Originally Posted by
Al Svanberg
Tactician- I agree with a lot of what you say, but in other cases I think you are way to cathegoral. Even if you tell your players to prefer to take long passes, there will of course still be short passes made in a soccer game. Have you ever seen a real soccer game where only short/long passes are made? Like I said, you cannot think of it like you are playing a game of chess, where if you move your queen you move your queen. A coach ordering his player to make the long pass in a soccer game would in a real game result in what, 3-4% more long passes being made? 10%? You don't set your players to only make long passes, a soccer team making a lot of long passes means that they in a few transition plays send long passes on a target striker instead of going through the midfielders. Most passes in a soccer game is other type of passes that are not long/short, but passes made with the back against the field, under pressure, up field and what not. And even besides that, the players aren't robots. They don't do what the coach tells them to do always.
BTW I don't understand your comment on the man-man issue. It's of course possible to play man-man if you are down a man. It's not like the defending team short a player would just stand and look if the player "left out" would get the ball. I am not even sure it matters if you play man-man or zonal, I've never tried and just guessed at man-man. The problem is this. With that formation you are good offensively, which I recon is warranted. BUT, you should be exposed defensively. With a DL-DC-DR defensive line, the DL and DR will be quite offensive when you have be ball. They will support the wingers, go up field and cross balls etc. But they are not exposed defensively to the extent they should be. From my POV, in real soccer that would be a suicide strategy. That is why there -- never -- have been a team at any kind of level that have played with one DC in real soccer. Hence I think Nordeus should tinker with the engine since it's so successful in TE. Defensively it works like you have 3 DCs and offensively like you have wing backs. That would be suicide in a real game, shouldn't be able to have both in TE.