Articles

It is evening, 9th November 2022. Today I found out that Lionel Messi will hang up his boots at the end of the season thus joining Cesc Fabregas and Sergio Aguero. Kuba Blaszczykowski is a youth coach at Gornik Zabrze, Lukasz Fabianski became a chairman – one era is coming to an end. Another one begins.

Sounds like a promising beginning? I have to disillusion you though – this is not an introduction to a sci-fi novel but an ending of the longest tactical test in my career. It all began on 30 June 2007 in Lowicz.

Since then I have played 788 matches and managed three teams. For 15 seasons I have celebrated great victories and suffered bitter defeats. Through my hands (and desk…) an army of players and coaches have passed. I have seen hundreds of training sessions, received numerous reports. During that period the world of football has changed for ever – for the first time World Cup finals were held in Russia (2018) and China (2022). In Europe Valencia has the lead. Empires of their own were built by Benfica, HSV and Galatasaray, and the brightest stars on the Continent are Pato and Bojan. The only thing that has not changed throughout all these years was my tactic. And here the proper story begins.

PLAYERS’ MENTALITY

From the very beginning of my adventure with Football Manager series (earlier also Championship Manager) one question made me uneasy: how to make an invincible team. Without false modesty I have to admit that the tactical side of FM has no secrets to me. I occasionally have problems with money, training, transfers, sometimes with the board, but the tactical options are always worked out down to the smallest detail. I never had any problems with finding the effective formation, neutralising opponents’ fortes, yet… Yet from time to time I had to face the inevitable: a defeat. It does not hurt that much in the league as you can always make up for them, but in cup competitions – especially in Europe – a loss can lead to despair. I have managed different teams; I had the best footballers on the continent, yet it happened to come to an obstacle that was too difficult to come over. The answer came in a blinding flash – if it was not for my meticulous observations, charts and analyses I would have surely overlooked it.

Players’ mentality, because this is the answer, is described by eight hidden attributes: adaptability, ambition, controversy, loyalty, pressure, professionalism, sportsmanship and temperament. They are complemented by four very important visible attributes: determination, concentration, consistency and bravery. All are rated between 1 and 20. From the above set only two have no influence whatsoever on tactics: adaptability and loyalty, the remaining ten I shall discuss as briefly as possible.

Ambition: avoid players whose ambition is below 5 and be careful with players with 15+. The less ambitious will not help you much when you are losing and need to get back in the game; they make worse wingers (do not run with ball well) but, luckily, they are not that many. The overambitious (only when combined with high temperament and controversy!) are more likely to behave in an unpredictible manner, lose their form after lost games, during the game their rating can fall from 8 even to 5. All of them are very difficult to keep in the team.
Controversy: avoid players with the value of more than 12. They disrupt the harmony in the changing room and always have something to say, they work with the team worse. They are not suitable for centre backs as they do not handle tactical freedom restrictions well.
Pressure: as in the case of ambition avoid extremes (<5 and >15). Those not handling pressure well are prone to your careless remarks and comments, they are easily discouraged by transfer speculations and, what is even worse, they adapt to the team’s level of performace. They will not pull the team’s socks up. They make poor forwards as they succumb to long spells without scoring more often. The mentally toughest will also be immune to your comments and motivation.
Professionalism: the higher the better so look for players with at least 10. The less professional develop slower, breach the rules more often and hardly react to motivation.
Sportsmanship: as above, so 10 is a minimum. Unsporting types reluctantly become mentors or protégés, during defeats have unstable form and breach the rules often. They are unsuitable for captaincy – in a poor game they bring the team down. Unfortunately, the game generates more players with this attribute below 10, so try at least not to have anyone with less than 5.
Temperament: avoid players with more than 15. They are hot-blooded, useless for tight marking, high pressing, and aggressive tackling.
Concentration: an indispensable attribute for central defenders, but also important for the rest of the team as it reflects how well the player fulfills tactical instructions during a game. Very important for the playmakers. Whilst holding onto a slender lead it is worth having a couple of players with concentration of 15 or more on the bench. I do not buy players with the attribute lower than 8 at all.
Composure: a key attrobute for attacking players and they should have it as high as possible. Combined with high finishing makes a player a prolific goalscorer. Lowly composed should not be made set piece takers.
Bravery: of course, comes in useful for the whole team, but is important mainly to the midfielders. Should you posses a midfield line consisting of players with bravery of 15 or more you will dominate the field almost in every match.
Determination: in my opinion the single most imporant tactical attribute in the game, that is why I am discussing it at the end. It is essential for turning the game around. Essential for the players to listen to motivational speeches. Finally, essential for the midfielders. Should you criticise the team at half time only those determined and ambitious will react, the rest will leave it unnoticed. I do not have any players in my team with determination lower than 10. The lowly determined are unsuitable for playmakers or captains. It is not worth fielding them as substitutions as they are unlikely to change the outcome of the game.

I am skipping the last players' psychological attribute deliberately. Eccentricity applies to the goalkeeper position - the higher its value, the greater the likelihood that our goalie will leave the box and, for example, try to dribble past the nearest opponent. Field players mostly do not have this attribute higher than 5. In conclusion - it appears that the player's psychological profile has a huge influence on how will he fill the designated tactical command. Therefore the question is: How the ideal player’s mentality should look? For example:

Ambition: 8-15,
Controversy: 1-8,
Pressure: 8-15,
Professionalism: 8-20,
Sportsmanship: 8-20,
Temperament: 1-15,
Concentration: 8-20,
Composure: 8-20,
Bravery: 10-20,
Determination: 10-20.

Intentionally I do not give a precise value of the attributes, because it is not about creating a superman, but finding useful players for the tactic. I assure you that such filter applied to the search will provide you, even on a small database, several hundred of valuable players in all positions. In addition, we should require greater concentration from defenders, bravery from midfielders and composure from attackers. As a result, we receive a determined and ambitious team, fighting in every match, responsive to commands and motivational talks - a team playing to the last referee’s whistle. I do not write about the other two of the hidden attributes: important matches and regularity, because they are not linked with the tactic. Their value influences the way the player acts. But the best is still ahead of us...

SCOUTING

How to find such players, since part of the aforementioned attributes is hidden? The simplest solution is to use FM Genie Scout 2008 and it basically solves the problem - the filter will find us the footballers we seek. However, I strongly believe, that there are many players like me, who do not use such tools during the game. We rely on what is the most beautiful thing in football: intuition. I immediately precedes the plea of hypocrisy - during my career, which I have described in the introduction, I did not use any external programs. The attributes’ descriptions and all of the conclusions were made after the game. I just used the FM Genie Scout to see all saved games and compare the actual value of the hidden attributes to my suppositions. However, there is a way to find such players without help of those programs. The key is to have at least two good scouts, but they should be different from each other:

First should have high abilities to assess the potential of the player and work with juniors – I will call him the Potential Scout,
Second one should have high ability to evaluate player’s skills and mental training attribute (mentality) – let’s call him the Ability Scout.

In this way, there is a chance that their reports will be slightly different and mutually complementary. Unfortunately, in most cases, we get almost identical reports from all scouts on one player. Of course, the better the expert – the more accurate the report, but you already know it, don’t you? Now it gets easier – when we find a player that is quite interesting and gets through all of our filters we send the Potential Scout to observe him for 3 matches. Then we receive a report, in which, of course, in addition to pure information about his skills, we get a handful of knowledge about his mentality and psyche. If he is still looking we send the Ability Scout so he can watch him in another three consecutive matches. As a result of such activities we should obtain an enhanced report, supplemented with additional information about the player's psyche.

If a football player still seems to meet our expectations, we have to do the rest of work ourselves. In his profile check the description of the player’s personality and, of course, the marks in recent matches – this gives us a quite clear picture of his regularity. Pay special attention to the important matches (those with the biggest rivals and the strongest teams in the league). From the player's appearances in these meetings we can try to estimate the value of another attributes, which are: important matches, stress resistance and ambition; the quantity of fouls, yellow and red cards and pass completion can make us judge his professionalism, sportsmanship, controversy and temperament skills. Of course, we take into account the statistical data, not a single assessment, but every game - as we know it - may have a unique history. A detailed analysis minimizes the risk of the "transfer failure" to a reasonable minimum. Then what remains is to teat the player already in our own team - and eliminate those, who are not good enough, despite the scouting we did.

Driven by those rules, I managed to gather a team of players with the desired characteristics, who, in a match with Benfica or Valencia, do what they should, and, most importantly, let me lead themselves to success that they have dreamt of.