MAGIC DEZERBI BALL

Hello guys, this is my emulation of Roberto De Zerbi's 4-2-3-1 at Brighton. I tested it with Real Valladolid, a team  18th in Spanish Liga in reality and we finished 4th and qualified for Champions League 2023-24. 

Let's give a brief introduction to the tactic

As you can see from the tactic screenshot here, the tactic has an attacking mentality, I tried starting with a balanced mentality in the first 3 games of the Spanish Liga to avoid allowing too much space to stronger opponent (Real Valladolid is weaker than many other teams in the Liga) but I noticed that my team struggled to score and shoot while conceeding too much changes to the opponent. I decided to try an attacking mentality and the tactic started to work, after it I have never changed anything neither did I reloaded the game after losing a game, I managed to finish 4th, winning both games against Real Madrid and one against Barça too. 

When his team is in possession, De Zerbi wants to play short passing game with higher tempo and play out of defense, inviting the opponent players to press his players and to trick the opponent. In Football Manager 2023, we can replicate this setting much shorter passing and play out of defense, a fairly wide width and an higher tempo so that our team can maintain possession. Crosses are mixed, it depends also on the type of forward you have in your team. We have Sergio Leon as central forward in Valladolid (he has 13 in Heading, 11 in jumping reach) he is only 178cm tall so not a really good header and the same goes for other forwards Oscar Plano, Gonzalo Plata and Darwin Machis who played as wingers and advanced midfielder. But we had some good heading goals in our season. Leon scored 15 goals, Plano 14 playing as AMC, Machis 9 playing as Inverted winger on the left, Monchu 8 playing both as defensive midfielder and AMC when Plano was injured, Ivan Sanchez 7 goals in 11 games playing as a replacement for Gonzalo Plata as Winger on the right, Amallah 6 goals in 12 games playing as AMC, Roque Mesa 4 goals playing as Volante. 

In the transition phase, our team does counter-press and counter-attacking, the goalkeeper can pass the ball both to central defenders and full back and kicks it short.

When the opponent has the ball, our team has an higher pressing line but a standard defensive line in order to avoid conceeding too many chances to the opponent when they play long passes from their defense or their Goalkeeper. The trigger pressing is set to more often and I want my team to prevent the opponent goal-keeper's short distribution.

Let's analyze now the roles and tasks of each player

Goalkeeper: Sweeper-keeper- support (S. Asenjo played very well in this role)

Right back:  full-back, support: Take less risks, cross less often, dribble more, shoot less often, stay wider. Ivan Fresneda played in this role for Valladolid, he had a great season, he is one of the best wonderkids in the game and probably the best young right back. 

Central defenders: central defender-defense: take less risks, close down less. Javi Sanchez and El Yamiq played as central defenders, not the best duo but we did not have any budget to buy other players. 

Left-back: Full-back, attack: take less risks, dribble more, shoot less often, stay wider: Sergio Escudero played in this role and scored 1 goal and made 9 assists, he played very well on the left flank together with the inverted winger, Machis. 

Defensive Midfielder Left: defensive midfielder- defense. Monchu played in this role but he also played as advanced midfielder close to the forward and he scored 6 goals and made 5 assists, he is 23 and he has very good values in passing (14), tecnique (14), ball control (14), decisions (15), team-work (13), he is the heart of our play and he has very good skills maybe because he came from La Masia (Barcelona's young team). 

Defensive Midfielder Right: Segundo Volante-support: take fewer risks, shoot less often, Roque Mesa played very well scoring 4 goals and making 5 assists. 

Advanced Midfielder-right: Winger-attack: take fewer risks, roam from position, shoot less often. Gonzalo Plata played very well, scoring 6 goals and making 11 assists, helping the central forward and the left winger to score.

Advanced Midfielder- centre: Attacking midfielder-attack: take fewer risks, close down more, dribble more. Oscar Plano was the second best striker for our team with 14 goals (and he made 7 assists too) , a great season for him

Central forward: Complete forward-support: Shoot less often, close down more: Sergio Leon, best striker for us, 15 goals and 4 assists.

I hope this tactic works for you too.

See you for the next tactic.

You can find also the link to my youtube channel