When you have followed this blog, you will have noticed that I have a quirky kind of love for strange formations, for peculiar settings and for tactics that are different than they might appear at first sight. The entire blog is named after a rather alien concept in football, so I guess it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that I generally try to think outside of the proverbial box. The Medusa tactic, which is bound to cause a few fits for people with tactical OCD, is a nice example of my desire to push the limits of what FM is capable of.

The underlying idea behind this Medusa setup is that the concept of an absolute formation is simply erroneous. It’s a myth, a legend, a tale of football lore, which has been crammed into our heads by overzealous analysts, experts, pundits and newspapers, in their efforts to oversimplify the reality of what happens on a football pitch, in an effort to explain their ideas to the masses at home. Though their intentions were good, it has lead to some misunderstandings regarding the entire concept of formations.

There is no such thing as playing a 4-4-2 formation, seeing as no 4-4-2 lines up in the exact same way in terms of how they take to the field and move around on the pitch. Every team has at least an attacking shape, a defensive shape and a transitional shape. You don’t play with a back four the entire time, you play with three at the back when going forward, as one of your wingbacks joins the midfield, four at the back when transitioning between attack and defence and perhaps five at the back when defending, as a midfielder may drop back to help out the defenders. The same concept applies to pretty much any formation. In basic FM-terminology, the shape on the pitch varies dependant on the phase of play, the team instructions and the roles of the players.

It doesn’t matter how crazy, absurd or obscene the formation looks like on paper, the team instructions, fluidity and individual player roles determine how the team lines up on the pitch during the various stages of play. Take this Medusa formation for example.

It looks obscene, almost as if a toddler aimlessly arranged the players on a whiteboard and someone figured it might make for a nice formation. It looks strange, unbalanced and unhinged, randomly cobbled together. Yet when you look at what happens on the pitch, it seems to make sense somehow.

In case you are not accustomed to the ProZone tool FM offers, the picture above shows you three things. First of all, the colouration shows you a heat map for the entire team. Heat maps are used by FM to identify the frequency of events spread in a given particular area. Basically, the map gets heated up in areas where the player has had more control of the ball and does most of his work, i.e., it turns redder as the player’s presence in particular areas of the pitch increases.

Secondly, it shows you the average positions of the players when we have possession of the ball and the team assumes its offensive shape. These positions are represented by the green(ish) dots with the squad numbers on the pitch. Thirdly and rather similarly to the previous points, the image shows you the average positions of the players when we have lost possession and line up in our defensive shape.

When we examine the various setups more closely, we can see that there is some sort of method to all this madness. In a way, the offensive setup could be characterised as a lopsided 2-5-3(-0) shape, as the inverted wingbacks move forward to link up with the regular midfielders. In a way, I took the traditional 4-3-3 formation and tilted it, causing it to become top-heavy on the left-hand side, which was the main reasoning behind dropping one of the wingbacks down a notch as well as one of the midfielders, in order to protect the balance of the team.

Attacking is not all about mastering one-on-one situations. It is about vision, movement, smoothness, and a sense of spaces. The roles I have selected generate a unique brand of football and specific patterns of attack. The Trequartista is a mobile creator who plays slightly deeper than the other two forwards. This allows the Inside Forward space to cut inside, whereas the Shadow Striker keeps defenders pinned back with his vertical movement.

In this tactic, I aimed to use the standard attack pattern of the Inside Forward to my advantage to overload the central area. When the Inside Forward cuts inside from the wing, be it to take a shot or to make a pass, he forces the opposing team to readjust their defensive line, which in turn opens up space somewhere. When the ball is moved quickly from one flank to the other, this kind of diagonal movement can often lead to a generous amount of space and a clear cut chance.

What looked like an insane setup on paper, translates into a pretty lean and effective formation on the pitch. The right combination of roles, team instructions and fluidity can help you pull this off. The Trequartista drops back a bit, drawing the attention of the central defender. As the Inside Forward cuts inside to get on the end of the cross-pass, the central defender fails to notice this diagonal movement, which results in an easy goal for the inverted winger.

Defensively, the team lines up in a far more traditional 4-3-3(-0) formation, though with the obvious lopsided favour towards the left-hand side. Again, it looks I tilted the traditional 4-3-3 formation to the left side, with a compact midfield that shields the two central defenders and the two wingbacks who are left to protect the flank. The forward three are mostly used to pressure the opposing team into playing long balls.

In the formation above, the central players are close enough together to be connected, ensuring a compactness within the shape. At this point, the benefits of compactness come into effect, as they can control the maximum amount of space whilst retaining the benefits of a compact block. As the ball is played wide, the team shuffles towards the wide threat, maintaining its cohesive form.

Anyway, now that I have explained what makes this tactic tick and how it works, here’s the download link.

Guido Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.

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