The 442 Academy
An iconic tactic is back for Football Manager 2019
Who doesn’t love a good and versatile 442 tactic for Football Manager? There a lot of 451 and 4231 tactics around but there’s not enough love for the old 442, what I’m going to describe here it’s not a plug & play tactic, but something better, a solid framework for many tactical variations to suit different scenarios.
My idea was to create a 442 to be used for underdogs and to do that I needed an underdog team to manage, you should know I’m in love with Italian leagues this year and so I picked the worst club in Serie A to test this setup: newly promoted Frosinone (media prediction 20th).
There were some players missing from the squad so I had to sign a bunch of youngsters, mainly on loan due to budget restrictions, to be able to play my 442 all season long.
I had that famous Sacchi’s Milan 442 tactic in mind while developing this one, to be fair it won’t be a replica of it, but many concepts used by the tactician from Fusignano influenced me; that Milan took down Europe, of course I have less ambitious goals for Frosinone.
Pressing is not about running and hard work, it’s about controlling the space (A.Sacchi)
From Sacchi’s point of view the opponent team confidence is broken by disrupting their usual way of playing, to obtain such a result the team should work like a unit where every player needs to participate to pressing tactics.
I’m sure you all know what 442 weak point is nowadays, you’re often outnumbered in central midfield, the only way to fix this issue is to stay compact, if all the players work together you could minimize this issue.
Somehow 442 has still plenty to offer even in Football Manager, a great cover of the pitch for example.
Sacchi used different types of pressing during a game: partial pressing, total pressing (to win the ball back), fake pressing etc..Milan knew when to press hard and when to keep their shape and regroup.
Sacchi’s Milan did not press all the time highly nor did they always counterpress. It very much depended on the match plan.
They knew when to drop back to regain a good defensive shape and then start pressing again, here the difference from gegenpressing for example.
Key points of Sacchi’s 442
- Playing short (the 25 metres rule)
- Compactness (three lines of players)
- A proactive zonal defensive model, employing a high line and offside trap
- Multi-purpose players better than specialist
Ideally, you should always have five players beyond the line of the ball while attacking (A. Sacchi)
Before I start talking about how I set my Sacchi inspired 442 with Frosinone, I need to show you some screenshots about my first season, just to intrigue you a bit.
The season surely went better than expected, Europa league qualification in season one is a clear sign of overachievement, but most importantly our setup worked amazingly well if you consider my players overall limited skills.
It’s time to take a look at the tactic…
I’m quite satisfied with the overall balance reached with this tactic, playing narrow and adopting a high defensive line help us to stay compact and improve our passing and possession percentage.
But there’s more, the team with the ball usually can control the pace of the game simply changing tempo.
I start almost every game with a mid-tempo but then I move it up or down while watching the game (always on comprehensive mode), if the opponent moves forward and start to put my midfield and my defensive line under pressure I tend to raise our tempo to move the ball quicker and take advantage of an unbalanced team.
Another setting I like to change is our behaviour when the ball has been lost, regroup is really useful while trying to protect a lead or when facing a rampaging superior opponent.
Once again reading the game well is vital to understand when and how to make small tweaks.
If you check the roles you could see that forward runs are limited in my tactic, they tend to disrupt team shape, so limiting them it’s another way to improve compactness.
Roles and players instructions
I didn’t use any OI’s in this first season, regarding the rest have a read below.
Keeper: playing always with a high defensive line a sweeper keeper looks like an obvious choice, I could try to be more expansive for the future and change from defend to support.
DC’s: two very basic defenders with good anticipation and positioning values and no PI’s.
Right and left back: two full backs on support duty, instructed to take fewer risks as well.
Wingers: the creative forces of my attack, they run with the ball from deep positions and are a constant threat for the opponents.
Mc’s: the DLP-carrillero partnership could look a bit odd and too conservative, but I really needed players who could stay in the middle of the pitch without going forward too much, they’re set to play a more direct passing game, this way they’re more prone to look for a striker instead of moving too often the ball to my flankers.
Strikers: a target man and a pressing forward, two hard-working men that served the squad well, Pinamonti and Trotta scored respectively 10 and 11 goals this year.
Not exactly Van Basten and Gullit but still useful.
The pressing forward run with the ball often to break the enemy lines.
That’s all for now guys, let me know your thoughts and feel free to ask more, if there’s enough interest I could continue this Frosinone save and write other stuff about how the team and the tactic could evolve.
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