Asunto: National Team

not to mention the INSANE amount of dodgy offsides, don't think i have seen so many in a single match...

and i thought they nerfed 1-on-1s...

My only criticism would be I thought the tactic was actually a little defensive at times (making the wider mids run a little too much) but it's that sort of match that shows the quality difference in the mids of some higher ranked teas and Australia.

It takes some very high tech/pass levels to be able to thread balls between gaps like they did and I personally think we may only have 1 teams worth of mids that could do it and that's not taking into account form.

The strikers and Willis was positioned very well, and I think most of the players did well (Ando had a shocker, and Burns was hot and cold)

Kohler did exceptionally well for a replacement, Byers performed well, and Cunico with a couple of great saves from Mangos and Burns' inability was geat to see (having said that Mangos made an awesome save part way into the 2nd half)

Timpano and Baveas also held their own in terms of keeping their own defensively but just couldn't attack.

Anyway it was a great try, and if someone had of said, over our two matches against Brazil the score would be 11-7 with us coming away with a point, I definitely would have taken that

I probably am but it just bugs me a little bit when you have players meant to be closing (and previously they have been) then suddenly they don't and in the tactical editor they should have been a bit deeper as I knew through balls was a problem. Then add in 4 fumbles from Burns who is no slouch with technique which added 4 goals to their tally.

Ando had a bit of a shocker, but I was more concerned with Burns with 4 stupid and uncharacteristic fumbles. Cunico was a rock and probably saved us about 2-3 goals.

Byers and Hirons played well when they got the ball and was satisfied with their finishing.

Brazil are extremely strong but given our squad I believe we should be able to take them ;).

Yeah in terms of going in with aggressive tactics the odds do fall a bit in the other teams favour, although I wouldn't have said this was as offensive as we have been.

The amount of through balls I was incredibly surprised with and the lack of defender movement to cut out the passes which we normally do was non existant. They have to have close to, if not divine passing/pm because we were unable to generate as much as they did.

I knew they'd cover Willis, but it took 2 players away, which allowed Hirons and Byers to be free.

I'm happy with the goals we scored, I'm not so happy about 5 of the 7 they got though. The 4 from fumbles and the one where they beat Cunico and slammed home from a tight angle just inside the box to make it 3 - 2 their way.

Had you said before the start of the season we'd score 7 against Brazil I'd have taken it right there and then and for sure that's some positives but conceding 11 in 2 matches and 7 in this match wasn't particularly great. Think that's the most any team has put past me in a single NT match since I've been manager.

We're still in a strong position though, so I'll just regroup and take my frustration out on langhe and Indonesia next week ;).

I'm with you Dave, it was very disheartening to see the Brazilian strikers gifted so many goals.
The off-side trap worked for them, but not for us.

That was a ballsy tactic by Brazil. To leave themselves so vulnerable at the back... and they were punished. But it paid off in the end. Had our defensive structure been more compact (wing-backs signing autographs) the Brazilian gamble could have really backfired. They put it all on their two strikers and it worked for them.

It was an aggressive formation by us and we were able to strike quickly in the first half. Unfortunately we ended up being in a position where if they got a clear possession in the midfield it was bread and butter for them to slot a throughball.
It's okay to concede the odd goal to a good through-ball, but when they walk in and have 1-on-1s completely uncontested you know something's wrong.

So yeah, disappointing, but good to see us really able to take the game to them in the middle and front thirds.

Yeah, I must admit I didn't really expect them to be nailing through balls from close to their own defensive goal box though, at the same time I expected that if they did our players would close the gap as I deliberately worked on that after last round where we didn't close in (due to tactical error). This time I closed them but they just stood still. They scored 7/13 which is a rarity these days, even if 10 of the 13 came from 1 on 1's. Still the 1st half was good, even with it being 3-3 in which I thought they were lucky from all 3 goals. Don't know what happened in that 2nd half, everything just went downhill.

If you look at the shots it's 9:13. Last time it was 9:15 and we still got a draw. Ando had a bad day and that's it, no sense in making any problems with it. Nice positioning of players, some good situations. And you'll never be able to make a perfect tactic in defence unless you use at least 6 defs.
Good job, just more luck needed next time. 1pt in 2 games against Brazil doesn't look amusing but it's fair enough for me.

Not only that Ando had a bad day, their strikers had an overly flukey day. I think the first 3 goals were from their first 3 attempts at goal, very lucky. I thought your tactic was superb cometer.

Nah, you can't just write this off. There are quite valuable lessons to be learnt here.

If you look at where the shots were taken from last game, you'll see that many of them were low percentage. They were either from bad areas or under pressure. In SK, if you give a quality striker a 1-on-1 with no pressure, they will score more often than not.

This came about because they had their midfield playing quite defensively, this drew our defenders out and opened the holes. Usually the resulting through-ball would be intercepted by our DMs, but we were playing our DMs high up the pitch to try to nullify their midfield dominance. The problem then was if they got past our last DM, they then had an unpressured pass which they could thread and the pass only needed to beat one defender to ensure an unpressured 1-on-1. The pass goes to the outside of one of the central defenders, that defender runs up to intercept, the striker runs in behind and now all 3 closest defenders are chasing with no chance of putting on a tackle (one is behind after missing the intercept, one is closing from the wing, one is closing from the other side of goal... the striker runs a diagonal straight towards goal to nullify all 3).

As a long time SK manager, you'll be familiar with this play. It's one of the 3 common ways of scoring in SK.
There are ways to stop it. My general rule is that if you don't have DMs to make the intercepts (which leaves the defenders to attempt the intercept), you have to place the defenders in adjacent squares. This would mean we'd be exposed on the wing, but when you play an isolated back 4, you have to make that sacrifice. Wing or no wing, if you leave the gaps, they will get exploited. That's just the way SK works.

But we live and learn. The overall tactic was really good. I liked it. We just have to sort out how we can set up a solid defensive structure while playing such an attacking game against better sides. A good effort but we got undone by a series of events in this instance.

There's wisdom beaming from your post. :P

I agree on most. As for good defense...I always was a big admirer of 5 defs. 1 striker, 1 high winger, 2 CM, 1 DM and 5 defs. That's my vision of winning against a stron opponent and I was always for it. Even with 2 DM instead of 2 CM. To block the through passes. 2 defs on the wings all the time, 3 defs concentrated in the center with half a square space between them.

Take a look at those four:

click - what counts is 90min. After that the defs with formid stamina got killes by the lot of running they had. If I only had a decent winger then I'd win that one. Liitmaa was excellent pace and divine tech, without that much in passing and pm, afair. And the strikers weren't world class quality at all.

click - as previously with a weak winger and a kid as a striker. all the best strikers were without form or injured. and a nice red card in 2nd minute on an important position. Still it wasn't that bad.

click - I bet I wouldn't had as many shots with more offensive tactic.

click - yup, great Italy with only 1 shot at the goal.

I've played a back 5 before. I've found it a great way to make sure the opposition earn their win. The strikers will have defenders constantly yapping at them. However, it's then hard to find a way to goal. If you play no DMs you run the risk of giving the opponent's AMs too much space (in safe areas mind-you) and the more DMs you play, the less avenues you have to goal. You also need 5 top-class defenders which may not be available.
There's no perfect defensive structure in this game, that's why it's so much fun.

Oh, and how was Dean "Christiano" Byers? A marked man or what!?

Yeah, if you play too many down back you've got no option up forward and are basically asking to get beaten unless you strike a lucky goal. Similarly though you give yourself more options up front you open up down back, so it's a tradeoff between offense and defense. I think one of the bigger problems was the fact the defenders weren't back enough to prevent the through passes, but even if they were what we really needed was the defenders reacting to passes but they were just standing stationary, almost like when a pass from a outfield player goes in the goal how the gk never reacts to it. I find it strange though that despite nothing meant to have been changed other than animations how suddenly there appears to be more fumbling but it could just be me, but from what I've seen across around 10-15 matches there certainly appears to be a higher % of fumbles.

Just will go back and analyze that game, lots of useful information I can gather from a defeat like that, both offensively and defensively.

I'm really for 5 defs. Well placed good 5 defs are really enough not to loose more than 1 goal and it really helps in playing offensive. More defs, playing high = faster regaining of the ball = more actions = more chances for goals.

btw. Willis got today 9 assists, which makes it 24 this season and 89 in career + 40 in NT = 129 assists :)

I'd be very surprised if Australia has the defenders to pull off a high off-side trap.

As best I can tell we simply don't have the pace + defending required to pull it off against top opposition.

We can pull off a high off-side trap, not against the top 10-15 NT's, but certainly we've got the defense with the pace to do it. I'm just really bad at making effective off-side traps as you have to get things pretty much perfect and then hope they don't anticipate it as well. A properly executed and unexpected offside trap can work wonders and is a useful thing but if the expectation is there or it is slightly off perfect, it can backfire just as badly. As a result of the small margin of error, I usually don't try to make off side traps either. Instead I try to sit back a bit (but not so far back to allow them long shot pots all day) and then use sliding techniques to cut out any threat, although last few games haven't been great use of defensive sliding. Probably had them too far up field given Brazil's deadly accurate midfield.

I could (but I won't) go through the defenders with the skill set they have and I think quite a few would be surprised, probably previous managers even more so if they still remember what they had to work with. Even since I've been manager, the last 2-3 seasons have seen significant changes in terms of our defender depth. That's another reason it's disappointing to let 7 past us, a lot from stupid mistakes at the back, or from the superior passing skills of Brazil's midfield.

I mean we're not a Poland type defense, but considering the user base we have, I'd rank our NT defense as one of our strongest areas, especially in terms of depth. Still it can always get better ;).

2 things:
- this subject is getting more and more interesting each weeks...
- Borkos's progress in english is phenomenal... well done!