Can poor players cope with extremely high-tempo football?

[ceefax the cat]

I'm playing in the Malaysian Premier League and I'm seeing a lot of horrible hoofball, no matter what tempo I play. What I'd like to rule out is the idea that there are certain levels of play I simply shouldn't demand of these players. I'm not asking them to play like Brazil '82, I'm not asking them to play short passes at a furious tempo, but is it even a viable idea to go extremely wide or extremely quick at this level, no matter how you do it? Nothing I've seen so far suggests so. In previous versions, to get up through the leagues I've ended up playing very tedious, slow, short passing football but I fancy something a bit more dynamic this time.

Also will a 'very fluid' team shape tend to bring about chaos with these players due to their poor decision making and positional sense? I want to be extremely vertically compact but if the only way to achieve that is simultaneously to tell my players to go and do what the hell they please, I'd rather not. Incidentally, why are vertical compactness and creative freedom linked?! That's bizarre, since a team that focuses more on defensive compactness is, if anything, more likely to be extremely disciplined and organised.

[gunnerfan]

Playing wide means longer, more accurate passes. Playing quick means not only excellent passing skills and quick decision making, but also excellent first touch and anticipation. Look at the attributes of your players and compare them to the attributes of players in the English Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. Players can't play a system for which they don't have the requisite skills.

[ceefax the cat]

Well, there's more than one way to spin it:

Playing wide also potentially means your wingers are in more space, which means it's easier to pass to them even if they are a few meters further away. It also potentially means that the player making the pass is in more space himself, with more time to think.

Playing with a quick tempo and direct passing might mean simpler passes to get the ball from back to front, such as a ball launched into the channel by a centre half. There's no footballer alive who can't do that. Playing slowly, on the other hand, necessitates a certain intelligence and the ability to work the ball around the back without losing it, and there are a lot of poor players who can't do that. As above, I'm not asking them to play intricate, sexy football, but I would like them to be able to use the full width of the pitch and I would like them to get the ball forward pretty quickly. That might mean route one for example, which doesn't scream 'slow tempo' to me.

[Dr. Hook]

Any system can work at any level, basically, with some exceptions- in your case while your players are not the most skilled, neither are their opponents. Crapness creates relativity. As for a fluid system, if you want the compactness, you can always stack a "be less expressive" TI on there to mitigate some of the creative freedom. To your larger question, there is no reason you can't play uptempo direct football- like an attacking mentality- at a low level. You just have to get your roles and duties right so the passes are going somewhere useful. As with anything you try at these poor levels, you have to temper your expectations accordingly, but it can work. I used an attacking, very fluid narrow 4-3-3 at the Conf. North and Conference levels in my current save and it worked just fine.

And as an aside, there is more to shape than vertical compactness- it is essentially moving the positional mentalities closer together which does create the compactness, but also sees the team operate on the same wavelength so to speak. If you remember the days of the sliders and mentality, you can visualize to some extent what is happening here. As for the creative freedom side, I happen to agree with you, and I hope this will be something that SI will de-link from the shape at the minimum.

[Warrenwwr]

i have had most success with high tempo, direct passing tactics in low tier leagues. a combo of high tempo, direct passing and numbers in defense can even allow you to overachieve vs upper tier teams.

comical errors are a norm in LLM, its fun to see the rubbish the opponents do as well. the direct passing puts both teams on the brink of doing something silly, which can be quite entertaining.

[ceefax the cat]

This is all the encouragement I needed, cheers. Off I go to set up for thrills and spills. If it goes well I'll make a thread so you can witness the sh*tness x