San Marino..

[wkdsoul]

Just taken over the San Marino NT as part of the San Marino challenge, so a formation that is containing defensive with a possibility of Counter Attackings and set pieces.

I have a decent 18 yr old regen at DMC , View attachment 204598

anyone got any suggestions or recommendations?

 

[Ubernisation]

In 09 and 11 I had the best success with using formations without wingers. I'd recommend a flat back four with 2 up front, the midfield you can change as you wish. I would probably try a DMC, 2 CM and an AMC? But it's up to you. Play on the counter as much as possible, and try to get some pacy players. If you get some good winger regens then use wingers to help with breaking with pace, but I found in 09 and 11 that San Marino don't produce good wingers at all.

 

[Wine]

Yeah agree with Ubernisation. For my San Marino club team I have used 4-1-2-1-2 with no wingers right upto Serie B and got promoted with that tactic (it was seriously hard lol). I would just arrange as much friendlies as possible and try a few different tactics but you should give the 4-1-2-1-2 a bash and see how you get on.

Also it's probably worth mentioning that regardless of tactic your going to be taken a humping, so tactics that you might think arent working will actually not doing that bad.

 

[Ubernisation]

Yeah, if the tactic you're using makes you a decent amount of goal scoring chances then stick with it, even if you're having big defeats.

 

[kandersson]

well, first of all consider I haven't won a competitive match as of 2014 and my only win is a friendly against Tonga (close match btw) so I'm not sure I can be of much help with this...

defensive tactics are recommended, low tempo and time wasting strategies might help keeping scoreline relatively low.

counter attacking football is hard to implement as you'd need pacey wingers/strikers for that, while the average SM player is quite slow (you might be lucky and already have quick regens though)

I was quite happy with a very defensive 5-1-3-1, felt we were doing a good overall job. We didn't concede many CCC's though unfortunately we had to concede lots of corners, which often resulted in lots of goals (even 3-4 goals from corner per game, quite frustrating).

recently I was using a flat, counter 4-3-3 with defensive mentality and high closing down (inspired by New Zealand at World Cup 2010), trying to keep the ball away from our goal as much as possible. Had a good 1-1 away draw with Moldova wit that tactic.

In friendlies against weak teams I try to use a tweaked version of the 4-3-2-1 that I succesfully use with the club, but I find it very hard to create chances without decent playmakers/inside forwards.

If you have some players good at long shots then use them as much as you can: you might win more corner kicks, which is probably the best way to score goals for San Marino (CB Juri Biordi is my top scorer with 3 goals in 18 matches...). In the same way you could set your wide players to cross often and aim to far post, increasing the chances of winning a corner.

With that said, 0-8 losses against Holland or England are still on the cards for San Marino...

 

[wkdsoul]

I've started playing a slight tweak on Houghs Boots to Assses formation, gone from having 5-0, 6-0, scores to 3-1, 4-2, so at least the players are getting used to it and i'm hitting goals of breaks and open play as well as corners. I'll see how this goes.

 

[Grievzie10]

I played Holland with a 5-1-4 Formation (yes, nobody ahead of cm) - Craig Levein inspired - but in reality, im not going to score away to Holland so not a bad idea. We lost 6-0 - 4 from corners, a penalty and a RVP screamer.
2nd game, tried to play 4-1-3-1-1 against Sweden, had 2 shots in 90th minute, lost 5-0. I dont think its that bad with San Marino. I think that if i had fit players and Andy Selva wanted to play to have match fitness, we wouldnt be that bad! friendlies v Luxembourg, Andorra, Malta, Solomon Islands and someone equally terrible coming up!
Seriously contemplating just using my u21s and punting the over 30s.