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ive just taken my first job as an international manager! ive had plenty of of offers in the past but have never felt intereseted enough to indulge in the international scene! so anyway i got offered the sweden job just before the 2010 world cup and for the first time i thought why not!!
after checking out the team i realised i had a job on to get anywhere in the forthcoming tourney with a squad that would do very well not to get relegated from the EPL! apart from olof mellberg, lundberg and zlatan ibrahimovic the squad was very poor imo!
i mostly play a normal 4-4-2 without much deviation! my belief is that my team should defend as a team and attack as a team therefore with the right settings i should always have a solid base that should be hard to beat! the only thing that should change imo, is team mentality to combat different quality, style and mentality of teams!
i believe i have that tactic with a 19-0-0 home record and 7-5-7 away record in the EPL which is very bad for me!
so i employ this tactic for my sweden squad and my group is japan, paraguay and england!
1st game v japan i win 1-0 comfortably with no real threat coming from them!
2nd game is 0-0 v paraguay, despite a few chances they never came out of their half and produced 0 shots all game!
3rd game v england and i won 2-0 comfortably and fully deserved with england only mustering 3 shots all game and being outplayed for most of it!
so i gain confidence and think now that maybe a semi-final is possible if i get the right games and avoid the top teams!
my first knockout match was against croatia. they employed similar tactics to paraguay and in the 39th minute they score a good goal and we go in at HT 1-0 down with them having 1 shot 1 on target and me having 4 shots 3 on target!
i decide not to change anything yet and go out in the second telling the team they could win it! but the clock goes straight to 55 mins so i click tactics and make changes taking off 2 poor performers (playing 6s) and changing my tactic around to try and break down the opposition! click on play and low and behold the clock goes straight to 70 mins without so much as a gust of wind to show for it! so i bring on my last sub and change things up a bit more to try and get back into it! but alas the clock runs down and the "sweden wont believe they lost this" is rubbed in my face! the stats finish at 4 shots 3 on target for me and 1-1 for croatia with a 67% possession in my favour! leaving me with 4 years to wait to try and fix whatever i did wrong!
ive deliberately not said what i changed as i would like to hear what people would do in this situation and i dont really want people to come on and try to tell me where i went wrong as i'd like to see if people would have done it my way and not use my failure as a base to a remedy!
like i said i play a flat 4-4-2 with and attacking mentality (16-17) not much creative freedom throughout the team, passing style is short (3-4) and tempo is set to 1. width is set to top notch of normal, time wasting is rare and a normal defensive line with easy tackling!
this is how i started the match! i would like to know what you would do to combat the situation that arrived?
It may sound strange, but i would move from attacking to normal mentality, set passing style to about 7, and tempo likewise. Def line a little deeper (one or two notches). The reason why is I would want to draw the opposition out their box (deeper def line + normal mentality should do it) + create more chanses even if they are not the best (passing + tempo). Imo very short passing style is good when you want to control, but when you are trailed it is not working very well. I would also question team passion to win the game at half time.
I do not know your individual settings (crossing, marking, etc.), but imo it is not something to change during the game.
Your tempo was too low, even though you attacked the opposition they were not put under too much pressure as they had time to get back into defensive positions.
Of course you dominated possession you just didn't have a cutting edge, especially after going a goal down.
i was also aware that things needed changing so at 55 mins i changed things around when i brought my underperformers off! what i did was increase both passing and tempo to a more direct and quick style! i also increased width to v.wide and i even lowered my team mentality! but only to 13 from 17
i'm pleased to see others (well at least 1!) who think my way but the trouble is that the clock continued to run down to 70 mins despite this! so i stopped the game again...
so anyway (i was caught up b4) i had no option at 70 mins but to go all out attack, max tempo and max tackling/closing down, max width and max DL! but it didnt work, it seemed for this game nothing would and the remainder of the clock ran down. (thats a full half without 1 highlight on extended!) anyone else shed some light on what i shoulda done???
It's difficult to say. You made changes at 55th and at 70th. What would have happened if you hadn't change anything at 70th? Maybe you could have scored at 71th or 90th. Or maybe you would have gone down by one more. All I can tell that I would never go all out attack before 85th. Because if AI has parked a bus in front of their goals, going more attacking rarely helps.
well theres the dilemma! but you cant just sit there and hope! it seems to me nothing would have worked which is a shame as i would of liked to have had 1 shot to look at and i had both CMs on long shots too! i disagree about all out attack though as the only downside would be to concede again, which didnt happen and there really was no other option in my eyes. you need to attack to score goals!!
it seems that you need to do something specific in order to win some matches but i dont believe there to be any rhyme or reason to what that thing is! it could be anything! for instance i replayed a game when it first came out as i was baffled by the result so i replayed a few times without making any changes and had similar results so the first change i made was not a tactical one but a player change! just the 1 change, my right winger for a much weaker, just out of reserves right winger and i won the match 3-0 after a run of replayed results without scoring and losing abysmally everytime! i cant see the rhyme or reason for such a turnaround for making a 'poor' change to personnel (without hindsight!) theres no way i could of known as it was the 1st game of the season! another time a change of just 1 on my mentality transformed a result in the same why!
i believe its this that ruins the game for lots of players as the random aspect is just too great to ever work out!!
Assuming my 442 was solid, and if at half time I was a goal down. I'd be looking out to understand how the goal came about. If it came through the centre and there are loads of chances happening that way, I'd reduce width as an option. If I was dominating possession and not creating chances then I'd want them to come out of their half more..so I would reduce my D-line and choose counter attack. Now if at halftime I find that the morale levels were low I'd target specific players, failing which I'd consider making sub changes by the 60th min.
What would you do? 
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