, but meant to be an explanation of it in FM terms, so how do I set this up on FM24, we can either use a 442 or 4231. Either one can work. First though let’s dive into some numbers from fbref.com to try and understand how the team plays in real life. FORMATION or FORMATIONS? Nearly everywhere you go its expressed notationally as a 4231. When watching the team play, to me at least, they resemble a 442 in defense and a 424 in attack, with both strikers sitting a lot deeper in the midfield phase with both wingers punching up. De Zerbi looks to use the middle to release the wingers into space. They operate more as a midblock in most cases because they do not have the kind of players technically suited to breaking down stubborn sides in a low block. If we go to fbref we can take any match report and dive into their numbers. This gives us some understanding of whats happening. The numbers I normally seek are passing, progression, ball carries and defensive actions. From the possession tab I can clearly see that Dahoud and Gross have most of their touches in the middle third, with Gross having more touches in the final third than Dahoud. Under carries PrgC you will see that neither player dribbles with the ball more than 10 yards towards goal or into the final third. When looking at the passing stats you will find that these two players do play quite a few passes into the final third with a good mix of passes that include short, long and medium passes. n terms of defensive actions, nearly all their actions happen in the defensive and middle third areas of the pitch. Based on how Mitoma and March are set up by De Zerbi, they are always trying to attack the lines, whilst the two strikers frequently drop deeper to draw central defenders higher thereby creating even more space in the defensive third. I would set the team up like this if I wanted to start with any attempt of setting this up on Football Manager 24 You could also set this up with 2 defensive midfielders in the middle and two wingbacks on defend duty. I don’t believe a formation should be a rigid interpretation of things, in fact depending on the situation you may want to ask your players to change the style of the system. Double Volantes Risky - potentially has both players attacking the box High chance that a lot of play could also go down the flanks With technically capable players could dominate since the transition overloads the centre, but at the cost of leaving on flank space free Defensive Midfielders Orthodox - Predictable DMs will not flood the AM tier Defensively more rigid Wingbacks on defend Provide protection down the flanks More inclined to use the defensive midfielders as a passing option, thereby creating the potential for different attack patterns which could include balls through the middle All the variations work, with wingbacks on defend you get more control, with wingbacks on support you could work ball into box and still trouble some teams. And with Volantes you end up flooding the third. Away from home, I could play with wingbacks on defend duty and DMs utilising the box buildup created by the central defenders and the two defensive midfielders to control games. The attack pattern will see some attacks happen through the middle. At home I can opt for any number of actions depending on the quality of the opposition. In one of my games I decided to opt for this set up The passmap it generated showed a lot of right sided focus involving Gross When I compare this to Brighton’s passmap against Manchester United there aren’t a lot of dissimilarities, they almost look similar Have fun playing football manager 24. My hope is that you understand the thought process that went behind creating these tactics, and if you didn't you can always find me and ask me here on the forums, or out there .... somewhere.

The BWM is also one of my go to destroyer roles in central midfield it works so well in the final third, and, with the right player winning the ball there it can initiate brilliant counters. Interesting how you paired it with an Inverted winger who could be classed as a more creative role. It’s a very good pairing.

So I've merged both threads to keep it centralised, with FM24 coming I thought it would be a better idea to collate threads that are a similar topic.

Nah I dont want to take any credit from the work you initially did, you got things off to a great start. With positional play being such a big part of FM24, I am not even sure functional play can even work. My gut tells me its going to be a strikerless system so i can get the escadinhas going. I will merge our threads together, so I can keep this going. At least all the information will be current, and it will still be your thread :-)

Everything is contextual, so put up your tactic and maybe someone can help

Great work on this thread, I had no idea it was this good, I normally never read another person's thread if I am planning a similar topic. I always read after the fact, and was surprised to find so many similarities. I have to admit Ben Griffis key maps are not easy to find. I only managed to find two for the team. My goal was to replicate their left sided emphasis. and also the tactical weakness of having Marcelo playing so high up in many transitions. Guga I found a lot less adventurous. This fluminense system is definitely not rock solid, its transitions always point to a colossal problem against teams that play direct with high tempo. They usually look like they are struggling. More and more times are now closing the channels to make it harder for them to go through them vertically. It will be interesting to see how Diniz adapts. So like I said I had that left sided focus and achieved something I was happy with The tactic ended up looking like this the first time. I chose the TM(S) because of how the transitions affect him when he has lots of players around. He drops very deep lays off, and passes it to some one. Very much a give and go role. Yeah it scores some of the best goals I have seen on FM23, but its crazy weak down the left. I like to call that the Marcelo issue. I also created something a bit different. With the next tactic, its the left sided focus again to get a similar heatmap with those diagonals using Guga as the focal point of the defensive diagonal, but I also wanted the "boxes" which were such a hallmark of latin football. In this tactic we will have a box form in the defensive phase and then another box in the midfield phase. I really enjoyed this and wanted to thank everyone who was egging me on to do a Fluminense replication. Ooh forgot to add, the keeper should be a sweeper keeper

And not forgetting totalfootballanalysis.com, they do fantastic work. And a lot of the gfx are in the posts of a large number of content creators here, including me. I usually check their video channel out first if I want to verify some assumptions I have made. Their website is subscription based. understat.com for xg fbref.com for data sofascore.com for heatmaps For articles betweentheposts is actually now no 1 for me, then its totalfootballanalysis, and then the athletic. There is one very underrated video content creator The purist football on youtube. He is also very good.

Enough has been said, this thread is becoming dumb as

This is a pretty good site for European games https://betweentheposts.net/the-inverted-parabox/

@Fox-7-Can we merge the Fluminense replication threads. I have just started one, there might be another l, we could merge all three with yours being the main thread. My goal is to see how far I can get replicating it for FM24. This way we have the discussion centred in your thread.

You might be overcomplicating it a bit way too much, there are a lot of factors at play. I would just focus on training him along the pathway of a player who needs help in specific attributes. You determine what they should be and then choose the role. Don't worry about optimising it too much. Try to avoid programs that are too general when they are young. At least thats what I have done and its worked for me.

They should mostly be back, I had to organise the pinned threads ahead of FM23, there has been no... updates to that thread since FM19 i think

The forum was getting too cluttered with sticky threads. We needed to make the helpful threads easier to navigate, so we will keep current versions for Football Manager here, and for older versions of the game, they will go into a compilation thread which you can visit to find helpful guides that cover versions of the game from FM12 onwards. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Guide to Touchline Team Talks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FM24 Positional Play Feature - Explanation of role rotations Defense First Football Tactics - CrusaderTsar Applying the 3-2-5, 3Box3, W-M Styles to Football - Aron FM23 Crafting a 433 - Johnny Ace Crafting a 4231 - Johnny Ace Choosing your HOYD and impacts Topic always comes up official SI responses within Jogo Bonito 4231 - CrusaderTsar Exploiting the modern 442 - CrusaderTsar Short Guide To Man Management - Jack722 De Zerbi Replication - Anderson36015 How to soak and hit on the counter - very good discussion for people who are struggling ultrAslan Previous Guides and Older threads (FM22-FM12) COMPILATION : TACTIC AND STRATEGY GUIDES - Various COMPILATION : TRAINING & MENTORING GUIDES - Various

Just pruning them ahead of FM23, they are going all the way back to older editions of the game. Some of the information is also out of date. Will need to go back in and see what to keep.

Yeah I know a lot of people have tried to do the team, and I have often said its impossible. So I thought I'd chronicle it here while doing the same thing on a video eventually. With the positional play feature I am worried that it becomes too rigid. So I may update the research section which is the one I just posted with more key pass combinations from Ben Griffis. And also specific heatmaps for individual players to show which parts of the pitch they influence. I already have the with ball passing diagram which shows the ratio of passes for each player, length and direction. So I wanna give this a good go. Credit to the rest though who have done a similar thing. Initially wanted to add this to their threads or merge them, but I was concerned it would appear as if I were hijacking it, seeing how its almost a 2000 word essay. Hopefully this doesnt end up like my theory of mentality thesis which i did in 2004.

**Reserved**

**Reserved** FM 24 Replication

It’s time to take a deep dive into understanding how Fluminese play. It’s a style of football that appears in stark contrast to other predominant styles of football. There are plenty of good sources of information on this including work by Jamie Hamilton, Jozef Bozsik, Caio Miguel, the writers at the Athletic, Total Football Analysis, Purist Football and the technical information from the analysts over at Between The Posts and Ben Griffis over at Bundesliga Analytics. So if you want to do your own research I would recommend them as the best sources of information. As far as FM content creators are concerned, bloggers and youtubers, it’s @RDF Tactics research that stands out from the pack. Not forgetting as well the forum post from @Fox-7- As always raw data is from fbref.com. I do not pretend to be an expert at this and a lot of my observations are based in part on how other coaches and analysts have arrived a their conclusions. Some of you may not agree but hey everyone is entitled to an opinion. This is a journey on trying to see if I can get this style working on FM24. Most modern managers like Xavi, and Guardiola are fixated by controlling space. They have clearly defined roles for players to control The most common tactical approach in Europe is positional play, where the individual movements of players serve the team as a whole. Creativity takes a back seat to structure and control of space. In these kind of systems coaches want their players working within a clear structure. While it looks like a lot of movement between players, they are just switching jobs between zones. These zones are defined, like the commonly seen box shapes that Guardiola uses. This allows for repeatable passing moves and is the predominant style of football practised by coaches like Roberto De Zerbi, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and quite a few others. Their goal is to control and attack space. Positional football does this by a form of zone attack - targeting specific zones for control and attack. Coaches that attack zones in this way are trying to make the players play within a system which focuses more on the unit than relying on the individual’s need for a moment of brilliance. The Evolution of Escadinhas (Diagonal Lines) What is an Escadinha? It is basically a diagonal line. It happens in football when players make forward movements relative to other players after passing the ball. A player passes the ball forward to someone else then runs vertically up. This movement creates a step ladder of sorts called an Escadinha. To understand it in detail I would suggest reading Jamie Hamilton's post on medium. We have offensive and defensive diagonals and he explains it very well in that brilliant post. At Fluminense, Fernando Diniz is bringing “street football’ back. His style of football brings back memories of the great Brazilian sides of the past, free flowing yet functional, creating patterns of play that lead to staggered diagonal lines of attack through midfield - its a system where the team positions itself in such a way that it creates asymmetries called “escadinha’s for the progression of play. Roles are not confined to zones, in fact players have a lot of creative freedom to move around the pitch and form relationships with players. In a match played against Flamengo, their right winger moved to the left flank and formed a relationship with the left winger. Creating these kind of relationships to build up play using short passing at a high tempo is a key facet of their play. Some have called it chaotic football, but it is anything but. There is a clear structure to how they play. To understand this we need to understand its origins. The goal in football is simple: Teams that have the ball have to move up the pitch to score and down the pitch to defend. In an effort to move the ball up the pitch, mid 20th century Brazilian teams began to have diagonal orientations in their systems. Flavio Costa developed a system where sides would set themselves up along the diagonals of the football pitch creating asymmetric relationships between players. These asymmetries were called Escadinhas otherwise known as diagonals or symbolically understood as a step ladder. Defining Costa’s system would be impossible, you could call it a 343, 235, 325 or 424. Players performed functions on the field while covering for each other. When one player moved forward another would assume his function. This is how Brazil played in 1950. Players had the freedom to move, change space, dribble and risk moments with individual brilliance. Seeing this play out as a 424 was not uncommon, it allowed for those asymmetries to develop easily. As the team moved up the pitch with the left back, the, left midfielder would drop back and begin the ‘escadinha’, the left midfielder in this example, Danilo would turn into a playmaking midfielder. If the diagonal shifted to the other side, then the reverse would happen and the right sided midfielder would drop back and the ladder would form again. The next Brazilian manager to take this further would be Zagallo. When the team was without the ball they would drop into a 442. They would be organised depending on which side the ball was on. It was the beginning of the pendulum attack. If the right sided fullback went up the left sided fullback would be on the defensive diagonal. In the next image Everaldo forms the base of the defensive diagonal while the offensive diagonal is attacking down the right. Functional football, or Fernando Diniz’s brand of football, isn’t new, its just a return to the roots. After years of systemic football, they needed a return to the basics of street football. UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES What’s the key difference between the European style of positional football and this form of street football? In positional football, symmetry is essential, this creates spaces for movement within offensive zones. Each player moves into a fixed area and assumes the position in that area. For example a fullback could move into a channel, the inside forward could drop between the lines and the central midfielder would then move to the base of that move to cover for the fullback who has moved up into a channel. In positional football, there are fixed zones, players simply move in and out of these zones to control them, with the ultimate goal of moving into a better zone to attack from. Positional systems basically are a form of zone attacks. Even Pep Guardiola makes that distinction calling them positional attacks. Positional attacks are just one way to attack space in the game of football. Functional football does it differently. In the functional game, asymmetry is key. The movement in going forward creates diagonal lines between the players to receive the ball. The players use that staggered shape to move the ball up the pitch. Attacking space is fundamental to both positional football and functional football. While positional play does it with fixed zones, functional players uses the asymmetric positioning of players to create diagonal passing lines. Functional play is intrinsically Brazilian in flavour. For nearly 40 years they dominated world football playing a brand of asymmetrical football built around the exceptional skills of their players. FOCUSING ON FLUMINENSE - Stats and Patterns - Dominates possession - Playing out from the back - Dictating the tempo of games - Passing directness is short, tempo is quite high averaging around 14.8 passes per minute of possession (Caio Miguel) - Lowest longest passes per 90 at 31.14 despite having 418.98 per 90. Fourth highest in the Brasilero in 2022 - Overpowers the flanks with numbers for counterpressing - In possession they have no clearly defined shape that players need to follow In their 4-1 win over at Flamengo, Ben Griffis did some pretty good analytical illustrations off OPTA showing their heat maps and average positions. I am very interested in where their penetration passes into the end zone start from. You can find his work, unfortunately there are very limited items on Fluminense. I will zoom in on the one I am more interested in. Final third penetration happens primarily through the half spaces. In that match against amongst their central midfielders Andre had 6 passes longer than 30 yards, while Alexander mostly played shorter passes. The backline of Felippe Melo, Nino, Samuel Xavier and Fabio their keeper also completed longer passes in the game with Melo raking in 7 and Nino 6. In the attacking 3rd, their strikers mostly attempted shorter passes in general. Ganso playing largely in the middle of a 4 man attack had a decent distribution of short and medium passes with 38 in total, attempting at least 4 passes that were longer than 30 yards with a 50% success ratio. Whatever tactic I create needs to have the majority of its final third entries happening from the halfspaces. It is also important to establish the amount of carries and progressive distance covered by these players, as some want me to believe that they “dribble less” by default. A carry in football is basically any attempt by a player to control the ball with their feet. Progressive carries bring the ball forward. No 12 Marcelo had the most carries as a player from their own half. In most games you will see his heatmaps have a substantial focus. What I like to do is compare these to carries per match and pass locations for a season. To do that we cor-relate these to the data from fbref.com, to basically determine the proportion of passes he makes forwards and laterally. I do this to find out what role he should be assigned. When replicating a tactic, I am not fixated of choosing the role he plays in real life, I am fixated on choosing the role that best produces that kind of movement in the game. In his case it will be the complete wingback on support. On the opposite flank its going to be a wingback on defend. Finally Ganso’s influence. He is a playmaker and more importantly the final third link. Most of the final third action goes through him like a conductor. Once again you could go to totalfootballanalysis to get the specific pass diagrams for Ganso, they will just show that a lot of passes go through him, however based on fbref.com data, we know that he doesn't make the most number of passes, nor is he the highest pass receiver We now have most of the data we need to build the replication. Next I isolate the style and phases of play. FLUMINENSE STYLE OF FOOTBALL Fluminense players will move across a pitch creating numerical overloads. And while they might have 4 defenders at the back, more players could shift to one side of the pitch for buildup up. This creates congestion and while some have intimated that they only play through congested areas, I disagree. There are plenty of matches that have shown that they do attack open space when its good idea to do so. I have included images from some matches later. They use basic principles of pass and run and a simple one-two to move the ball. They do this very well using a staggered buildup in midfield creating 3rd man runs. It creates entertaining football. They also focus play exclusively down the flanks to counter press the ball against teams that are sitting back and defending all day. How do we achieve this kind of intricate movement? First stop thinking that it needs to be a specific formation, the moment you do that you run into trouble. Ask yourself what kind of roles will give me those staggered diagonals across the pitch. Then you have created a functional attack built around asymmetric movement of players. We do not need to force an asymmetrical system, like a 442 onto the team, there are plenty of roles in football manager that can give us an asymmetrical attacking shape while defending in symmetry. While I know what I am trying to achieve, I need to recognise certain limitations. The game of Football Manager loves to move the ball into available spaces. You could be patiently building up play down the right, its congested and then it switches to the left flank, where it isn’t crowded, let me delve into expected shapes I want to see. SHAPES THEY CAN TAKE UP To understand what kind of formation would be our starting point we need to establish certain patterns. This is what they might look like when they go attack down the right flank. There are some diagonal patterns in attack. These kind of shapes can be attained by several formations, 4231, 442,4222 and even the 433 And if they are going down the other side, they could look like that DEFENSIVE PHASE When defending, they can appear fairly disorganised and frequently found wanting down the flanks. This was in evidence in their 2023 Conmebol Libertadores game against Internacional. They press aggressively in packs and frequently along the flanks. They defend in a high block and play a variety of defensive lines, this defensive line actually has one defender in their penalty area. MIDFIELD TRANSITION PHASE In a lot of fm tactics, I’ve seen people deciding that they do not dribble at all. In reality they do, at least during certain phases. The ball playing defenders do bring the ball out of defence, and they also transition the ball through midfield with a carry too. Against better sides they do switch the ball to empty flanks and play longer passes as well. In their Libertadores game, one of their players carried the ball a good 35 yards bringing the ball from their defensive third all the way to the edge of the oppositions defensive third. This was his starting position. He laid the ball off here to a player behind him who played it out to another player on the right who took a shot from outside the area. So while its nice to paint a perfect picture of Fluminense, we have to recognise that the fundamental feature of their game is their staggered buildups, and while they do like to play “street football” on a pitch, like many sides they do adapt. A distinct challenge for playing like this is when sides reduce space in the channels. You can clearly see from the picture above that while they may have numerical superiority, transitioning through them will be difficult with average players in a team. BUILD OUT PLAY They have a 4-2 buildup from the back involving their keeper. Depending on who they face, the could play it out with 2 ball playing defenders less than 2 yards away from the keeper with both defensive midfielders deep. Out of defence at least one of their defensive midfielders will help to build play out from the back. He is sitting between the two central defenders. Or they could look like this, either way at least one defensive midfielder drops very deep. As they move the ball out of defence, the play shifts to the right. There is always constant movement from their players to create optimal passing lanes, this is done by having more players in closer proximity. Players higher up the pitch will also drop deeper to support play, giving them an extra man to build out with. Players do attack space, here one of their central midfielders instantly attacks space. They can make these kind of runs with the ball and without the ball. When they do this without the ball its to make space for others to make themselves available for passes. It can also happen when a player carries the ball out from one zone into the next, drawing players to him whilst making space for others. The action from the last image continues here. The ball leaves defence and is now carried by Andre Trindade the number 7 in midfield, with play being supported either side. Its interesting it looks almost like a 433 with a halfback and a slightly more adventurous role that works in the defensive midfield and central midfield zones. He passed the ball when he reached central midfield. This buildup is a big clue on the roles we can use, and the way they defend is another clue on where those same players might end up sometimes. This move led to their winner, Andres simple pass to central attacking midfield then kicked in 3 one touch passing moves that led to the winner. The narrow buildup attracts a significant number of opposition players to one area which leaves space elsewhere which they do take advantage of. They do occasionally play the diagonal to attack these spaces. Their attack patterns aren’t always about going through the path of greatest resistance with short simple passes, but also involve passes into space. ATTACKING PHASE In the final phase of attack, players are given more latitude to express themselves, attacking play can be patient and probing. HOW THEIR MIDFIELD TRANSITION AFFECTS THEIR DEFENDING Some teams notice how they like to have extra numbers on one side during some of their buildup phases, here the Internacional keeper elects to kick the ball long to start a quick attack, and because the Fluminense players have drifted towards the side where the ball is heading, space opens up down the right. This attack led to a shot on goal, which was parried out for a corner that gave Mercado the chance to put Internacional into the lead. In the image above you should be aware of the defensive shape of the backline, its a similar outcome for most box buildups. When a formation has a box buildup in midfield or out of defence, the outer backs come inside and in doing so they leave space down the flanks. This is something other teams will exploit with direct attacks. As they push their defensive lines higher they leave themselves open to numerous counters and in each one you can see the effect of having players either roaming or inverted can have on their defence. In both images their defenders in the lighter colored jerseys are trying to prevent goal scoring chances. FOOTBALL MANAGER TACTICAL TRANSLATION Key features to achieve in the translation to football manager: Defending - Press after losing possession, aggressive press around the flanks Offense - Slow buildup, possession orientated. During the buildup some dribbling and carrying the ball, during the attack phase little dribbling, more 1-2 passes and 3rd man runs. Attacks that can leave them vulnerable down the flanks Keepers - Play the ball on the ground and come out to claim crosses Fullbacks - Generally play a balanced game of football, not overly aggressive, but do under and overlap Both centre mids are expected to shut down passing lanes, support attack and defence, defend the wingers and drift wide Strikers are sometimes decoys, they roam and often times swap positions. The rest of this appears when FM24 drops, let's get the bulk of the research out of the way.

Funny thing about chatGPT even the guys who created it don’t know how the neural network actually works. They know there are billions of calculations happening but can they say whether it’s heading in the right direction, no. Some of those ChatGPT developers left to set up Antropic, their AI tool is a more creative version called Claude. Their interviews are fun. Having used chatGPT extensively, I can say without hesitation that it’s just a glorious “auto-complete” tool that digs through information on the web which may not always be correct. It’s fantastic for research if you are good at prompting it, ultimately though a subject matter expert has to authenticate and verify the answers. It is self learning, based on information that may or may not be right. And even researchers don’t even know how it ticks, it’s all trial and error. Like any tool in the hands of an idiot it’s an idiot.

I think using passmaps is great. They are useful to display effective combinations, pass build up areas. Heat maps can be useful too, which tell us where a players spends most of his time, defending and attacking. A pass map is only a passmap. If you look at his heatmaps you will see an almost equal emphasis in the middle and on the flanks, which shows where he spent most of his time. When playing as an IWB a player is in the middle for buildup and on the flanks when defending, which would give them an almost equal amount of "heat". If you were to play him as a FB, it would be lopsided on the flanks and will almost never heat up in the middle unless you PI the living daylights out of the player. The you have where he played most of his passes from, \ Thats where he played most of his passes from. Note the central areas of the pitch. A fullback might do that in some kind of transitional phase, but to have that many passes done from that area would require a prolonged presence, and the role that does that is the IWB