Interview Sketch - The Prof - (don't ask here plz)

[IImaestroII]

FORUMERS QUESTIONS:
SillyBQ:
What are your orders when you play hard attacking and when you play hard defending?

I'm an attacking minded manager and i always play Hard attack, i like my team to play more in the oppo half than mine but some times i use also other mentalitys according to the opposition way of playing and %.

Playing a high defensive line is a high risk style of playing and you need good players and the right formation , cause basically you are leaving a lot of space behind your defeners. The advantage of playing in this way is that you force the opposition team to lose the ball by doing mistakes ( wrong passes ) and once they lose it your team is more close to the goal.


By keeping the defensive line high , you decidehow much space the opposition team have to play, but in order to keep this space you need a " virtual chain " and this chain is the offside trap. once they manage to pass the D line the trap will kill the oppo counter attack. But if you play vs a good team that play defensive mentality it will be difficult to play such a high D line cause they can "escape" your press with a good passing pattern and exploit the space behind your defence.



My Orders when i play hard attacking:
- focus passing - mixed ( but can change according to the opposition )
- type of passing- short most of times ( i chnage it sometimes to mixed when i low my mentality )
- Fource counter ON ( but sometimes i change , explanation below )

Force counter:The role of this commad need to be explained cause is not always clear to many
Basically it says to give up possession in order to have chances by countering fast the opposition. So is a
Tempo command.

Force counter OFF ( SLOW Tempo ) : This should be used when you want max possession , and it says to
your players " once you get the ball , keep it ". they will play patiently till
they found space to exploit ( TIKI-TAKA)
Force counter ON ( HIGH Tempo ) : This should be used when you want you team to play more fast, they
will not waste time by keeping the ball and they will perform high
speed counters to reach oppo goal, and you will see more shots from
player than passes ( an example is Kloop Liverpool style of playing)

So i usually play short pass+ counter ON, is a balance between good poss% and good amount of chances, when i'm winning like 4-0 and want to
waste time last 20/30 mins i switch counter off .

-High pressing ( sometimes low press if the oppo is really weaker so i don't need to waste too much energy )
-Zonal marking ( i only use MTM if i'm really much stronger and want to close the game fast )

-Hard tackle: Tackling is very important cause determines the team aggressivity and if you play hard attacking is a must cause if oppo team manage to pass the press you need to kill the counter by doing the offside trap or ( if they fail it ) a hard tackle risking a card. Some say " i don't use hard tackle cause the risk of a red card is too high " but this depends on how much poss% you are doing , if your team have more time with the ball than your opponent they will not need to do much fouls. I played many seasons with hard tackles and i don't even remeber the last time i got a red .

-Offside ON : is a must like i explained before


When i play hard defending ?

I play hard defending i some cases

1- When opposition team is playing defensive, like i said before play a high line vs a defensive team can be a huge risk so what i do to beat defensive teams is "Counter the Counter". The aim of the defensive team is to exploit the space behind your defenders, ok, so why giving them that space ? you need to "counter the counter", lure them out, sit more back than them and they will come at you. They will leave space behind them and you will counter that.

2-When i play vs a much stronger team ( like 15+%) that play attacking( or hard attacking ) mentality, while against stronger team that play normal mentality hard defending is not much good ( from my experience ) cause they don't concede much space behind them and your team is to far from that line to perform an effective counter so in this cases i play normal+low press ( or defensive + high press ) in order to stop them near the midfield line( this helped me a lot in many events that Nordues did where there are 40% stronger teams, like the last one we had )

3- When i want to keep a result but only in the last 10 mins