lxl Ra lxl

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Hello fellow football managers,

First off, I'm new to this forum and my first language isn't English so i'm sorry if i make mistakes in advance.

As you guys might know, since Frank de Boer is the manager of Ajax, Ajax is about to win his 3rd league in a row in 2 and a half years. With this he'll put himself in a list of legendary Ajax trainers, who won 3 titles in a row: Rinus Michels and Louis van Gaal.

This is pretty big (imo), because before Frank made Ajax champion of the Eredivisie, Ajax hadn't won the title since 7 years (I think). de Boer started his training career with training the youth of Ajax and being assistent-manager of the dutch national team who got into the finals of the fifa world cup. He became manager of Ajax' first team because Martin Jol was investing money in players who weren't good enough for the first squad and playing some hit and run tactic on the pitch.

The first season with Jol as manager the supporters of Ajax weren't that upset about the playstyle, since Ajax did score alot of goals, thanks to Suarez et al. and unfortunatly ended second while Ajax scored over 100 goals that season. The next season Ajax qualified itself for the Champion's league and got in the same poule as AC Milan and Real Madrid. Due the poor performances of Ajax in the Champions league (specially against Real Madrid) Johan Cruijf started the "revolution".

In this revolution their was alot drama, about which way to reform the club, to bring it back to it's glory days of Michels and van Gaal era. Altough every Ajax supporter will know Ajax won't win the Champions league anymore, there will always be the hope to make a upset and get into the (semi) finals. In the end the revolution ended with old players like Frank de Boer being manager and other old players, like Bergkamp, becoming trainer and van der Sar becoming director of something.

Surprisingly this had a huge effect on the prestations on the first team. Unlike in the other years when a trainer got sacked it'd go good for like a few months but the prestations would go downwards again. But not with Frank de Boer! At the very first match Ajax played with de Boer he had to go to AC Milan away. Ajax did not just win that match, it also started playing football again. It was no more hit-and-run. Ajax started to play a 4-3-3. Ajax started attacking from their goal keeper passing to the defenders and up. Ajax started defending with their attackers.

Altough that years Champions league was over for Ajax it still had a very small chance on winning the Eredivisie. Eventually Ajax was about 11 points behind the leader at that moment, FC Twente. At the very last game, Ajax was still a match short but it still had everythinig in it's own hands, because the last match was against FC Twente. Altough Ajax lost the finals of the national cup a week earlier against FC Twente, Ajax was now playing a home game with an amazing atmosphere. And ofcourse Ajax won with great football and with that Ajax and de Boer won the Eredivisie.

The next year Ajax played CL again, and yet again against Real Madrid. This time their last match was at home. It was a very important match, because if Ajax would draw or atleast not lose with big numbers it would go to the last 16. Too bad for Ajax because of some curious accidents (2 unfair canceled goals) did Ajax lose, and last but not least Lyon went through because it won against some east-european club with alot of goals.

After Ajax got kicked out of the CL it went for the UEfa cup, because hey, it's still a great price to win. Sadly enough they got matched against Man U. The first game, at home they desperatly lost, and to be fair Ajax had no chance. Surprisingly Ajax was the better team in Manchester and won the game, too bad they lost because the score wasn't good enough, and Ajax didn't progress to the next round. In the end no biggie, because Ajax won the Eredivisie again with a great sprint.

This year Ajax got placed in probably the hardest CL pool possible. It got paired with Real Madrid (again), Dortmund and Man City. Ajax did play some fine football, too bad, Real Madrid was too good Ajax, which isn't a shame. Ajax did play some great matches though against Dortmund and Man City and even winning both matches against the millionaire's army from Manchester. Last weekend Ajax won pretty much the decisive match against PSV, with 2-3.

This doesn't only show that de Boer won (will win) 3 Eredivisie titles in a row and be put in a list with the best Ajax (and maybe Dutch) Coaches ever. He also brought Ajax back to it's philosophy with attacking and attractive football with wingers and stuff. Giving the youth a chance to play in the first team when they're good enough and not necesarrily when they are old enough. And when a leading player (like Suarez or Vertonghen) gets sold that we'll look for a player from a player in our youth teams first before looking to transfer a player from outside the club. And this way building a sustainable way to stay at the top of the Eredivisie.


So after reading all this ****, you'll realise that Frank de Boer is an amazing manager and that there should be some tribute for him on this forum. So you're asking yourself: What can I do?

As I'm not a great football manager/tactician I'm asking for your help. I'm asking for people to send in tactics (can be more than one) you think do look exactly like Ajax is playing this year (or the last 2).

If I'd start myself i'd put something like this: a 4-5-1
Ball playing Goal Keeper (support)
Attacking wingback (attack), Ball playing defender, Ball playing defender, Attacking wingback (support)
Ballwinning midfielder (defend)
Central mid (attack), Advanced playmaker (support)
Inside Forward (attack), Winger (attack)/Inside Forward (attack)
Complete Striker

I know this is very rough, and I'd like your input. It would be great if you guys could put screenshots of individual player roles and make tactics (preferably for FM12 since i don't have FM 13) and describe why you think it's the Frank de Boer tactic.
I just really enjoy when watching Ajax because there's so much movement in the midfield and their playstyle is so dynamic that you can see about RL results that even the best Premier League teams are having difficulties against it.

Thanks for reading all and I'm already looking forward to your feedback :)

Ra

PS:

I would also hugely appreciate if a mod could put the story telling (history) of de Boer/ajax in some "Hide" tab, i can't see how to do it sadly... Because this will improve the reading of the topic.
 
I already thought of making this tactic work without succes. A difficult part is that The wingbacks and the wingers are not all the time wingers or wingbacks. There is always one back in attack and the other back is part of the defence when attacking. Also the ballwinning midfielder is sometimes behind the central defender. Another difficult part is that one of the central midfielders is sometimes a second striker and the striker is sometimes a third midfielder.

I know I don't give a solution with this post but maybe someone else can fix this tactic with the above advice. Also you can look at Barcelona tactics. This is the main inspiration of Ajax with a twist of Louis van Gaal tactics.
 
Indeed, that's why i think you'll have to make like 3 tactics for it, since it's the max possible you can have at FM. Maybe you could have the ballwinning CM have behind you CB's by having your CB's put on dribbling/ going forward with the team (forgot which words FM is using).

Also i'd really love to see that my attacking midfielders could go to the winger positions when the wingers are falling back to pick-up the ball or when the wingers are going inside, like what Ajax is doing irl. That's also pretty much how Eriksen scores his goals this season, from the attacking midfielder position moving to winger then cutting inside.
 
Can anyone confirm if it's possible to change players walk-lines?
I know you can put players to cut inside, move to the left/right line, search for free space, but is it also possible to tell people to fallback to pick up balls?
Also, if you put ur left inside forward to cut inside and put ur attacking midfielder to walk into free space does that mean he'll go to the left wing? or would it be more effective to tell them in the instructions to go left. Won't you have sometimes 2 people at the same location?
 
I love Ajax to. Frank de Boer is the best what happened for Ajax in the past 10 years! Love him.
 
Nice to see there are people interested. I guess I'll start a bit myself.

I'll change the ballwinning midfielder to a defensive playmaker, since Poulsen/Schone do get the ball alot from the defenders.
Besides just player instructions isn't gonna work so i'm gonna start with prefered player moves, hopefully i can do that in the Editor since it will take already like a season to train the players to their roles, and have to test it after it also...

Any suggestions already? :)
 
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