A Guide to Formations and Tactics in FM

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Great guide GC, I've just read through it and opted to attempt a 'total football' replica. I'm far from good with tactic creation, but it seems to have promise so I may stick with it. Here are some screenshots:


I'm not sure on a few positions. The two central midfielders have to be capable of both attack and defence, so is box-to-box the best way to go? Also, is having two trequartista's counter productive? Marko Marin seems to be thriving in the role, but the other (either Lewandowski, Medina, Zidan or Kagawa) seem to have little impact.​

Here are the results so far (start of 2nd season btw) :​

 
After studying Total Football religiously over the past week (watching hours and hours of footage, reading countless articles etc.), I'm going to say that your Total Football formation could use some tweaking. I'll expand more on it in my thread which should be going up some time this week.
 
Eds said:
After studying Total Football religiously over the past week (watching hours and hours of footage, reading countless articles etc.), I'm going to say that your Total Football formation could use some tweaking. I'll expand more on it in my thread which should be going up some time this week.
Click to expand...

Mmm, now that I look at it it isn't perfect in FM terms. For starters, the outer strikers should be FL/R rather than FLC/RC. Also, maybe three MCs rather than a DM and two MCs.

Germaniac said:
Oh, a question, is there a combo for 3 strikers?
Click to expand...

Could be any striker combo at all, really, depending on their strengths. Look at the ones I've put up and just add another of the same onto it, for example a target man and two poachers.
 
TaP

Sorry if this doesn´t seem to fit in this thread. Might not be anythig new and might be a tweek to the deep lying forward - poacher combination but i´ve found the TaP (Trequartista - Poacher combination) up top to be extremely succeslfull. The Poacher scores loads and the Treq comes deep, moves into channels and both sets up goal and scores quite alot as well..

Trying to create the destroyer - passer - creator in a 4-2-4 got me thinking: AML - Adv PM att (creator with roam and cutting inside) the passer (maybe creator aswell?) is the left CM - Adv PM/ sup (move into channels and roam) and the destroyer is the CMr - ball winning midfielder/def. I have tried this with good succes so far.

poacher - Treq

AML - adv. PM attack (with roaming) creator ------ AMR - IF/ att.

CM - adv PM /support (passer) - moves into channels -------CM - BWM/def (destroyer)

FB/sup---------- CB ----------- CB ---------- FB/aut/att

Mentality wise the AML sits a litlle deeper compared to the AMR aswell. Maybe setting CMl to CM support would be better but so far so good
On the right side i have the attacking fullback/ IF combo. And the treq drops deep creating a 4-2-3-1 at times, at least thats what i think:-) the football is great to watch, so thank you for the guide:-)
hope this thread makes sense
 
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Like many other people, I've tried to recreate the legendary total football formation with Man U and it works surprisingly awkwardly well for me. At the back, Vidic, Rio, Edvra and Rafael did almost perfect as defender and wingback. At the middle since it's impossible to find someone multi-talented as suggested, I use the DM-CM-AP with Owen Hagrever as DM, Fletcher as CM automatic and Kaka as advance playmaker (yeah, that's right, the famous Kaka, both him with 40m, quite surprising but he played like **** for Real in my game and his price dropped to 17.5 mil ). At the front I use Rooney as RF complete forward, and the combo target man/poacher with Hulk and Henandez. Using veryfluid, always attacking minded, expressive freedom, shorter passing, slightly narrow with, roaming from position. I managed to beat Liverpool 1-0, Mancity 4-1, chelsea 2-0, Barcelone 2-1, Asernal 3-0 and completed the season with 3 major cups and only lost 3 matches. One thing I realize is that this "second rate total football" formation is deadly against any team who play solid defense possession football (and most FM teams play like that ). With highly creative mid field player such as Kaka and 3 highly active forward, never run out of option to attack with this formation no matter how many buses the other sides put in front of me. It's also limited opponent's attacking chance, my opponents usually have 2-3 real chances the whole matches. The bad things are it's very stamina consuming, the players get worn out quickly so I only use it for important matches. Also, my opponent have few chance to attack but most of them are deadly especially when launched with long ball or through the wing so I suggest a skilled goalkeeper. I also think it could work much better with 2 highly creative central middle fielders rather than one playmaker and one ball wining. And if you want to use it it's important to have good fast wingback/fullback at the quality of Edvra and Rafael as they will play a large supporting role for both defense and offense.
 
I'm thinkin' of doing a Zona Mista, but I simple don't know which roles to give my players. :/
 
Any Idea on the Total Football Formation and Tactics used by Rinus Michel in 1972 and 1974. Any explanations ASAP
 
Has anyone ever actually created a successful Spain like formation? I'd love to try something like that
 
Dazron said:
Has anyone ever actually created a successful Spain like formation? I'd love to try something like that
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There have been many attempts - take a look around the tactics download section - but it's pretty difficult to find a perfect replica that both plays like Spain AND plays well, crucially.
 
im just starting one now with your idea as a starting point
 
The Dutch team lined up with a standard 4-3-3 in the 1974 WC. In fact, the total football formation given here is slightly wrong. I've modified that to a 4-5-1 with converted wingers and one forward rather than three forwards. Trying it with Ajax Amsterdam now.
 
fran1412 said:
The Dutch team lined up with a standard 4-3-3 in the 1974 WC. In fact, the total football formation given here is slightly wrong. I've modified that to a 4-5-1 with converted wingers and one forward rather than three forwards. Trying it with Ajax Amsterdam now.
Click to expand...

Calling the Dutch 4-3-3 'standard' is a pretty extraordinary claim. I discussed earlier in this thread how it my interpretation was probably wrong: it was more likely a 4-3-3 with inside forwards and three midfielders on the same axis.

It's not that simple, obviously, but it's a framework.
 
I meant that yeah, the forwards may have been inside forwards, but they played with three out and out attackers. What I meant by standard is that the 4-3-3 was the bookish 4-3-3 where there are three forwards and not two attacking mids which we mostly see in these days eg: It was not a Messi-Sanchez-esque type of football where Leo and Alexis tend to stay a little deeper than the conventional forwards.

Implementing total football is by itself difficult but using certain ideas of the total football system and tweaking it works. I just destroyed FC Twente 4-0 in the Dutch Super Cup.

Oh and I'm sorry I didn't mention it earlier. This is one of the most amazing guides ever :)
 
fran1412 said:
I meant that yeah, the forwards may have been inside forwards, but they played with three out and out attackers. What I meant by standard is that the 4-3-3 was the bookish 4-3-3 where there are three forwards and not two attacking mids which we mostly see in these days eg: It was not a Messi-Sanchez-esque type of football where Leo and Alexis tend to stay a little deeper than the conventional forwards.

Implementing total football is by itself difficult but using certain ideas of the total football system and tweaking it works. I just destroyed FC Twente 4-0 in the Dutch Super Cup.

Oh and I'm sorry I didn't mention it earlier. This is one of the most amazing guides ever :)
Click to expand...

Good analysis. I agree: the wide two forwards' purpose was to attack, pressing high up the pitch in support of the central striker, and the three midfielders played narrow and with ambiguous roles, equally balanced between defence and attack.

Thanks for the praise. Getting a bit dated now, I'll have to rerelease it for the next iteration.
 
And one more thing. The three CMs involved a lot of swapping between all the three. That's something I've not figured out in FM. How do you make three people swap positions automatically, without the need for you to go to the tactics screen and manually change them?

I can swap the positions of two players (I guess everyone can) but three...Ive not figured it.
 
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