Top Eleven Formation - Tactics: How they work.
To understand the tactical choices in Top Eleven, you must see them as tiny parts of a machine, formations included. They can’t be taken apart as they are part of a whole. You must understand what you are doing like if it were real players in a real match. After all, you don’t see Pep Guardiola managing Barcelona using 3 strikers and 3 attacking midfielders and ordering them to play defensively while chasing the ball all over the pitch trying man-on-man marking, do you?.
Top Eleven Formation - Mentality.
This is the measurement of how much your players will attempt to go forward and attack. Defensive mentality means they’ll play cautiously, and attacking mentality means that even your defenders will move forward to support your attacks. It also affects how much your players will shoot, cross and pass, which could lead to goals (good), losing possession (bad) and even counter-attacks (awful).
Top Eleven Formation - Pitch pressure.
This is the measurement of how far into the pitch your players will “chase” the ball.
Own half means that once the ball is in your opponent’s possession and within your half of the field, available players within their marking reach will attempt to take the ball away from the attacking player.
Whole pitch means that all your players will attempt to take away the ball from all opponents within their marking reach no matter where they are. This tires the players more, but as you gain control of the ball further into the opposing side of the pitch, it also improves your chances at goal. Of course, it also means that all your players will be further up the pitch, leaving you vulnerable to counter-attacks.
Top Eleven Formation - Flank, mixed and central passing.
This is where you choose where most of your passes will be, or where your players will try to move the ball from and to. Among the most important tactics, as this is the “steering wheel” of your formation.
This can make or break a formation if chosen right or wrong. Obviously, in order to use flank passing, you need a formation with wingers and in order to use centre passing effectively, you need players in the middle.
Top Eleven Formation - Some like it short others love them long (passes).
Short passing: High ball possession, a lot of time between plays. Needs a solid midfield that can feed passes to the forwards.
Long passing: Low ball possession, little time between plays. This passes may fly past opposing midfielders and land successfully near a striker. Ideal for counter-attacking football.
Top Eleven Formation - Tackling.
This is the intensity with which your players will try to disposes the opponent.
-Easy tackling. Use this if your opponent has a high skill free kick specialist or if you don’t want to risk getting penalised, specially if your players have low form.
-Normal tackling. This is what you’ll use most of the time, a decent tackling rate without having to deal with too many free kicks and cards.
-Hard tackling. Use this when playing against better teams, specially those without Free kick specialists. Using hard tackling and having defensive wall defenders and a good goalkeeper is a good strategy. Be aware that players with low form will get penalised very often with this kind of tackling.
Top Eleven Formation - Marking style
By far, the most difficult tactical aspect to understand, adapt and use. There are too many factors that affect and are affected by marking type to write a simple walk-through: Length of passes, crosses and shots, difference in defender VS striker quality, formations, condition… The best I can do is point the guidelines to help understand when to use each kind of marking.
Top Eleven Formation - Man-on-man marking:
This kind of marking means that every player is assigned an opposing player. They’ll chase that player wherever he goes when defending and only leave his side when attacking. Defenders are assigned to block strikers, defensive midfielders and wing-backs are assigned to block attacking midfielders, midfielders are assigned to block the opponent’s and lastly, strikers are assigned to mark the occasional attacking defenders.
For the above reasons, man-on-man marking is only useful if your formation has enough defenders to stop the strikers, enough defensive midfielders to stop the attacking midfielders and so on.
There is a definite advantage of man-on-man marking over zonal when it comes to intercepting long passes, through balls and specially blocking long shot attempts. The downside is that since only one player is marking, if the opponent manages to dribble or nutmeg past his marker, he’ll be in the clear unless the defender is much faster and catches up.
Notes: If the opposing strikers are better than your defenders, don’t ever use man-on-man marking. it also works the other way around, if your defenders are better you should probably use it.
One of the best ways to lower your opponent’s possession is to use man-on-man marking, as his players will be forced to try to dribble, nutmeg, shoot, cross or pass earlier instead of holding the ball around the zone.
Top Eleven Formation - Zonal marking
A much more modern approach to marking. Players are entrusted with an specific part of the field (zone) and then marks any attacker that enters his zone. This also means than more than 1 player will mark an attacker that enter their zone. In Top Eleven, this zone is defined as 1 “square” away from the player in every direction.
Zonal marking is like “minesweeper”, in the picture below you can see a 4-4-2 formation (left) and how many players are guarding a square zone (right).
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Zonal marking allows a greater number of formations; not having to limit your defense to fit your opponent’s exact attack. The downside of zonal marking is that it leaves open spaces that can be exploited by long shots and that it allows your opponent to take his time when in possession of the ball, which isn’t a good idea if you are behind in the score.
Top Eleven Formation - Free kick, corner kick and penalty takers.
Free kicks come in 2 kinds: Shots on goal and crosses. For those reasons, your free kick takers should have high shooting and crossing skills.
Corner kicks: They are crosses from either side of the opponent’s goal. Your corner kick takers should be right footed for right corner kicks and left footed for left corner kicks and in both cases have high crossing skill. Using the correct footed player is very important, as a plain right footed player will be better crossing a right corner kick than a left footed corner specialist (unless he also has a much higher crossing skill).
Penalties: Hard to stop even for the best goalkeepers. Your designated penalty kick taker should have high shooting skill.
Top Eleven Formation - Force counter and offside trap.
-Force counter: With this tactic you allow the opposing players to come forth into your half of the pitch before you attempt to deposes them and send a long pass or through ball in a fast counter-attack that catches the defenders off-guard. If successful, the defenders will be too far up to catch the counter attacker, if unsuccessful, you let the opponent run uncontested into your half.
Since you are letting the opponent run free until they are in an attacking position, using force counter leads to an obvious and voluntary loss of possession.
Force counter can only work while pressing your own half. Defensive mentality is highly recommended as you don’t want to let the opponent into your half and have all your players on his own at the same time.
-Offside trap: This style of play means that your defenders will try to stay ahead of the opponent’s attackers so they can’t receive passes of any kind. If successful, the opponent won’t be able to get close enough to the goal, if unsuccessful, the attacker will be able to out-run the defender. For that reason, offside trap requires very fast defenders.
Offside trap can only work while pressing the whole pitch, as you need your defenders to try and stay as far up as they can. This also means that offside trap is much better suited for attacking mentality.
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Originally Posted by Nigel Baker
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