Metodo Napoletano - My tactical approach

[SirCliveWolfe]

About me

I think that it will be constructive to show were my tactical ideas come from and thus a little about myself. My approach to coaching has come from a handful of managers and their ideas and they run in this particular order, Bob Paisley (Liverpool 'pass & move'), Arrigo Sacchi (his 'modern' 'pass & move'), Rinus Michels (Total Football), José Mourinho (the best current tactician) and Zdenek Zeman (Chain-smoking Foggia coach). As you can see they (with the exception of José) have given me an appriciation for beautiful attacking football and this come accross in the way my FM teams play.

The formation(s)

Well I was looking through old formations and mountins of writing on the beautiful game I came accross the glossary at www.zonalmarking.net and came accross the description of a centre-half and a little tactical drawing. Inspiration had hit, the centre half in my tactic (Arsenal's Håvard Nordtveit) will either fill in at DC if the opposition play two upfront or into the 'DMC' role if they play one up-front;

Tactical Approach

Defence: The basic idea is that in FM theams either play with two up front or with a lone-striker and a player just behind him. So the first formation is for two up-front, the two 'centerbacks' will pick up the opposition strikers and the 'centerhalf' will act as the spare man in defence covering any mistakes. Against only one striker one of the centre halfs picks up the lone striker while the other is the spare-man, the centrehalf is then free to move into the DMC position to combat a deep-lying forward (say Rooney or Gerrard).

The team presses, and presses with the wingbacks, although very attacking harrying the opposition wingers. The two 'deep strikers' (Playing as inside-forwards) keep the opposition full-backs 'honnest' as if they attack too much we can quickley hit on the break. The two in midfiled allow me to win the 'midfiled battle' most of the time.

Attack This is a 'strikerless' formation in that the ST plays as a Trequartista with the two wingers actuall playing as inside-forwards. The MCL is the 'Regista' (Advanced play-maker in FM) while the MCR is normally the 'destroyer', although against weaker teams the physical Hamsik will play this role with van der Vaart becoming the playmaker. This setup means that the AML/AMR start-play wide and become narrow as the attack develop, dragging the full-backs with them. This is when the full-backs bomb down the wings looking to stretch play.

Results

Well I'm at the half-way point in my first season at Napoli and I'm quite happy;

The squad is playing well... but I'm a little dissapointed in Buonanotte, I got him because his stats were what I was looking for and he's left footed (works well cutting in from the right), but in comparrison to Lavezzi he's underachieved;

As you can see I am over-achieving for Napoli, the best results so far are 2-0 at home to AC Milan, 3-2 at home to Juventus and 1-1 away to Inter Milan. The AC Milan result is probably the finest and shows how the tactic should work, it also shows the changes I make 'in-game' so I have uploaded it here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/0zzdjn3wugy/A.C.%20Milan%20v%20Napoli.pkm

Instructions

Team:

Philosophy: Rigid

Statring Stratergy: Control

Passing: Shorter

Creativity: More

Closing: Pressing

Tackling: Hard

Marking: Default

Crossing: Default

Roaming: Stick to position

Width: o (Most narrow)

Players;

GK - Goalkeeper/Defend - No changes from TC

DCL- Centeral Defender/Cover- No changes from TC

DCR- Centeral Defender/Defend - No changes from TC

WBL- Wingback/Support - RFD-Often, Long-Rare, Cross-Often from byline, Wide-Hugs-Touch

WBR- Wingback/Support - RFD-Often, Long-Rare, Cross-Often from byline, Wide-Hugs-Touch

DMC- Defensive Midfielder/Defend - Long-Rare (when at the back I have coppied the Libero instructions exactley)

MCR- Ball Winning Midfielder/Defend - Long-Rare

MCL- Advanced Playmaker/Attack - Long-Rare

AMR- Inside Forward/Support - Long-Rare

AML- Inside Forward/Support - Long-Rare

ST - Trequartista/Attack - Long-Rare

In-game Tweaks

I normall start the game telling the players to 'pass into space', 'exploit the flanks' and 'play narrower'

If I see on the pitch that we are dominating then I change to Attacking or Overload, this increases the preasure on the opposition with possestion and leads to more attacks.

If I see that we are not dominating and that we are not closing down enough I use the shouts 'hassle opponents' and 'get stuck in'

When we go two goals up I normally chnage to Counter (but un-tick counter-attack yes), no pressing, deep defensive line, time wasting to full and use the 'retain posestion' and 'play safer' shouts. I also pull the wingbacks back to ful back and wingers to ML and MR positions.

Conclusion

This tactic seems a little frail defensivley (6th in the league), but I am over achieving in the league so I am not too concerned.

The tactic is all about preassure, both in attack and defence and it is not a super-tactic, well I don't think so anyways This article is intended to create discussion and not make you win the Champions League with the Royal Oak pub team.

Ideas, comments, critisims?

[causeforconcern]

Nice write up, I'll post a more indepth response when I have some time

[Magica_Milan]

Nice design and style of play. Play more with it in try to tweak it to be stronger in defense if you say that is not very good there. Anyway, with a team like Napoli to be 1st after 16 games in first season is already an achievment and you can be proud of that.

Good luck and keep up the good work

[SirCliveWolfe]

Nice write up, I'll post a more indepth response when I have some time

Thank you very much for your reply, looking forward to your in-depth analysis

Nice design and style of play. Play more with it in try to tweak it to be stronger in defense if you say that is not very good there. Anyway, with a team like Napoli to be 1st after 16 games in first season is already an achievment and you can be proud of that.

Good luck and keep up the good work

Thank you very much, Im even prouder now;

End of season results

A great end to the season, topped off with a 3-1 home victory against AC in the last match.

Can't believe I won the title, not sure about some of the players though.

Riquelme is coming in on a free, so VDV ay not stay, buts he's played so well.

Transfer needs: One or two DCs, back-up WBR and possibly a striker any ideas?

[Klajwert]

really great results, interesting shape and generally nice idea. I'm a big fan of tactics with very high pressing so it makes it even better for me

one question, while playing VdV-Hamsik in midfield first is an advanced playmaker, Hamsik is also a advanced playmaker but with support I guess?

about transfers:

definitely Paloschi. worth every money, I bought him before my second season for 18m € or sth like that. Napoli have really big budget after first season so there will be no problem.

on DC you have Campagnaro and Cannavaro so maybe Kjaer? this 3 + Santacroce and Nordtveit will be ok in my opinion. you can buy after next season another DC and sell Campagnaro but for this moment I think that one player more is enough.

no ideas about WBR because I never play with them.

[Magica_Milan]

Great end of the season. Seems a really good tactic. Definetly i will try it in a new save, probably with Ajax to see how it works but the only problem is that i don't know when i'll start a new save because i'm very dedicated to my curently save where i'm at HSV right now.

Great job. Congratulations

[Magica_Milan]

Can you put a link with the tactic please?

[Goose54]

Yeah share it mate

[causeforconcern]

I've made a similar tactic that I'll post up here at some point. I don't use wingers though.

I'm starting to think playing five at the back is the most effective set up I've used in FM10.

[SirCliveWolfe]

Semi-Update

Hey guys, thanks for the positive feedback, I've not been able to play much for a few days and have been mulling over if I should upload the tactic or not. I have decided that I will on the previso that; I do not think that this is a 'super-tactic', and it is certinaly NOT a 'plug and play' tactic. you will need the right players* and even then it may not work for you with that in mind;

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=6364df1d06d1db1f6b21be4093fab7ac66871a13c4650b9b61390143435ec59c

It will be interesting to see what results others have with this tactic, and it may even be able to help devlop it as it is a work in progress.

*It should work well with a team such as Liverpool, as they have good inside-forwards (Gerrard, Maxi, Babel etc...) and good wing-backs (Aurelio & Johnson who should imho be a WB in the game) so a team with players such as this would be good.

There are three tactics, Metodo_Napoletano_1 for against a lone striker, Metodo_Napoletano_2 for against two strikers and Metodo_Napoletano_Dominate, which is a new variation I have tried when 2 or 3 up against lower teams to kill the match off. I'm not sure how well it works, and it certinally doesn't work against the like of Inter etc...

Anyways Enjoy

Game - Update

I got a nice juicy budget and spent it on five players;

GK - Adler - £21m

Stopper - Fezio - £10.25m

Cover - Rodwell - £7.5m (I don't know how either)

MC - Riquelme - Free

ST - Paloschi (he better be good Klajwert ) - £10m

Inter lost Jose and replaced him with Lothar Matthaus and Liverpool sacked Benitez, I was linked with the job (kept silent) but they went with Marco can Basten, so an interesting season ahead.

[Klajwert]

He's a beast. £10m - bargain

after my first season in Napoli save L'pool sacked Benitez too, they even offered me a job but i refused. then my HDD crashed...

I'll give it a try with Sevilla. Navas, Capel and Fabiano. scary

[Braenn]

I'm giving it a try with Everton at the moment - one thing I've noted is that is if you change your Playmaker to your MC/a and set your Treq as target man with ball to feet then the tactic seems to flow much better.

Have you tried that?

[grimness]

Nice presentation and great result. Congrats!

[amazin89]

great tactic, working really well with my man utd team

[calcioplayer]

I like this idea of tactic just starting with Milan and brought in Fabio Contrao on loan from Benfica,Diego Lugano from Fenerbahce £9.75m and Andres Guardado from Deportivo £3.7m and sold Jankulovski to Real Madrid £3m.

I will post results as the season unfolds.

cheers

[RichieThreeOne]

Looks like a good tactic but it hasn't worked for me yet. My defenders tend to do stupid things and are rounded far too easily. I might try to tweak it myself.

[pjtopor]

Interesting write up. I'm interested in your results with the extra man at the back theory. After a bit of a binge on real football tactics in the last couple months, I've tried converting some of the real life tactical trends into FM with varying degrees of success. I too have been using the same front three tactic you have here, with a false nine supported by two "wrong-footed" wingers. It works quite nicely, though from my previous saves, I think it has more to do with how well the "inside forward" role works on FM than the game modeling the strikerless formation properly. Maybe you've seen different results.

On the backline, I have had no kind of success using sweeper/stopper with 2 CBs against a lone striker. Using a 3rd CB against two strikers is marginally more effective, but I haven't unlocked this truly either. I'm just curious as to whether you're finding the same kind of awkwardness at the back or whether I'm missing something.

[RichieThreeOne]

It's not going too badly now. The main problem I have now is discipline. Red cards every second game and several yellows.

[Klajwert]

if you are using high pressing and hard tackling, then don't use OI.