My sincere heartfelt Ouch! to those ex-Barca brats. Geovanni had said ‘I feel sorry for Scolari because we’re going to beat his team’. Ouch. Fibreglass had said ‘Arsenal ladies team would draw with Spurs’. Ouch. I had the privilege of watching the Arsenal ladies hold Spurs last night. Football keeps teaching so many lessons but still these stupid, arrogant footballers never learn!
I’m back. I’m sure a lot of you have read my earlier post on custom tactics suggestion for realistic gameplay in FIFA 09. That’s what about 7500 views are telling me. Now, this time, I’ve going to suggest custom tactics for the top top teams. I’ve tried these setting myself and I find that the games are very open, random and very attacking. The more I play, the more I’m able to study the game. The more I experiment the more I understand about the tactical sliders and how they impact the game. I’ve had new learnings every day. The below is the latest of my understanding and suggestions.
Build up speed: The maximum that you set this for any team should be 50. Again, don’t set it to more than 50 to any team. The reason is, the pitch size in FIFA 09 is small. It is not as big as it’s in Pro Evo. In a small-sized pitch, it the build up speed is set to 70 or 80, it would just be a game of counterattacks. When you lose the ball in your attacking third, because of the high build up speed, you’ll see the ball the opponents attacking third in the very next moment. With high build up speed there won’t be midfield battles. That’s why you should slow down the build up speed to 50 for the quickest team and then may be 10 or 15, for the slowest team. For Man Utd and Arsenal, it should be 50. For Chelsea and Liverpool, it can be 40.
Build up passing: Set this to a maximum of 70. For teams like Man Utd and Chelsea, set this to 60. For Liverpool, set this to 70. For Arsenal, set this to 40. This will determine what mix of short and long passing will be made by the team. Long passes will mean there will be 50-50 balls in the air which really adds to the excitement. A 40 for Arsenal will mean they will make mostly short passes and very occasional short passes. Even here, the pitch size makes a difference. Too much of short passing will create a lot of congestion while the long passes will change the sides of play and even out the player distribution on the pitch.
Chance creation passing: This shows how much risk the teams would take while making the passes. This means looking for the killer passes and also the off the ball players making runs to get those killer passes. Set this to as high as possible. For teams like Chelsea and Man Utd, I’ve set this to 90. This means these teams would play some very enterprising football which adds to the excitement. For Liverpool, I’ve set this to 80 and for Arsenal I’ve put this to 70. I don’t want to set this to less than 50 for any top half teams. This tactical slider plays a major role in making your games play an unpredictable attacking game.
Chance creation crossing: This slider’s value would determine where and how off the ball players would make themselves available to receive the ball and whether they would make movements expecting a cross. I have no suggestions here. Please set this up as you find it appropriate. I’ve set Chelsea’s crossing at 60, Man Utd’s crossing at 50, Arsenal’s at 30 and Liverpool’s at 60. Feel free to set this as per your choice.
Chance creation shooting: This slider’s value would determine whether the off the ball players position themselves to take a shot and whether they would think it’s a priority to position themselves for a shot instead of looking for a passing position. I have no suggestions here. Please set this up as you find it appropriate. I’ve set Chelsea’s shooting at 80, Man Utd’s shooting at 80, Arsenal’s at 50 and Liverpool’s at 70. Feel free to set this as per your choice.
Team width: For all the top teams, the team width is set to 60 – 70. Teams with good full backs should have a 70 here. I’ve seen that with the team width set highly, players get spread out on the pitch. The full backs participate in the attacks. When you set it to low, the defenders narrow down in the centre which created invariably the same type of games where you’d pass it to the flanks and then bring it in. With the team width set high, you’re challenged at every part of the pitch, instead of leaving you room and space in the flanks which produces similar games.
Pressure: For the top teams set this to just 15. Anything higher, again, produces similar kind of games such which have mostly throughballs and lobbed throughballs. When you set the pressure to just 15, you’ll see your defenders backing up when the opponent has the ball (that’s quite a sight!). And then when you win the ball with a defender, you have about 75 to 80% of the pitch still to be covered and with slow build up, it creates a lovely football game.
Aggression: This will have to be set to 70. This is as explained in my other thread. The higher this is, the higher the tackling/ball winning mentality of the players. If set this any higher, you might see a lot of cards and sending offs. If you set this any lower, the crucial tackles may not be made in time. Unless you use skill, you won’t be able to waltz past the players. Forces you to pass around and build up creative attacks.
Positioning – Build up & Chance Creation: Set both these to FREE FORM. The top teams have top quality players who have varied attributes to be able to do well with ‘free form’ positioning. Again, with ‘free form’ positioning, players do make overlapping runs and making unpredictable build ups and attacks. Also, it is the AI which is playing so ‘free form’ would do well.
My settings: I play on ‘world class’. I use ‘assisted’ passing, crossing and through balls, ‘manual’ crossing and lobs. I use TELE camera angle with height and zoom set to ZERO. My player change setting is set to about 2/10 of the bar. I do not play MM. I just play custom created tournaments. I generally love to play possession football while trying to surprise the opposition at every chance! I play only OFFLINE games despite having access to xbox live gold membership valid until next year.
Remember, the tactics numbers for the top teams are set based on my opinions. Let’s not have an argument on whether Arsenal should be 40 in buildup passing or Liverpool should be 80 in chance creation passing. You’re free to set the numbers to your beliefs/liking.
Just understand the logic and set your numbers accordingly. For the la liga, serie a and other league top teams, you can set the sliders accordingly. I played a league with just Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool, with home and away games. All matches were very tight and challenging. They were very random and unpredictable too. I have not put the tactics in the locker. There are very few changes to be done, so you can do it yourselves manually. If I learn more, I’ll share more. Cheers!
We should see a reaction. After a home match where there was not even a single decent shot on goal by Chelsea, the players would certainly be gutted. To play Hull City at their back yard now would be a very interesting match. If there is one in-form team, that is hull City. In their last 6 matches, they’ve won 5 and drawn 1. Currently they’re on a 4 match winning streak. It is Hull City I’m talking about!
First things first. Liverpool deserved their win. I can’t even say Chelsea deserved a draw, let alone a win. When Liverpool scored in under 10 minutes, I thought we have enough time to come back and win. What I saw was a Chelsea team that could not score to equalise at home for 85 minutes. For all the desperation and urgency, sadly, I don’t think we created more than one decent chance. This is only our first defeat of our season to the team that tops the league. Doesn’t sound very disastrous but I cannot ignore the fact that our weaknesses were glaringly exposed.
It’s me, Bluchampblogger again! One more painfully long post! This time I’m gonna talk about how to play possession football in FIFA 09. Playing possession football may not guarantee you goals or success but certainly it will make you confident on the ball and confident about the game. And I assume that you have tweaked the custom tactics for realistic gameplay already!
Before I proceed, here comes my standard disclaimer. I’m not a great FIFA player and I don’t claim to be so. I don’t play ranked matches at all. I don’t even know how many skill points I have. I’m a football enthusiast. I love football and football gaming. I’m just writing what I think would be useful for some if not many. So if you’re beyond all these, I’m gonna bore you, so buzz off. Okay so if you’re still reading this, you might be either curious or you genuinely need help. Let’s resume. This post is for the players who are struggling with the game, struggling to keep the ball, tired of losing the ball or simply out of form. Before you start playing champagne football, you should be able to keep the ball. Try playing possession football for a few days and then slowly open up for stylish stuff. And yes, I play offline games mostly. All my experiments are with the offline games! But by general logic these could apply for the online games as well.
Set the tactics to your best advantage. In build up play, set passing to 30 (short passes) and set speed to 40 (slow build up). In chance creation, set passing to 20 (very safe passes), crossing to 10 (no crosses) and shooting to 60. I’m assuming that your crossing sucks just like mine. Let’s get some wins under our belt before we experiment with crossing. In defence set pressure to 20, aggression to 70 and team width to 30 and defender line to cover. For this set of tactics, you need to build up slowly. Pass and move, pass and move. Don’t be in a hurry, wait for your colleagues to move up the pitch. For you to use this tactic effectively, your players should be moving when you have the ball. For that, go to edit formation and edit the player movement arrows for the players. You might want the wingers to move ahead when you have the ball. You might want to move your attacking midfielder but you might want your holding midfielder to stay put. Also edit the work rate of the players. The defensive players to have high defensive work rate and low attacking work rate and so on. If you don’t do these tweaks, the rest may not be effective.
The formation, the player selection, the player movement arrows, the player work rate settings, the surface of the pitch etc will all decide how well you’re able to play. One basic advice is: Don’t sprint forever. Use the sprint button only when needed. Instead of chasing a player in full sprint select another player and defend. Don’t run at full speed when there is no need. With more speed you have less control. Also, the more your sprint, the fatigue sets in and by 60th minute, your players will refuse to run and only jog. If you stop your constant sprinting you’ll see how beautiful this game is.
Choose a challenging opponent who has similar attack, midfield, defence, speed attributes as your team. Having chosen the opponent, choose a contrasting jersey for him. This looks like a dumb suggestion but you won’t know what kind of impact it can make. If you’re playing in white kits and your opponent is playing in black kits, you don’t even need to see where your players are. It would be subconsciuosly recorded in your mind because of the contrasting colours. If you’re dark grey and he is light grey, it requires your conscious efforts to locate your players. This is not difficult but you’re losing some valuable micro seconds in the process, without even knowing that.
Don’t get worked up with the semi/assisted/manual thing. Just have everything on assisted. You just want play the game and enjoy, right? When you play on assisted, your football thinking is what is rewarded and not your dexterity. When you’re confident about your accuracy levels because you’ve set them on assisted, you start thinking about other constructive things like how to build up the play, how to hold the lead etc. In terms of which camera to choose, I strongly suggest wide camera angle with maximum or a bit less than maximum and fully zoomed out. This way you’d be able to see a good part of the pitch. This helps a lot in passing accuracy and in attacking moves. Close camera angles help defence but can be disastrous for attacks. A nice useful radar would have solved the problem but FIFA’s radar is still not of PES quality. In terms of stadiums, try playing in those stadiums where you’d love to play. I play most of my matches in Camp Nou dusk or San Siro dusk. It’s very important because you don’t want any distraction for whatever reason. Let all settings be to your heart’s content.
And more importantly, play 10 minutes a half. A 20-minute match gives you enough time to try out everything you can. If you’re particular about playing possession football, you should have enough time as each attack would consume a lot of time for you. Don’t play 5-minute or 6-minute halves. Play 10-minute halves and you’ll understand the impact it makes on your game.
Why do we lose possession? That’s what I’m gonna talk about, today. As we all know, the opponent won’t score if he doesn’t have the ball (‘Gary Neville + Robinson’ comes to mind). So that means we need to have the ball as much as possible. In 08, we complained about all possible things for not being able to keep possession. Now that most of those things have been fixed. The players respond so quickly and if you’re on assist, the passes can be near perfect. So why do we lose the ball then? That could be because of various reasons. (a) late to react (b) trying a risky pass (c) unwilling to go backwards (d) delayed player select (e) poor vision (f) turn (g) lack of understanding of player capabilities.
(a) Late to react: This happens most of the time, especially when you’re new to the game. If you have not come to terms with the pace and responsiveness in the game, you wouldn’t know the exact timing to release the ball. Or you wouldn’t expect the opponent to close you down so soon. What happens here is you have the ball but you’re thinking what to do now because you have multiple options including your own pre-determined ones. Just when you’re about to pass (everytime it’s like that), the opponent steals the ball. How do we prevent this? You can obviously try to hold, shield and trap the ball. Otherwise, draw an imaginary circle around the player with a radius of about a yard. The moment an opponent threatens to break into that circle, pass the ball quickly to the nearest option. Don’t have to see if that would help you in the attack and all. Now you’re just trying to keep the ball. For you to make that quick pass, you should have options available around you. Safe and short passing sliders in custom tactics would help you there. This looks like a simple solution but it can be hard because you need to have that discipline. It’s much more difficult that it sounds. When you play like this you’ll even be worried how to set up your attack. This worry would make you deliver another incorrect pass and that’s it. So just maintain this 1-yard radius discipline and as the players make their movements, there would be spaces to exploit. You’ll be fine. Remember, one-twos are a great way to keep the ball.
(b) trying a risky pass: Because the game is so fluid and possible, we tend to play that hollywood pass every now and then. I’ve tried them many times. Those were the kind of passes, if you pull them off, would be very decisive ones. If you’re keen on keeping possession, there are the types of passes that are most easily avoidable. If you’re not fully confident that the ball would be received by your player, just simply don’t pass. Wait for a better opportunity. So every time, a second before you hit the pass button you should quickly answer this question – ‘am I 100% confident that my player will receive the ball’. Make the pass only if you think the answer is yes. Never pass to a marked player.
(c) unwillingness to go backwards: This is a very common mindset. Once we’ve started an attack, we don’t want to go backwards. Somehow, we’ll try to go forward and forward. That’s a psychological thing. There is nothing wrong in going backwards. Sending the ball backwards is much better than delivering a hurried nonsense pass. How many times we have delivered a useless cross because we were being closed down by the full back? What we should do is to have that maturity to pass it around even from the most delicious positions. Sometimes, certain passes and shots are too hard to resist, but if you do that you’ll feel that you’re completely in control of the game which improves your confidence.
(d) delayed player select: Not every unsuccessful pass is caused by the passer. The receiver might always mess up. So what you do is make the pass and quickly change the selected player and control the receiver and receive the pass carefully. Player select is a very important tool in football games. The one who performs timely and correct player selections, will have that additional amount of time on the ball than his opponent. Some of us ignore the importance of player select and pay less attention to it. I’ve set my player select to manual because I want to time my player selection myself. That might help for you too.
(e) Poor vision: The game is dynamic. The players are constantly moving. That’s why, the space that you saw is now gone by the time you hit the pass button. Every second that you delay your pass, the players keep moving and the existing gaps are being closed and new ones are being created. As you’re gearing to make the pass, look how players are moving and try to extrapolate to see how the field would be in a couple of seconds later. That’s vision. Being able to see what’s not there already. You should be able to guess and anticipate the spaces and gaps as the game moves along. Because the game is dynamic, what should have been a good pass could be a wasted possession and even the otherwise is possible. So, before you pass, ensure that the pass would be a successful one considering that the players are constantly moving.
(f) Turn: In the final third or in midfield, once you receive the ball, your natural next step is to turn the other side with the ball to face the goal. This is instinctive. You get the ball, you turn. You have an option to turn the right side or left side. You’ll have your marker to your right or left. If you receive your ball on your left, it is natural that you’d turn on the left side, so the AI would anticipate and nick the ball as soon as you turn. So what you need to do is, when the ball is travelling to you, see which side the marker is and turn on the other side. If you find this too difficult to do, there is a simple solution. When you receive the ball, don’t turn immediately. Just hold for a second or even go towards the direction from where the ball came, instead of turning. This whold e turn thing might look little and silly but in the game, it makes a big difference on how you handle it.
(g) lack of understanding of player capabilities: Sometimes how much ever you try to make an accurate short or long pass, you can still go wrong because the player you control may have poor passing abilities. You need to find out who’s the best passer in your team and use him for the special passes.
If you practice the above thoroughly, you might end up with 60% or more possession with a goal dry game. You may or may not score. And your opponent may score with just one corner. Don’t lose hope. Keep playing this way. What this will do is to make you very familiar with the player movements and reactions, their capabilities, ball physics, AI behaviour and a general feel of the game. Over a period of time, you’re going to be very confident on the ball. You would no longer be worried about the defenders that pressurise you, in fact you would welcome them because defenders applying pressure means lots of space to exploit!
The above is just to get you back in form. You don’t have to follow these always. Once you start winning and once you become confident of your capabilities, you can play the way you want..
Only a short preview today. Chelsea take on Liverpool today. The clash of No.1 and No.2 in the league is always going to be something special. Back in 06-07, Man Utd were in roaring form while Chelsea were just about catching them with winning from last minute efforts with undying spirit. Man Utd went on to win the league that season. This season, Chelsea and Liverpool are more like the Man Utd and Chelsea of 06/07, respectively.
In my previous post, I had talked about how some tweaking of the custom tactics for the opponent teams would make this game absolutely brilliant with variety and randomness. Thanks for your overwhelming response for that idea. As a result of your support, now I’m going to suggest you some custom tactic set ups for various types of opponents. My basic assumption is that you would be playing for a top team or a champions league team.
Relegation battlers: Let’s see how they normally play. Primarily, draw is a great result for them. They may not have matching skill or pace to weave an attack from back to front too often. They would go for route one football of hoofing it up to the target men or in the D-area in some hope. They may not be tactically sound in defending and organisation but they would make it up with spirited tackles and interceptions. They would defend in numbers while leaving very few in attack. They would cross a lot and given the opportunity, they’d rather shoot instead of wasting it with a hopeful further build up play. Build Up – Speed: 40 Passing: 85 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation – Passing: 30 Crossing: 80 Shooting: 55 Positioning: Organised. Defence – Pressure: 35 Aggression: 75 Team width: 20 Defender Line: Cover.
In build-up, they’re slow and long. That means when they have the ball in their own half, they won’t hurry up the attack and that they use a lot of long balls. Because they’ll use long balls, their attackers would position themselves to receive the long passes, which might give you some space in the midfield. In chance creation, they pass safely, cross and shoot a lot. In defence, they won’t chase you when you’re in your half but will get involved as you get closer to your final third. They’re also very aggressive in winning the ball from you. They wouldn’t mind a crunching tackle. Defender line should be set to cover if you want a challenging game.
Mid-tablers: Must be pretty average in attack and should concentrate on defending. They might have one or two star players and the rest should be decent but may not be good enough. I’d make quicker than the relegation battlers in build up speed. I’ll make it 50. The passing in build up should be 70 which means both short passes and long passes but still more of the latter. In chance creation I’d expect them to take more risks in passing so that would be 50 and I’d keep the crossing at 80 and bring down the shooting to 40 as I think they are more comfortable on the ball than the relegation battlers. In defence, I’d bring down the pressure to 30 as it would help with a quicker build up play, if the ball is won. I’d keep the aggression at 75 as I think that’s the ideal setting for aggression across all teams. I can put the team width to 30 as the defenders could be a bit better and hence should be able to make up the lateral distance. Build Up – Speed: 50 Passing: 70 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation – Passing: 50 Crossing: 80 Shooting: 40 Positioning: Organised. Defence – Pressure: 30 Aggression: 75 Team width: 30 Defender Line: Cover.
Euro-aspirants: These are good teams that may not have those five star players but still can give a great challenge to the biggies. They should have some skillful players and can be pacy. I’ll give them a 60 in build up play speed and passing in build up should be 55 or 60. This means they can play short passes as well as long passes. It’s more situational. The riskiness of passing in chance creation must be 65, which means they’ll go for the risky passes but they might have the players to back it up. Crossing should be 55 or 60 while shooting can be 50 or 60. Basically, they’ll rely less on crossing and more on passing and shooting. This could be different in various leagues, so I suggest you make you appropriate customisations. In positioning in chance creation, you can make it ‘free form’ for certain teams which would make the game lot more interesting and random. Pressure and aggression should remain as 30 and 75 respectively while the team width can be 40 or 45, which will help them cut down our crosses. I suggest you alwasy have the defender line as ‘cover’ across all teams. Build Up – Speed: 60 Passing: 60 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation – Passing: 65 Crossing: 55 Shooting: 60 Positioning: Freeform. Defence – Pressure: 30 Aggression: 75 Team width: 40. Defender Line: Cover.
For the champions league teams, especially the so-called big teams, the custom tactics set up for build up and chance creation is almost perfect already. But since the defence sliders are messed up, you might have to change that alone for them. Once again, pressure can be 30 and aggression 75. For a team like Chelsea if you set the aggression slider to 75, they might be a massive challenge to your attackers, because they have a top class defence and most of the team could tackle rather well. The team width can be 50 for teams which uses wing backs and 40 otherwise.
If you don’t know already, there are only 28 slots for saving custom tactics. That’s a shame. Anyway, I’m using it this way. 3 slots for my team (Chelsea), 1 for relegation battlers, 1 for mid-tablers, 1 for Euro-aspirants and 18 other slots for specific top teams which are Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City (love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t ignore ‘em!), Real Madrid, Barca, Sevilla, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Villareal, Inter, Milan, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina, Bayern, Lyon and Porto. Now this leaves 4 empty slots which can be used for the in-game tactical changes.
So I’ll have unique tactic setups for the above mentioned top teams and the other teams in English, Spanish and Italian leagues would get one of the tactics of (a) relegation battlers (b) mid-tablers (c) euro aspirants. As long as I’ve the teams fixed in the premier league, la liga and serie a, I’m fine. These leagues account for 90% of my matches. This might have left some leagues untouched. That’s fine. Either I don’t use them or I’m fine with the occasional random match where I can run past the defence through the centre. May be, I’d be playing samba football by then that I’d not think of route ones!
XBOX 360 users – These tactics are saved in my FIFA 09 locker (XBL: bluechampblogger)
PS3 users – Click on the below image and update the values manually.
Custom Tactics Values
P.S: The slider values are ased on my own opinions and preferences. Please change it for yourself if you wish. Don’t need to bash me but certainly we can have a matured discussion on what the sliders should be. But I have tested the above values and they work for me superbly.
When the match was nearing the one-hour mark, I was just thinking that this was John Terry’s best match for many months. And this happened in a match where Carvalho also played. Terry was in a very positive frame of mind. He made those crunching tackles, crucial interceptions and even made some interesting runs. But I didn’t think he could get the man of the match award ahead of Mikel. And then came his fantastic header. The header was very reminiscent of his tremendous winner which was Chelsea’s amazing fourth goal of the match against Barcelona at the Bridge few seasons back.
I think I’ve found the ideal camera setting for FIFA 09. It is TELE and then in custom, both height and zoom should be zero. This way the camera angle like you’re watching from the stands. You see a lot of pitch at the same time, you feel closer to the players so your moves and tackles can be followed better. Some time you’re also shown some parts of the stands which adds to the excitement. In this camera set up, I feel closer to the game than ever before. May be, it’s looks more like the telecast of matches at Stamford Bridge, which between the telecast angles of erstwhile Highbury (which was very close like you’re standing on the pitch) and that of Camp Nou (which is very far that you see the full rectangle of the pitch most of the times).
Try it out and let me know.
I love this game. As I get better I realise that very often the scoring happens to be from a throughball that results in on one-on-one situation, which you can finish with a finesse shot. Nowadays, it is happening too very often. This is what people complain as ‘route one football’ of FIFA 09. This is not a bug or a glitch. I’ll explain you why this happens and I’ll also suggest you a solution which would make your game lot more tactical and lateral. If you haven’t experienced this one-on-one thingy, you are not spoilt yet.
See this game plays so beautifully that you can almost score a goal anyway you want. You can build up to the goal to your heart’s content. When there is an easy way out, you can exploit it. You don’t want to exploit that because you want realism and simulation as much as possible. When you’re playing a league or a cup competition, when you badly need a goal, you’d get it cheaply but wouldn’t really enjoy it. Am I right? This “throughball + one on one” happens to be one such quick way of scoring. I don’t want route one football and I don’t need a readymade way of scoring a goal.
Lot of people have written and said that this game rewards only route one football and does not reward or even facilitate patient build up football with lateral movement. That’s primarily because of the number of one-on-ones that people have seen so far in the game. When you keep zipping throughballs to the centre one-on-ones, it’s not fun. You are unchallenged. You have one quick way to get out of jail. It subconsciously restricts your creative thinking in building the game up and does not encourage you to play enterprising football. So why does this happen? I’ll break the suspense upfront. It’s all because of the custom tactics set up of your opponent teams.
I was playing against Real Madrid the other night. Throughball right through the centre, one-on-one to Drogba, goal! I was thinking how this could happen. It can’t be that I’m too good at this game. I ruled that out. In reality, they would have floored Drogba instead of watching sprint through 30 yards. The defenders didn’t even make a decent attempt to stop Drogba.So I went about investigating further. If you see the custom tactics set up of Real Madrid, you’ll understand.
Go to the defence numbers in custom tactics for Real Madrid. Pressure is 65. Aggression is 35. Team width is 65. What does this mean? The 65 for pressure means that the Real Madrid players would start pressurising you quite high on the pitch. When they pressurise, with the kind of responsiveness in FIFA 09, you can quickly exploit the gap created by the pressure with a quick throughpass and boom. But why don’t their defenders jockey, tackle and give Drogba a hard time? Because the aggression is set at 35. This means they won’t really pounce on you. They would try to contain you but won’t tackle you hard. At least they must be blocking Drogba in numbers right? No they won’t because the team width is set at 65. That shows that the defence will not narrow down at the back. They would in fact be quite wide and spread, and in case of a quick attack, their full backs will not be able to come to rescue. Goodness me, they also have the defender line as offside trap – good movement or bad movement, they’re in it together, the back four.
So now, what settings for Real Madrid here would have challenged Drogba? Pressure is not quite effective without aggression. And I don’t want the defender to be activated so high on the pitch. I’d put the pressure in the region of 30-35. Aggression should be between 70 and 80. This way, you won’t have it easy. It would be a massive challenge to get through. AI will tackle you, would even foul you and might double the pressure by asking one more defender to help stop you. Your route one football would be effectively over here. The more your ’striker runs’ are intercepted by the opposition defence, you’ll start thinking of how else to play, build up and score.
So what have I done here. For certain top teams, I have gone and edited the custom tactics set up so that they don’t play like absolute idiots. And then I have created certain standard set ups. For instance, relegation battlers. They all mostly play very similarly. So I have personally edited their custom tactics to reflect their deep defending, hard tackling, long balling etc. But I did not want to do this for all of them individually. I started with Stoke City. Edited the custom tactics for them. And then for the similar teams, I just pointed their custom tactics to this saved custom tactics of Stoke City. So simple.
As per the original set up, Stoke had a fast build up play. The players are not as fast as Chelsea players. So when they play fast build up and lose the possession high up on the pitch, they won’t even tackle because of the original defence set up in custom tactics and they can’t even catch up a monster like Didier Drogba. If they lose the ball in my half, it could be a matter of two or three passes, before you see another one of those Didier Drogba goals. Not anymore. Now they will tackle me, challenge me, double up on me and even crowd in the centre. Lovely isn’t it? That’s no guarantee for Stoke City that they won’t concede, it only improves their defence. Remember, we’re not trying to boost any statistics here. If that Stoke defender is rated only 55 in tackling, when you set the their team aggression to 75 or 80, this 55-rated defender would do as much as possible in the framework of his own capabilities.
Apart from the unique tactics I’d like to customise and keep for the champions league teams, I would create more such generalised customised custom tactics for groups like relegation battlers, mid-tablers, euro-aspirants etc. My special concern would be on editing the defence set ups. I’m already half way through this. I love my games now. AI gives me a tough fight through the centre forcing me to come up with new ideas to break it up. With the gameplay of FIFA 09 at my disposal, I love this challenge!
Finally, if you’re fine with the game as it is, no worries. Don’t tweak anything. Just enjoy your game. Also if you’re finding the game already difficult enough, good for you. Keep trying. But just keep checking if your goals are from everywhere and if your goals are produced from varied types of attacks. The moment you realise that all that you do is one-on-ones, use this little tutorial. But remember, one-on-ones are not bad. They are in real football so they must be in FIFA 09 as well. I’m just saying that the proportion should also stay true.
If you think that you’re unable to control the game as much as you’d like to, set the passing in chance creation in custom tactics to somewhere around 30 which means safe passing. If you do this alongwith 30 or 40 for passing in build up, there will always be players around you to pass the ball and you can slowly build up and play your game. Having made these tweaks, I’m enjoying this game so much. The quality of my football has really improved and I’m truly enjoying the way I play. Now I have multiple options in mind, I’m trying out new things. Heck, I’ve strarted to use crossing as a weapon and even putting corners to good use! Let’s use the game to its fullest potential!
P.S: (a) I’m referring only to the offline games. (b) I play in ‘professional’ difficulty. (c) I use ‘assisted’ for pass, cross and through. ’semi’ for shots and ‘manual’ for lob pass.