tactics "for big teams" will work equally well for the small teams, if you have players with correct roles and duties combinations. However, most tactics here are built by amateurs, not real football coaches, and all the success that you see they had is basically just because they have great players. Even then, they lose some games, when they encounter ai that targets holes in their tactics, and that is considered "normal". When you make a tactic that works well in LLM, Premier league and zimbabwe, you have done a good job. But 99% of tactics here can't cut it. It takes years (in my case) of researching football guides and books to build a flawless tactic. And even than, it usually exploits a single area of game (for example exploits the right flank), so when you come across opponent that has a very good fullback and perhaps a very good DM player aswell, it all falls into water. Every formation in modern football is good at one thing and bad at another. So when you have read all possible tactical books, and guides, you may think of a formation to use, end exploit it strentghs and cover its weakness to maximum, but even than you wont win 100% of games. Perhaps it would be best to research what football club made real and great acomplishments, how they did it, and than copy the best ouf it, if not all of it. That is what I did with Bayern 2012-2013, under coach Osram.