Season 6: SM23 (Tactics Page) Episode 5: ATTACK

Soccerblog 4 Minutes

This area within the tactics page is the one that normally has players scratching their heads. The ‘Attack’ area is all about getting the right style of play that will fit the players within your team and will also complement your general instructions as well. Way back in season 3, I went over every pattern of play that can be properly used within soccermanager worlds so you should already have an understanding of some of these patterns that will be implemented during today’s tutorial. Soccer is all about getting the best out of the players at your disposal and leaving this area untouched is simply an absolute no no for all my soccermanagerites reading these words.

PASSING STYLE

These are the bread and butter of your pattern of play as they indicate the kind of passing that you want your team to be performing when you are on the ball. There are 5 options to choose from and they ofcourse are the exact same 5 that are available in SM worlds with the caveat of having some illustrations next to each that make it easier to get a glimpse into how your team should be aiming to pass the ball. Now, I’ve been in discussions with many soccermanagerites over the years who simply cannot comprehend what these different illustrations really mean. It is my job to ensure that you are well educated for this kind of soccermanager information.


The yellow arrows indicate that the ball will be recycled around the park especially through the more creative players within the team
We have here the small arrows being joined with some more larger ones which is an indication that this team has decided to completely mix up their style of passing based on what will be the best way to go after your opposition within the course of a match.
As you can see, the yellow small arrows have been removed and now the team is looking to speed up play as much as they can which could lead to a faster way of getting the ball into the attacking third.
The last style of pass we have is the long ball passing style. This is simply a form of “Route one” football in an attempt to bypass the entire midifeld to get the ball up towards the foward players swiftly.

ATTACKING STYLE

The attacking style is all about where on the field you have decided to allow your team to play based on what you believe would be the best method of getting them to play in an efficient manner. The styles are indicated by the use of blue arrows.

FORWARDS


The first items we’ve discussed so far are pretty self explanatory especially for the lads who started playing SM Worlds first before starting to play this game. The next few items that we will be going over are where the confusion tends to come into play.


Forwards is bascially an indication of how you want your forward players within your X1 to play whenever the ball is within the attacking third.


When you have chosen mixed, your forwards will attempt to mix things up whenever your team has posession of the ball within the final third which could ofcourse lead to unpredictability.
The work ball into box option (which is indicated by the small red arrows)  is all about players in advanced positions seeking to pass the ball around in order to shift the oppositon defence into positions where you want them to go. This requires that you have intelligent players within your attacking area as well as players with high creativity and passing attributes.

The shoot on sight option is all about not wasting any time when your team has the ball in the attacking areas by taking as many shots as they possibly can. This works well with a counter attacking, fast passing style of play.



WIDE PLAY


The Wide play area is all about how your team decides to use the ball whenever they are on the flanks. It’s important that you get this one and the forward area working in tandem since they rely on each other for your team to play it’s smoothest footy possible.


When you choose the mixed option your team then chooses the right time to perform specific crossess based on the match situation
Byline Crossing is all about using the entire length of the pitch in order to get players overlapping towards the byline to get cut backs into the oppositon’s 18 yd box.


Arguably the most difficult style to implement, working the ball into the box from the wide areas requires sophistication and player intelligence since the wide area does not have a lot of space to maneuver the ball into so it is of extreme importance that you have Technical Wingers within your team along with decent Fullbacks/Wingbacks who are good on the ball in order for you to use this style to your absolute best.



BUILD UP PLAY



As you should know, a team’s build up play determines how effective they will be in opening up the opposition to get into goal scoring opportunites. We will not spend too much time here since you should already be aware that build up play is simply another way of saying the tempo in which you decide to play.



COUNTER ATTACK


To finish off today’s episode, we briefly explain the Counter Attack option on this page. It is very common for players of this game to not use the counter attacking option due to them wanting to play a Tiki-Taka style of play. But this Counter Attack option is an option that is there for teams who have explosive players within their team who have the capability to break with speed. The best examples that I can give will be the current Barcelona and Manchester City teams. Both teams aim to play a short passing style of play, but based on the players at their teams only one should choose the Counter Attack option here. Do you know which one??? If you chose Manchester City then I am seriously freakin proud of you! 🤗 The Man City team are all about posession football but with the likes of De Bruyne, Gundogan, Foden, Haaland, Walker and Alvarez they will be more capable of breaking on the counter compared to Barca who only really have Torres, Dembele and Raphinha as Counter Attacking options.



Soccermanagerite, I’m contemplating whether or not I should upload episode 6 tomorrow or wait until next week? Hey, why not share a comment on your opinion so I can figure this sh*t out….. ADIOS!

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