How to set up short passing

[rogerramjet]

Hi there,

I have a highly technical team with a lot of stamina, team-work and work-rate. I want to set up a 4-3-3 with short passing and play ball out of defence.

I'd also like to play a high line and pressing, but I have one slow centre back so I'm going to try to retrain him to a sweeper.

Does anyone have any tips for getting short passing to work? I'll go for a 4231, 41221 or something like that.

Cheers!

[papamogl]

It's pretty obvious but it gets forgotten from time to time: to play a short passing game there need to be short passing options. Which means your team needs to be compact, without large gaps between the lines. One way to achieve that is having your defence push up, another would be to have your team playing rather narrowly. Use play out of defence, and set your Gk distribution to defender collect. If you want it to be a slow, patient build up play (like Barca) use retain possession and a slow tempo. That should be the basics to get you started.

[Mattp1980]

They're two considerations when it comes to space, the first is the correct use of space in regards to your passing style. As Papamogl suggests this would be push higher up/play more narrow for short passing or play wider and drop deeper for counter.

The second is how you utilize space within that system, this could be asking your wingers/inside forwards to play wider in a more attacking formation or asking them to tuck in in a more defensive system. This would be set on a per player basis.

An example of this would be Kagawa for United on Sunday would have been asked to tuck in, this would encourage him to get closer to the more central players.

If you want to play a more direct flavour of short passing (Arsenal?) around 50% possesion then just select short passing, if you want to play a more probing variation (Barca?) then also select retain possesion. Inside forwards are also more useful than wingers but they need to be given the extra width (as above) in more attacking systems, this is how I approach short passing and I've enjoyed alot of success with it.

Edit to add, if you're a team that is tecnically superior at passing (so top 2/3 in league for passing, first touch) then focusing passing through the middle might also help.

[heisenburglar]

It's mentioned in wwfan's 12 steps, but you also might find a mentality of Counter to work well, and then alter your pressing based on what you see.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but with an attacking/control mentality, you'll likely find your CMs and Full-backs passing between each other just outside the box, and all other players trying to stay onside on the edge of the area, especially once AI managers start parking the bus.