Foreword
This guide is intended to explain both the general gameplay and tactical side of Football Manager games. I’ve been playing Football Manager since 2006, and am by no means a master of the game. This is just what I learned over the years, and what I think general opinion is wrong. To differentiate, I will refer game players like us, “gamers”, and virtual footballers in the game, "players".
What is Football Manager?
Football Manager is a series of football management simulation games that allows players to experience the role of manager in football clubs. With each iteration, more elements are added to the game to make gameplay experience more realistic and elaborated. So by definition, each new iteration must be better than the previous ones, that I firmly believe.
What Football Manager can and cannot do?
The post in this forum by GodCubed, Football Manager 2015 FAQ and Myth Debunking, accurately described the nature of Football Manager game and debunked a lot of myths about the game. The game simplely cannot and will not intentionally make you lose, so if you can’t win, either your team is out classed, or tough to accept but you just suck.
Maybe with some exceptions, like I recently lost in Champions League semi-finals against Chelsea, we controlled the game well, 3-1 in aggregate, then they scored twice in 90 and 92 minutes, in the same fashion, left fullback runs up field with ball and crosses to strikers, and we lost due to the away goal rule. But these things happens, in real life also, some players with sparks in their eyes, determined to make a difference, and they did it, isn’t that what we all hope to see in football games? And it can happen against us, one man’s loss is another man’s gain, you can’t win every time, accept it, live with it. I should note that Chelsea did go on and win the final, so maybe its their year.
My point is, today’s football manager game is so in-depth, you can’t think of it just as AI field a team and play against you. The opposition managers do team talks too, they motivate their players too, they study your weakness too, they park the bus going for the point too, they fight back desperately too, when they needed a result. Shouldn’t we do the same? That brings me to my next point.
What can gamers do in Football Manager?
As amazing as the game is, GodCubed commented “…this game isn't the greatest for feedback.”, and I completely agree. The game will not tell you what you need to do, and you truly can be only as good as your real world football knowledge. This is a slow paced game, in between hitting the continue button, there’s a lot of stuff to do. This brings us back to the beginning, what is Football Manager game. Gamers assume the role of football club manager, and they have to imagine their daily life in the game. Many little aspects in the game affect the out come of the game either in the long run or in the moment.
Do you run general training yourself? Because training affect your players focus on specific area of football (ball control, attacking moment, defensive positioning) therefore affect your playing style.
Do you interact with your players before or after matches often? I know you only have limited options to do that, but it’s important. A player has been under performing for a few matches, talk to him. A player hasn’t featured in you first team in a while, and you suddenly need him to play, maybe talk to him first to let him know he’s gonna play.
How do you handle the media? Again, I know many gamers found this topic dreadful, but the answer you give at press conferences do have effect on your players. When being asked “are you going to rotate your squad?”, do you say “I trust my team, whatever team I select will be a formidable force.”, or do you say “I think it’s time for some players to prove their worth”. These seemingly limited options matter, I believe.
And teamtalk, a very important element, don’t use you assistant manager all the time no matter how good their motivation stat is, because one thing the computer can’t do is to recognize different situations, you as human can and should. Coming into a game against a league opposition after a comfortable league win, you can say “let’s pick up where we left last game”, but against a champions league opposition, probably not a good idea, after all, the importance and intensity of the games are different.
Do you hold team meeting regularly or before big games? Or do you forget the game even has this feature?
These are just some examples, I haven’t covered a tenth of it, but you get the idea, it’s not just about playing matches, dive in to this virtual world. Perhaps you don’t have to do all this in FMC, I have no say in this because I’ve never played. For the full game, do these, because these are real football managers do, and the AI managers are doing it, the whole point of this game is to try the best to let you do what real world managers do.
About the general gameplay
You now know what I intended with this guide, to emphasize how this game is not just about playing and winning matches, it’s a life simulation game, and it has subtleties even most experienced gamers may overlook.
Now let’s talk about football. Aside the above mentioned daily activities you can do, the most important elements of the game is the squad you build (you players) and the tactic you implement. I’ll talk about tactics in the final part, and this part is my general view on players and the match engine.
It’s come to the time, when players born in the late 80s and 90s take over the world’s football stage. My view is, we as audience are witnessing the worst of football. And it has a lot to blame to, not just the players born in the 80s and 90s. The media and increasing public attention in football, made the game more of a show, with the media looking for a way to appease the growing “football fanbase”.
There were times when only professionals talk about tactic, and only players with consistent and big match performances are rated as stars. Now everybody thinks they know something about football, and young players who score 10 goals a season are suddenly worth 30 – 40 million euros (Paulo Dybala I’m talking about you.). Remember how many star players were born in the 60s and 70s? And how many are competing for the Golden Ball?
Let’s take a look at Hernan Crespo for a minute, he scored over 300 goals during his career, and is the third highest goalscorer for Argentina, a very good old fashion centre striker, yet he has never won a major personal award. How many players today can look back at their career when they retire and say I was a better player than Hernan Crespo?
This is what I’m talking about, today’s football environment creates self-centered pseudo stars. This is also a reason for teams play wingers in advanced positions today, because the players crave for attention and fame, skillful players want to play to score and don’t want to contribute to team’s defense.
I know I’m ranting, but I do have a point. If you look at the today’s players stats, very few players have high workrate, teamwork, decision, concentration, bravery, all those important qualities for players in a team play game. If you still have Football Manager 2008, you can find many players with good mental stats, but not now, not in the future, as the regens in the game are just bad. This is a result of today’s football environment. So as gamers, you can’t expect the same from your players as in the old days.
Because their “mental instability”, you can’t think of your players as robots who are always running on full ability, no matter how amazing their stats look like, they are not as good players as you think they are. They get selfish, they get nervous, they get emotional, they have personal issues. If a player doesn’t perform well despite his good stats, maybe because his personality doesn’t suit the tactical role you assigned him on. Again, the depth of the game, player’s personality, some are selfish, some are afraid of physical challenge, some fold under pressure. These are details you should identify when you view the game, see how the players behave, find a way to play them better.
Another thing to notice is the player’s physical feature, I don’t mean pace, strength, jumping etc.. I meant player’s height, weight. Both Messi and C. Ronaldo are pacy and have good dribble, technical, flair stat, but in real life and in the game, Messi is much better at dribbling pass defenders. Because Messi is much shorter. The taller your player gets, the harder they can dribble pass man. So maybe not assign your tall player with roles that require dribble, because it’s difficult for them to do. And big players are difficult to maneuver in tight space, so when your opposition puts men behind ball, park the bus before their goal, don’t blame your big strong strikers on missing shots in the penalty area, because their shots are taken awkwardly as they don’t have much space.
So, that’s about cover it. In general gameplay, you keep eyes on your players’ every aspect, you treat the team as real life managers do. Remember, AI knows the nature of the game better than you, so try harder.
Before talking about tactics, let’s first talk about the match engine. I don’t know how the Football Manager match engine works exactly. But as an engineer, I do have some ideas if I were to build a software to simulate football matches. Anyhow, here is my take on football manager game engine.
The game has its own language to describe football tactics, and control how players behave on the pitch. Only by understanding the game’s language, can you implement your tactic correctly. I’ll try to explain every tactical button in tactic section.
In general, the match engine rewards good tactical decisions, and punishes bad ones. Don’t smash your computer when you lose against a weaker side when your team dominated in shot attempts and possession, the opponent are playing defensive or counter attacking strategy against a much stronger side, that’s a good start. And they must have players that suit this style, technical, pacy attackers stay up front looking for kill chances. And they must have trained in this discipline like for ages, their defensive players are happy sitting deep and work well and confidently together. Plus, as I said, today’s top team players are not so reliable any more, your “world-class” defenders are likely to lose one-on-ones to a nobody player.
So with all this, did you apply good tactic against this kind of opponent? Do you play small technically strong player to work in tight space? Do you play good wide player who can deliver perfect crosses to you big target man present in their area? Do you play shorter, more patient build ups? Is your team well trained in this style? These are the things the match engine takes into consideration. If you apply good tactic against weaker teams that play defensive style, the match engine will reward you with good result. Otherwise, you’ll be looking at you team taking 10 long shots, your big striker misses chances in the penalty area because the ball was fed to his foot and his has to turn and twist to make the shot, just when you’re wondering why your team can’t score, they scored one from counters or set-piece. This is football for you, the team that can effectively play the right strategy wins the game, schooled!
I’ll just say that much, the match engine is decent and works, gamers on the other hand aren’t.
Tactics: Football is about shape and space
In case you missed that, Football Is About Shape and Space. Almost all the tactical instructions you can give to your team, is about how to keep your own team shape, and how to utilize space in attack.
I took a lot of inspiration from articles on guidetofootballmanager, and a lot of content in this part can be traced back to them. I still go back to read the basics when I’m having a difficult time. So I recommend gamers to go there and learn what you don’t know.
Team Shape: there are five team shapes you’re given to choose from. Very structured, structured, flexible, fluid, and very fluid. The in-game descriptions for these shapes give us a general idea on how each one works. It’s always a good idea to read these in-game descriptions as they help you understand the game better.
Basically, the more structured you team is, the more your players keep the formation they are set to play, defenders rarely get involved in attacking play, the strikers don’t track back when defending. Players are given a specific job on the pitch, and low freedom. This suits weak team, with players having poor intelligence(Anticipation, Decisions, Flair, Teamwork and Vision), works well with formations that have more horizontal lines such as 442 Diamond, 433 with DM. Play flat midfield like flat 442 with structured shape will leave gaps between defensive line and the midfield, this can be countered to some extend with either playing a high defensive line or asking your midfielders to drop deeper.
The more fluid the team shape is, the more players do outside their job description, i.e. strikers drop deep to help build up play or track back a lot to help with defense, this will jeopardize the team formation, such as strikers not in position when counter attacking, and require intelligent players who can read the game well and act properly to different situations.
Remember the way your team play, depends on how familiar they are to the tactic and individual player’s personality. C. Ronaldo will unlikely to track far back regardless how you set him to play because of his low workrate, in previous games anyway, I haven’t played him in years.
Mentality: Mentality affects player’s position on the pitch. The more attacking a team play, the higher the defensive line is, the closer the strikers get to the opposing goal and vise versa.
By default, playing attacking also means playing fast tempo, players try to close down opponent fast to try to win the ball back, more direct pass will be taken as the players want to get the ball to the final third fast; playing defensive means playing low tempo, take little risks and pass around, but players may recognize counter attack opportunities and make direct passes.
Each player role also have individual mentality upon team mentality. Deep-lying playmaker with defensive mentality will not leave far from the defenders, but with supportive mentality he will venture further up. However with the same player duties players position themselves differently according to the team mentality. Mentality affects the team’s shape and the space they take over.
Setting the team shape and mentality is your grand strategy. Shape represents your football philosophy, either by choice or being forced upon by the players available to you. Mentality is your judgement on how the match will play out, can your team dominate the game, how worried are you about the opposition counter attacks, how are your players’ physical condition?
The standard mentality tells your players to hold ground, attack when opportunities present themselves. There will be space behinde your defensive line, but your defenders are watchful. Control mentality ask your players to play high up the pitch, limiting opposition’s space for ball control, but leaves a larger space behind your defensive line. With attacking mentality, defensive line will push up almost to the half-way line, pinning the opposition to their own half, applying high close down, playing high tempo, take more risky play, but beware of the huge space in your own half, one miss interception will cost you dearly. Counter and defensive mentality play the team deep and narrow near or in their own penalty area, players mark the space rather than the men, shut the opposition down and look for counters.
If you don’t know which mentality to play, you can always open the game with standard, and observe how the opposition play when your team win the ball. If they close you down in your half, they’re playing attacking, if they drop back to their own half or even penalty area, they’re standard or defensive. You can also predict how your opponent’s going to play, by noticing how they always play, or the preference of their manager, but don’t take anything for granted because they may offer some surprises.
Just like how your mentality exposes space for your opponent, their mentality also tells you their weaknesses. If they play attacking, you play direct, and pass to the space behind their defenders, and play a fast striker. If they play defensively, take the advantage, and close them down much more, pin them to their own half and force them to make mistakes. And either cross to your target man, or exploit the vertical space (channels) between their players.
I don’t believe there are unbeatable or win’em all tactics, as no tactic is perfect. If there is a perfect tactic, then every team would play it. Then football will make no sense. There may be unbeatable teams, when their players are just good, and work well together, and always react correctly in different situations (recently the 2009 Barcelona maybe, and they did lose games of course). But even such a team will play different strategy in different games, because this is what professionals do. So use your three tactical slots, train your team play different strategy, and view the matches at least in extended, and make the decisions accordingly.
I’ll explain the team instructions next.
Possession Instructions: possession instructions tell your team what to do in possession with ball. They can be used to instruct your players to exploit certain space.
Go Route One – a more extreme version of More Direct Passing, mostly used in the late stage during a match and your team need a goal.
More Direct Passing – your players will attempt longer passes to teammates further away, and play at a slightly higher tempo. Combined with Pass into Space, can punish the opposition team playing attacking strategy.
Retain Possession – a more extreme version of Shorter Passing, can be used if even more control in possession is required.
Shorter Passing – your player will make shorter passes to teammates closer to them, and play at a slightly lower tempo. Can be used when the opponent is playing very defensive, combined with Pass into Space will exploit vertical space between opposition players. Also can be used when the team need more patient build up plays.
Pass into Space – your players will attempt creative risky passes and literally pass in to empty space for teammate to chase. I like this instruction a lot, it makes the creative players more dangerous.
Work Ball Into Box – your players will be more patient, take less long shots.
Play Out Of Defense – your defenders and more defensive midfielders will make much more short passes.
Pump Ball Into Box – your players will be more likely to pass into the central channel of the pitch, with your defenders and more defensive midfielders attempting very direct passes which will be aimed at the head or chest of your central attackers, rather than being through balls for them to run on to.
Clear Ball To Flanks – your players will be more likely to pass into the wide areas of the pitch, with your defenders and more defensive midfielders attempting very direct passes which will be aimed at the head or chest of your wide attackers, rather than being through balls for them to run on to.
Hit Early Crosses – your wide defenders will dribble with the ball rarely and attempt crosses into the opposition penalty area often and from deeper positions. Your wide attackers will also attempt crosses from deeper positions.
Float Crosses – your wide players will attempt to make high crosses with less power that stay in the air for longer. I believe this one plays well with tall strikers.
Whipped Crosses – your wide players will attempt to make high crosses with more power that curl and dip in the air. I believe this one plays well with fast strikers.
Low Crosses – your wide players will make crosses that stay close to the ground. This one should be for short strikers.
Run At Defense – having trouble make a through pass? maybe dribble pass instead.
Shoot On Sight – your players will be more likely to shoot when they believe there is a chance to score, from both outside and inside the opposition penalty area, and less likely to wait until there is a clear-cut opportunity. Oh, who would want that? Or would they? When you have little chances or simply desperate, why not, maybe some miracle will happen.
Penetration Instructions: penetration instructions tell your players which area on the pitch (space) to pass to and attack from.
Exploit The Flanks –Your players will be more likely to pass into the wide areas of the pitch and your wide players will stay wider to receive passes on the flanks.
Exploit The Left/Right Flank –Your players will be more likely to pass into the left/right side of the pitch and your left/right-sided players will stay wider to receive passes on the left/right flank.
Exploit The Middle –Your players will be more likely to pass into the central channel of the pitch.
Look For Overlap –Your wide attackers will allow your wide defenders to move past them by sitting narrower with more defensive individual mentalities, making less forward runs off the ball, dribbling less often and attempting to hold up the ball rather than taking it on themselves.
Shape Instructions: shape instructions allow you to further control your team shape for your benefit.
Play Wider/Narrower – by default, attacking mentality sets team higher and wider, defensive mentality sets team lower and narrower. The width of team shape means how close the players position themselves from each other left and right. Playing wide opens attacking space, so players can run into, playing narrow compress space so the opponent find it hard to break, hence the default setting. If you find your team with a lot of possesion but no quality chances, try play wider. If you find your players can’t find each other with passes, try play narrower.
Much Higher/Deeper Defensive Line, Push Higher Up, Drop Deeper – again, about space control. My take is, Push Higher Up asks your whole team to play higher up than they’re now, while Higher D-Line only asks your defenders to position higher, closer to midfielders, and vice versa. I might be wrong on this one, this is just how I felt when I played the game.
Stick to Positions/Roam from Positions – a more structured or more fluid team shape instruction in respect.
Defending Instructions: I don’t understand why a lot of gamers say we should be able to tell the team what to do with and without ball when the game already allows us to. Defending instructions tell your team how to defend when the opposition has ball in possession. This is also where gamers overlook, when they try to recreate the “Barcelona Style”. Barca don’t play attacking football, not from the game’s perspective at least. They pass around A Lot when in possesion, play very low tempo, these are characteristics of counter attacking mentality. But, when Barca lose the ball, they press hard, this is achieved by setting closing down to very high in defensive instructions. Again, I think you need a very special group of players to play at that level, the Barca Formula doesn’t work for every team.
Close Down – assuming a player has high work rate, and is asked to close down more, he will close down opponent more up the pitch and track back more in our own half. So close down means how far you go from your tactical position to chase opponent and try winning the ball back.
This is why a defensive winger’s closing down is set to max, to suppress the opposition on the flank. And a trequartista who doesn’t have to do defensive work (help to win the ball back), is set to close down very very low, so he can stay in attacking position and wait for teammate’s pass when the ball is won back.
Obviously, asking too many players to chase the opposition all over the places would be a disaster, since it not only breaks our shape, but is also physically demanding. Close down not enough will see your team retreat too much and the opposition dominate in possession.
Generally, you close down your opponent when they’re weak, take the game to them; don’t close down so much against technically (and mentally) strong player because they may get away and go through or drag out your defender and make a pass. There are also teams that players work hard, and physically fit, they play hard working physical game and close down very much against any team, that’s just playing style and squad trait.
Tight Marking – my interpretation is, tight mark acts as a man mark within zone marking system. Asking a player to use tight marking, is to ask him to mark the man in his vicinity ( defensive zone) instead of mark the space.
I don’t use this instruction on the team or any individual player, instead, I use it on opposition instructions. Every match, I set my team to tight mark opposition wingers/wide midfielders, attacking midfielders, and strikers, basically, any player who may receive the ball and make counter attacking runs (there are normally 3-4). My defenders or defensive midfielders closest to them will tight mark them, and eliminate counter attack threats.
This works fine with me. I don’t need to tell you how many goals I’ve conceded because the opposition winger runs past my fullback and cross to their strikers in counter attack before I worked this out. At times I even thought this game was broken, and that had to be a bug. On this note, the OI is there for a reason, it’s quite important, use it, and for your own sake don’t always click on assistant’s help.
Prevent Short GK Distribution – this is a new instruction, works as a counter measure to the GK short kick. I don’t see the harm of it.
General Instruction:
Tempo – I’ll only explain the tempo, since the rest are self-explanatory. I once read somewhere, a good manager can make a difference by only play different tempo. Tempo affects a lot. High tempo saves time, creates more attacking chances in turn, but requires high concentration and stamina; low tempo wastes a bit time, but the team plays more patiently. And I also think, low tempo allows players to hang on the ball longer instead of passing to another. So if the opposition is closing down very high, you should play higher tempo regardless your passing style.
OK, that about covers the team instructions and how I think you should use them. I won’t be talking about player individual instructions since they are easy to understand and some work the same way as their team instruction counter parts.
About formation and player roles/duties
You can play any conventional or even unconventional formation as long as you have the player that can play in those positions. Just get more familiar with your players, know their strengths and personalities, some players can play in certain positions, but don’t fit in the formation.
Like I had a hard time playing Mateo Kovacic in my 442 as MC, because of his preferred movements, I don’t think he is suited for one of the MCs in a 442. So I played him on the ML, as a wideplaymaker, and he performed better. Another real life example is the famous England’s “Lampard - Gerrard” problem, they’re both very good players, just difficult to fit together.
When you set the player roles/duties, keep it clear, who’s in which area, who’s holding, who’s passing, who’s running off the ball. You don’t want players have similar functions in the same area (i.e. winger and winger back on the same flank, advanced playmaker and wide playmaker on the same side).
A post on another forum by wwfan, How to Play FM: A Twelve Step Guide, categorized player roles in Specialists and Generic Roles, and stated that you should assign more specialist roles (4-5) in very structured tactics and less specialists (0-1) in very fluid tactics. I agree upon this theory very much. Just based on FM experiences.
In the end
I don’t know what got into me to write such a long guide, I knew from the very beginning this was going to be long, and I don’t think I did a great job, I got tired towards the end. I think I just liked to talk about football.
Football is a fascinating game, with things people can explain, things people argue over and over again, and a lot of questions with no definitive answers. What I wrote, is my Football Manager game, how I play it, and what I considered answers to some questions.
Now I realized, what kind of manager I am. I do have a passing style, playing style, but during the match, I always look for weakness in my opposition’s strategy and think about how we should react. Just like in chess, I was always rated as a disruptive player, I always look for weak spot in my opponent’s play. I guess I just have this in me, when it comes to strategical or tactical games. Some people believe that a team should always play their own style regardless how the opponent is playing. I won’t argue with that.
So in the end, I’m not saying you should play the way I did, if I was condescending, I apologize. I talked about Football Manager, and I hope you enjoyed reading.
This guide is intended to explain both the general gameplay and tactical side of Football Manager games. I’ve been playing Football Manager since 2006, and am by no means a master of the game. This is just what I learned over the years, and what I think general opinion is wrong. To differentiate, I will refer game players like us, “gamers”, and virtual footballers in the game, "players".
What is Football Manager?
Football Manager is a series of football management simulation games that allows players to experience the role of manager in football clubs. With each iteration, more elements are added to the game to make gameplay experience more realistic and elaborated. So by definition, each new iteration must be better than the previous ones, that I firmly believe.
What Football Manager can and cannot do?
The post in this forum by GodCubed, Football Manager 2015 FAQ and Myth Debunking, accurately described the nature of Football Manager game and debunked a lot of myths about the game. The game simplely cannot and will not intentionally make you lose, so if you can’t win, either your team is out classed, or tough to accept but you just suck.
Maybe with some exceptions, like I recently lost in Champions League semi-finals against Chelsea, we controlled the game well, 3-1 in aggregate, then they scored twice in 90 and 92 minutes, in the same fashion, left fullback runs up field with ball and crosses to strikers, and we lost due to the away goal rule. But these things happens, in real life also, some players with sparks in their eyes, determined to make a difference, and they did it, isn’t that what we all hope to see in football games? And it can happen against us, one man’s loss is another man’s gain, you can’t win every time, accept it, live with it. I should note that Chelsea did go on and win the final, so maybe its their year.
My point is, today’s football manager game is so in-depth, you can’t think of it just as AI field a team and play against you. The opposition managers do team talks too, they motivate their players too, they study your weakness too, they park the bus going for the point too, they fight back desperately too, when they needed a result. Shouldn’t we do the same? That brings me to my next point.
What can gamers do in Football Manager?
As amazing as the game is, GodCubed commented “…this game isn't the greatest for feedback.”, and I completely agree. The game will not tell you what you need to do, and you truly can be only as good as your real world football knowledge. This is a slow paced game, in between hitting the continue button, there’s a lot of stuff to do. This brings us back to the beginning, what is Football Manager game. Gamers assume the role of football club manager, and they have to imagine their daily life in the game. Many little aspects in the game affect the out come of the game either in the long run or in the moment.
Do you run general training yourself? Because training affect your players focus on specific area of football (ball control, attacking moment, defensive positioning) therefore affect your playing style.
Do you interact with your players before or after matches often? I know you only have limited options to do that, but it’s important. A player has been under performing for a few matches, talk to him. A player hasn’t featured in you first team in a while, and you suddenly need him to play, maybe talk to him first to let him know he’s gonna play.
How do you handle the media? Again, I know many gamers found this topic dreadful, but the answer you give at press conferences do have effect on your players. When being asked “are you going to rotate your squad?”, do you say “I trust my team, whatever team I select will be a formidable force.”, or do you say “I think it’s time for some players to prove their worth”. These seemingly limited options matter, I believe.
And teamtalk, a very important element, don’t use you assistant manager all the time no matter how good their motivation stat is, because one thing the computer can’t do is to recognize different situations, you as human can and should. Coming into a game against a league opposition after a comfortable league win, you can say “let’s pick up where we left last game”, but against a champions league opposition, probably not a good idea, after all, the importance and intensity of the games are different.
Do you hold team meeting regularly or before big games? Or do you forget the game even has this feature?
These are just some examples, I haven’t covered a tenth of it, but you get the idea, it’s not just about playing matches, dive in to this virtual world. Perhaps you don’t have to do all this in FMC, I have no say in this because I’ve never played. For the full game, do these, because these are real football managers do, and the AI managers are doing it, the whole point of this game is to try the best to let you do what real world managers do.
About the general gameplay
You now know what I intended with this guide, to emphasize how this game is not just about playing and winning matches, it’s a life simulation game, and it has subtleties even most experienced gamers may overlook.
Now let’s talk about football. Aside the above mentioned daily activities you can do, the most important elements of the game is the squad you build (you players) and the tactic you implement. I’ll talk about tactics in the final part, and this part is my general view on players and the match engine.
It’s come to the time, when players born in the late 80s and 90s take over the world’s football stage. My view is, we as audience are witnessing the worst of football. And it has a lot to blame to, not just the players born in the 80s and 90s. The media and increasing public attention in football, made the game more of a show, with the media looking for a way to appease the growing “football fanbase”.
There were times when only professionals talk about tactic, and only players with consistent and big match performances are rated as stars. Now everybody thinks they know something about football, and young players who score 10 goals a season are suddenly worth 30 – 40 million euros (Paulo Dybala I’m talking about you.). Remember how many star players were born in the 60s and 70s? And how many are competing for the Golden Ball?
Let’s take a look at Hernan Crespo for a minute, he scored over 300 goals during his career, and is the third highest goalscorer for Argentina, a very good old fashion centre striker, yet he has never won a major personal award. How many players today can look back at their career when they retire and say I was a better player than Hernan Crespo?
This is what I’m talking about, today’s football environment creates self-centered pseudo stars. This is also a reason for teams play wingers in advanced positions today, because the players crave for attention and fame, skillful players want to play to score and don’t want to contribute to team’s defense.
I know I’m ranting, but I do have a point. If you look at the today’s players stats, very few players have high workrate, teamwork, decision, concentration, bravery, all those important qualities for players in a team play game. If you still have Football Manager 2008, you can find many players with good mental stats, but not now, not in the future, as the regens in the game are just bad. This is a result of today’s football environment. So as gamers, you can’t expect the same from your players as in the old days.
Because their “mental instability”, you can’t think of your players as robots who are always running on full ability, no matter how amazing their stats look like, they are not as good players as you think they are. They get selfish, they get nervous, they get emotional, they have personal issues. If a player doesn’t perform well despite his good stats, maybe because his personality doesn’t suit the tactical role you assigned him on. Again, the depth of the game, player’s personality, some are selfish, some are afraid of physical challenge, some fold under pressure. These are details you should identify when you view the game, see how the players behave, find a way to play them better.
Another thing to notice is the player’s physical feature, I don’t mean pace, strength, jumping etc.. I meant player’s height, weight. Both Messi and C. Ronaldo are pacy and have good dribble, technical, flair stat, but in real life and in the game, Messi is much better at dribbling pass defenders. Because Messi is much shorter. The taller your player gets, the harder they can dribble pass man. So maybe not assign your tall player with roles that require dribble, because it’s difficult for them to do. And big players are difficult to maneuver in tight space, so when your opposition puts men behind ball, park the bus before their goal, don’t blame your big strong strikers on missing shots in the penalty area, because their shots are taken awkwardly as they don’t have much space.
So, that’s about cover it. In general gameplay, you keep eyes on your players’ every aspect, you treat the team as real life managers do. Remember, AI knows the nature of the game better than you, so try harder.
Before talking about tactics, let’s first talk about the match engine. I don’t know how the Football Manager match engine works exactly. But as an engineer, I do have some ideas if I were to build a software to simulate football matches. Anyhow, here is my take on football manager game engine.
The game has its own language to describe football tactics, and control how players behave on the pitch. Only by understanding the game’s language, can you implement your tactic correctly. I’ll try to explain every tactical button in tactic section.
In general, the match engine rewards good tactical decisions, and punishes bad ones. Don’t smash your computer when you lose against a weaker side when your team dominated in shot attempts and possession, the opponent are playing defensive or counter attacking strategy against a much stronger side, that’s a good start. And they must have players that suit this style, technical, pacy attackers stay up front looking for kill chances. And they must have trained in this discipline like for ages, their defensive players are happy sitting deep and work well and confidently together. Plus, as I said, today’s top team players are not so reliable any more, your “world-class” defenders are likely to lose one-on-ones to a nobody player.
So with all this, did you apply good tactic against this kind of opponent? Do you play small technically strong player to work in tight space? Do you play good wide player who can deliver perfect crosses to you big target man present in their area? Do you play shorter, more patient build ups? Is your team well trained in this style? These are the things the match engine takes into consideration. If you apply good tactic against weaker teams that play defensive style, the match engine will reward you with good result. Otherwise, you’ll be looking at you team taking 10 long shots, your big striker misses chances in the penalty area because the ball was fed to his foot and his has to turn and twist to make the shot, just when you’re wondering why your team can’t score, they scored one from counters or set-piece. This is football for you, the team that can effectively play the right strategy wins the game, schooled!
I’ll just say that much, the match engine is decent and works, gamers on the other hand aren’t.
Tactics: Football is about shape and space
In case you missed that, Football Is About Shape and Space. Almost all the tactical instructions you can give to your team, is about how to keep your own team shape, and how to utilize space in attack.
I took a lot of inspiration from articles on guidetofootballmanager, and a lot of content in this part can be traced back to them. I still go back to read the basics when I’m having a difficult time. So I recommend gamers to go there and learn what you don’t know.
Team Shape: there are five team shapes you’re given to choose from. Very structured, structured, flexible, fluid, and very fluid. The in-game descriptions for these shapes give us a general idea on how each one works. It’s always a good idea to read these in-game descriptions as they help you understand the game better.
Basically, the more structured you team is, the more your players keep the formation they are set to play, defenders rarely get involved in attacking play, the strikers don’t track back when defending. Players are given a specific job on the pitch, and low freedom. This suits weak team, with players having poor intelligence(Anticipation, Decisions, Flair, Teamwork and Vision), works well with formations that have more horizontal lines such as 442 Diamond, 433 with DM. Play flat midfield like flat 442 with structured shape will leave gaps between defensive line and the midfield, this can be countered to some extend with either playing a high defensive line or asking your midfielders to drop deeper.
The more fluid the team shape is, the more players do outside their job description, i.e. strikers drop deep to help build up play or track back a lot to help with defense, this will jeopardize the team formation, such as strikers not in position when counter attacking, and require intelligent players who can read the game well and act properly to different situations.
Remember the way your team play, depends on how familiar they are to the tactic and individual player’s personality. C. Ronaldo will unlikely to track far back regardless how you set him to play because of his low workrate, in previous games anyway, I haven’t played him in years.
Mentality: Mentality affects player’s position on the pitch. The more attacking a team play, the higher the defensive line is, the closer the strikers get to the opposing goal and vise versa.
By default, playing attacking also means playing fast tempo, players try to close down opponent fast to try to win the ball back, more direct pass will be taken as the players want to get the ball to the final third fast; playing defensive means playing low tempo, take little risks and pass around, but players may recognize counter attack opportunities and make direct passes.
Each player role also have individual mentality upon team mentality. Deep-lying playmaker with defensive mentality will not leave far from the defenders, but with supportive mentality he will venture further up. However with the same player duties players position themselves differently according to the team mentality. Mentality affects the team’s shape and the space they take over.
Setting the team shape and mentality is your grand strategy. Shape represents your football philosophy, either by choice or being forced upon by the players available to you. Mentality is your judgement on how the match will play out, can your team dominate the game, how worried are you about the opposition counter attacks, how are your players’ physical condition?
The standard mentality tells your players to hold ground, attack when opportunities present themselves. There will be space behinde your defensive line, but your defenders are watchful. Control mentality ask your players to play high up the pitch, limiting opposition’s space for ball control, but leaves a larger space behind your defensive line. With attacking mentality, defensive line will push up almost to the half-way line, pinning the opposition to their own half, applying high close down, playing high tempo, take more risky play, but beware of the huge space in your own half, one miss interception will cost you dearly. Counter and defensive mentality play the team deep and narrow near or in their own penalty area, players mark the space rather than the men, shut the opposition down and look for counters.
If you don’t know which mentality to play, you can always open the game with standard, and observe how the opposition play when your team win the ball. If they close you down in your half, they’re playing attacking, if they drop back to their own half or even penalty area, they’re standard or defensive. You can also predict how your opponent’s going to play, by noticing how they always play, or the preference of their manager, but don’t take anything for granted because they may offer some surprises.
Just like how your mentality exposes space for your opponent, their mentality also tells you their weaknesses. If they play attacking, you play direct, and pass to the space behind their defenders, and play a fast striker. If they play defensively, take the advantage, and close them down much more, pin them to their own half and force them to make mistakes. And either cross to your target man, or exploit the vertical space (channels) between their players.
I don’t believe there are unbeatable or win’em all tactics, as no tactic is perfect. If there is a perfect tactic, then every team would play it. Then football will make no sense. There may be unbeatable teams, when their players are just good, and work well together, and always react correctly in different situations (recently the 2009 Barcelona maybe, and they did lose games of course). But even such a team will play different strategy in different games, because this is what professionals do. So use your three tactical slots, train your team play different strategy, and view the matches at least in extended, and make the decisions accordingly.
I’ll explain the team instructions next.
Possession Instructions: possession instructions tell your team what to do in possession with ball. They can be used to instruct your players to exploit certain space.
Go Route One – a more extreme version of More Direct Passing, mostly used in the late stage during a match and your team need a goal.
More Direct Passing – your players will attempt longer passes to teammates further away, and play at a slightly higher tempo. Combined with Pass into Space, can punish the opposition team playing attacking strategy.
Retain Possession – a more extreme version of Shorter Passing, can be used if even more control in possession is required.
Shorter Passing – your player will make shorter passes to teammates closer to them, and play at a slightly lower tempo. Can be used when the opponent is playing very defensive, combined with Pass into Space will exploit vertical space between opposition players. Also can be used when the team need more patient build up plays.
Pass into Space – your players will attempt creative risky passes and literally pass in to empty space for teammate to chase. I like this instruction a lot, it makes the creative players more dangerous.
Work Ball Into Box – your players will be more patient, take less long shots.
Play Out Of Defense – your defenders and more defensive midfielders will make much more short passes.
Pump Ball Into Box – your players will be more likely to pass into the central channel of the pitch, with your defenders and more defensive midfielders attempting very direct passes which will be aimed at the head or chest of your central attackers, rather than being through balls for them to run on to.
Clear Ball To Flanks – your players will be more likely to pass into the wide areas of the pitch, with your defenders and more defensive midfielders attempting very direct passes which will be aimed at the head or chest of your wide attackers, rather than being through balls for them to run on to.
Hit Early Crosses – your wide defenders will dribble with the ball rarely and attempt crosses into the opposition penalty area often and from deeper positions. Your wide attackers will also attempt crosses from deeper positions.
Float Crosses – your wide players will attempt to make high crosses with less power that stay in the air for longer. I believe this one plays well with tall strikers.
Whipped Crosses – your wide players will attempt to make high crosses with more power that curl and dip in the air. I believe this one plays well with fast strikers.
Low Crosses – your wide players will make crosses that stay close to the ground. This one should be for short strikers.
Run At Defense – having trouble make a through pass? maybe dribble pass instead.
Shoot On Sight – your players will be more likely to shoot when they believe there is a chance to score, from both outside and inside the opposition penalty area, and less likely to wait until there is a clear-cut opportunity. Oh, who would want that? Or would they? When you have little chances or simply desperate, why not, maybe some miracle will happen.
Penetration Instructions: penetration instructions tell your players which area on the pitch (space) to pass to and attack from.
Exploit The Flanks –Your players will be more likely to pass into the wide areas of the pitch and your wide players will stay wider to receive passes on the flanks.
Exploit The Left/Right Flank –Your players will be more likely to pass into the left/right side of the pitch and your left/right-sided players will stay wider to receive passes on the left/right flank.
Exploit The Middle –Your players will be more likely to pass into the central channel of the pitch.
Look For Overlap –Your wide attackers will allow your wide defenders to move past them by sitting narrower with more defensive individual mentalities, making less forward runs off the ball, dribbling less often and attempting to hold up the ball rather than taking it on themselves.
Shape Instructions: shape instructions allow you to further control your team shape for your benefit.
Play Wider/Narrower – by default, attacking mentality sets team higher and wider, defensive mentality sets team lower and narrower. The width of team shape means how close the players position themselves from each other left and right. Playing wide opens attacking space, so players can run into, playing narrow compress space so the opponent find it hard to break, hence the default setting. If you find your team with a lot of possesion but no quality chances, try play wider. If you find your players can’t find each other with passes, try play narrower.
Much Higher/Deeper Defensive Line, Push Higher Up, Drop Deeper – again, about space control. My take is, Push Higher Up asks your whole team to play higher up than they’re now, while Higher D-Line only asks your defenders to position higher, closer to midfielders, and vice versa. I might be wrong on this one, this is just how I felt when I played the game.
Stick to Positions/Roam from Positions – a more structured or more fluid team shape instruction in respect.
Defending Instructions: I don’t understand why a lot of gamers say we should be able to tell the team what to do with and without ball when the game already allows us to. Defending instructions tell your team how to defend when the opposition has ball in possession. This is also where gamers overlook, when they try to recreate the “Barcelona Style”. Barca don’t play attacking football, not from the game’s perspective at least. They pass around A Lot when in possesion, play very low tempo, these are characteristics of counter attacking mentality. But, when Barca lose the ball, they press hard, this is achieved by setting closing down to very high in defensive instructions. Again, I think you need a very special group of players to play at that level, the Barca Formula doesn’t work for every team.
Close Down – assuming a player has high work rate, and is asked to close down more, he will close down opponent more up the pitch and track back more in our own half. So close down means how far you go from your tactical position to chase opponent and try winning the ball back.
This is why a defensive winger’s closing down is set to max, to suppress the opposition on the flank. And a trequartista who doesn’t have to do defensive work (help to win the ball back), is set to close down very very low, so he can stay in attacking position and wait for teammate’s pass when the ball is won back.
Obviously, asking too many players to chase the opposition all over the places would be a disaster, since it not only breaks our shape, but is also physically demanding. Close down not enough will see your team retreat too much and the opposition dominate in possession.
Generally, you close down your opponent when they’re weak, take the game to them; don’t close down so much against technically (and mentally) strong player because they may get away and go through or drag out your defender and make a pass. There are also teams that players work hard, and physically fit, they play hard working physical game and close down very much against any team, that’s just playing style and squad trait.
Tight Marking – my interpretation is, tight mark acts as a man mark within zone marking system. Asking a player to use tight marking, is to ask him to mark the man in his vicinity ( defensive zone) instead of mark the space.
I don’t use this instruction on the team or any individual player, instead, I use it on opposition instructions. Every match, I set my team to tight mark opposition wingers/wide midfielders, attacking midfielders, and strikers, basically, any player who may receive the ball and make counter attacking runs (there are normally 3-4). My defenders or defensive midfielders closest to them will tight mark them, and eliminate counter attack threats.
This works fine with me. I don’t need to tell you how many goals I’ve conceded because the opposition winger runs past my fullback and cross to their strikers in counter attack before I worked this out. At times I even thought this game was broken, and that had to be a bug. On this note, the OI is there for a reason, it’s quite important, use it, and for your own sake don’t always click on assistant’s help.
Prevent Short GK Distribution – this is a new instruction, works as a counter measure to the GK short kick. I don’t see the harm of it.
General Instruction:
Tempo – I’ll only explain the tempo, since the rest are self-explanatory. I once read somewhere, a good manager can make a difference by only play different tempo. Tempo affects a lot. High tempo saves time, creates more attacking chances in turn, but requires high concentration and stamina; low tempo wastes a bit time, but the team plays more patiently. And I also think, low tempo allows players to hang on the ball longer instead of passing to another. So if the opposition is closing down very high, you should play higher tempo regardless your passing style.
OK, that about covers the team instructions and how I think you should use them. I won’t be talking about player individual instructions since they are easy to understand and some work the same way as their team instruction counter parts.
About formation and player roles/duties
You can play any conventional or even unconventional formation as long as you have the player that can play in those positions. Just get more familiar with your players, know their strengths and personalities, some players can play in certain positions, but don’t fit in the formation.
Like I had a hard time playing Mateo Kovacic in my 442 as MC, because of his preferred movements, I don’t think he is suited for one of the MCs in a 442. So I played him on the ML, as a wideplaymaker, and he performed better. Another real life example is the famous England’s “Lampard - Gerrard” problem, they’re both very good players, just difficult to fit together.
When you set the player roles/duties, keep it clear, who’s in which area, who’s holding, who’s passing, who’s running off the ball. You don’t want players have similar functions in the same area (i.e. winger and winger back on the same flank, advanced playmaker and wide playmaker on the same side).
A post on another forum by wwfan, How to Play FM: A Twelve Step Guide, categorized player roles in Specialists and Generic Roles, and stated that you should assign more specialist roles (4-5) in very structured tactics and less specialists (0-1) in very fluid tactics. I agree upon this theory very much. Just based on FM experiences.
In the end
I don’t know what got into me to write such a long guide, I knew from the very beginning this was going to be long, and I don’t think I did a great job, I got tired towards the end. I think I just liked to talk about football.
Football is a fascinating game, with things people can explain, things people argue over and over again, and a lot of questions with no definitive answers. What I wrote, is my Football Manager game, how I play it, and what I considered answers to some questions.
Now I realized, what kind of manager I am. I do have a passing style, playing style, but during the match, I always look for weakness in my opposition’s strategy and think about how we should react. Just like in chess, I was always rated as a disruptive player, I always look for weak spot in my opponent’s play. I guess I just have this in me, when it comes to strategical or tactical games. Some people believe that a team should always play their own style regardless how the opponent is playing. I won’t argue with that.
So in the end, I’m not saying you should play the way I did, if I was condescending, I apologize. I talked about Football Manager, and I hope you enjoyed reading.