Zonal or Man Marking

[Chris81]

Which one works best? I usually use Man Marking, because im not a fan of Zonal Marking in real football, but ive heard Zonal Marking is more efficient. Also, do you guys use tight marking, or just normal, thanks guys

[ObaMartins09]

Intelligent players can zonal mark, idiots can't. That's how I always do it.

If a player is good enough to make his own decisions and position himself correctly then zonal mark, but if not just ask him to take a man and stick with him (not a homosexual reference).

[Wannabe]

It definately depends on not just the man set to man mark, but the rest of the defence.

I would only rate my back four as 7 out of 10 and when I assign a DC to man mark opponent, my DC gets drawn out of position and opposition midfield pour thru the gap.

Mind you, when I set marking as zonal, the opposition striker justs stands between my 2 DC'c and they just ignore him, even when he has the ball.

[grimness]

I've started using man marking in team instructions and it works better then zonal. I suggest to everyone to try it and see for themselves.

[Cleon]

Intelligent players can zonal mark, idiots can't. That's how I always do it.

If a player is good enough to make his own decisions and position himself correctly then zonal mark, but if not just ask him to take a man and stick with him (not a homosexual reference).

That's the most important thing imo

[grimness]

You mentioned it in your thread. Before that I was using mixed marking but after trying your tactic I've noticed that man marking works better. Looks like players are picking their man properly. Also against 4-2-3-1 formations it has reduced opposition through balls and their attackers are running less on them. Also against that formation dropping 2 MCs to DMC position improves defensive stability and only sometimes no tweaking in tactical wizard is needed.

[johnboy14]

Zonal marking is a flawed defensive system. It does not work in real life.

[Cleon]

Zonal marking is a flawed defensive system. It does not work in real life.

Yeah ask Rafa:D

[johnboy14]

In real life, it takes responsibility away from the players. Instead of marking men, you are marking space but space doesn't hurt you. It's also a very static defensive system. If some one gets a good run attacking the ball, there is a big chance the zonal marker will be static.

[ObaMartins09]

I never inherit a squad good enough to zonal mark, so usually just stick with man to man marking. It still requires decisions to be made, but with the use of OI it can make things easy if against a formation different to your own. i.e. a team with an AMC when you have an MC, just tight mark the AMC in OI and set your more defensive MC to specfically man mark the AMC.

[TheStoneMonkey]

I've been using zonal marking and my BSP team have been appalling since patch 10.2 - is this the reason?? Please someone tell me that switching them to man marking will help tighten my defence up, I've been pulling my hair out in despair.

[grimness]

It will. Just do it

[David Beckham_7]

If your trying to man mark strikers, take note of their speed and the speed of your defender. Centre back with good pace and acceleration might be a good choice to mark those strikers who aren't very pacy. For lightning quick strikers, i don't mark them, i would rather let them enter a particular zone and i would close them down.

[Zebedee77]

Zonal marking is a flawed defensive system. It does not work in real life.

Yeah ask Rafa:D

Interesting idea given that zonal marking has been standard in football for a couple of decades now. If you mean zonal marking at set-pieces, it's interesting that teams who rely on set-pieces to score the majority of their goals (eg 50% of Aston Villa's goals in one recent season came from set-pieces, and around 1/3 goals in the EPL come from set-pieces) tend to score them against both man-marking and zonal systems of defending set-pieces. Given Liverpool (and Chelsea) have had excellent defensive records in recent seasons, that might tend to indicate that the system itself is unfairly maligned.

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The game doesn't really use the right terms for marking. But this is how I try to marry its terms up with reality, your mileage may vary:

Zonal marking in game is 'pure' zonal marking. It creates 'space' for your players - but the flipside is that you'll find that the opposition is in 'space' too and individual zones can be overloaded. It's worth using for players who you want to find space, or if you are trying to play 'Total Football'.

Man-marking in game is just a more defensively sound form of zonal marking, with players tracking runs in a more effective manner. So it's still zonal marking, but it's just a different form. You won't see your players tracking opposition players all over the pitch using this form of marking, but you will see them tracking opposition players across zones more frequently in defensive situations.

Specific man-marking (usable via specifically setting an individual player to mark an opposition player in the player instructions) is equivalent to 'real-world' man-marking. This is how you get players to track their target all over the pitch, follow them to the bathroom at half-time and is what most of us mean when we say 'man-marking'.

This article may help with understanding the difference between how the game views the two main forms of marking.