The Secret Combination

How to overwhelm the defense

The Secret Combination

I discovered something that works really well as I made this tactic.

The thing that works is to combine Inverted Wingbacks, a Libero, and two Segundo Volantes.

It’s actually pretty simple. The two Segundo Volantes play as attacking midfielders when we have the ball, going maybe two or three steps behind the Advanced Playmaker. They do well because they tend to be unmarked by the defense, which usually doesn’t know how to respond to attacking players that arrive late.

This is realistic, by the way — at least according to my reading of Inverting The Pyramid. Sending players forward and giving the defense something to worry about means the players behind them generally have all sorts of space. This can be almost impossible to defend.

As I mentioned earlier, the Libero then comes in behind the Segundo Volantes to fill up the space they no longer occupy.

And the genius in this tactic is to have the wide players also come to the middle at the same time.

That gives us attacking movements where we have something like 8 players moving forward all at the same time — something that Football Manager defenses simply can’t deal with:

Normally I’d worry about being hit by the counter attack. However, our Libero and our Inverted Wingbacks tend to do a good job at getting back quickly. And this is where pace and acceleration become extremely important.

I’d love to know what you think!