ANCELOTTI'S AMAZING 4-3-1-2 172 GOALS IN ONE SEASON GOALS MACHINE

Carletto Ancelotti's Real Madrid 2023-2024: 4-3-1-2 tactic

Hi guys, last time I posted a different version of Carlo Ancelotti's Real Madrid tactic, with a diamond shaped midfield and a defensive midfielder who should provide more cover to our defense, especially in the space between the central midfield and the defense. That was Casemiro's role and as we analyzed before, without the Brazilian defensive midfielder, in this season Real Madrid keeps conceeding the same goals from the same spaces.

This time I tried to emulate Ancelotti's tactic in a more realistic way. First of all, even if Tchouameni or Camavinga can drop deeper to cover the defense creating a diamond shape midfield, Real Madrid's typical shape this year is a 4-3-1-2 with a central midfielders trio, usually Valverde, Tchouameni and Modric or Kroos but Ancelotti has a great number of solutions in his midfield, so he can often change. What he surely understood is that he can't easily drop Modric and Kroos from his starting XI because Camaving and Tchouameni are far from reaching the same level of the former Croatian balon d'or and the German champion.

The player who made a great debut in Real Madrid is surely Bellingham, the English wonderkids is absolutely a gem and he will surely become (if he is not yet) one of the strongest players in the next 10-15 years.

After Benzema left Real to go to Saudi Arabia, many thought that the blancos lost all their goal scoring power, but Bellingham, even if playing as an advanced midfielder, replaced Benzema's scoring 10 goals in the first 10 games and providing many assists to his teammmates, besides he can also drop a bit deeper to help the team build-up play.

So let's examine how I recreated this tactic in Football Manager 2024. I created two tactics, one for home matches, one for away matches, with only one difference, the central midfielder duty is support in the first and defend in the second version. First of all, the basic shape is a 4-3-1-2, the back fours are Carvajal as a wing-back in support (no player instructions) and Mendy as a wing-back in attack (no player instructions). The two central defenders are Rudiger and Alaba as ball-playing defenders in defend with only one instruction to dribble more. This way they will carry the ball forward and contribute to build-up the play.

In the midfielder trio, we find Valverde as right-midfielder with the role of a mezzala in support (tackle harder and shoot more often to take advantage of his great long range shooting ability), Tchouameni in the centre with the role of a central midfiender in support (or in defend in the second tactic) instructed to take fewer risks and tackle harder, to disrupt the opponents play and Modrid (or Kroos) as deep-lying playmaker in support, the real core of Real Madrid's midfield.

The attacking midfielder is Jude Bellingham (replaced sometimes by Brahim Diaz), he is an attacking midfielder in attack and I instructed him to roam from position because I want him to find spaces and move into channels because I want him to move into the box, and of course tackle harder, he has to win the ball back as soon as possible. The two strikers, Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo are two advanced forward in attack with the following instructions: tackle harder (they have to press the defendants and win the ball), roam from position ( they can find spaces to carry the ball or try to score) and stay wider (they can move also to the flank and act as inside forwards). As I said in the previous tactic analysis, I do not like to use a couple of players in the same position and with the same role, especially attacking players, such as I did here, Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo both advanced forwards, but this is the more realistic way to emulate their play in this season. If you want you can change Rodrygo to a complete forward to make him link up the play more.

Team instructions

They are the same of the previous tactic.

Mentality: 

positive

In possession

b]fairly narrow attacking width ( to make the team be more compact), 

play out of defense

 and 

focus play through the middle,

shorter passing

 and

 higher tempo, low crosses

 (Vinicius and Rodrygo are not tall and good at heading they are very fast) and 

be more expressive.

.

In transition

Take short kicks

, 

distribute to center and full backs

, 

counter-press

, 

counter

Out of possession

Higher defensive line

High pressing line 

Trigger press: 

more often

Prevent gk short distribution

step up more

 to apply off-side trap, 

trap outside

, 

stop crosses

With this beautiful tactic, I won all trophies, including the UEFA Champions League, (even if against PSG and Bayern Munich I needed penalty-kicks) final against Manchester City, scoring a lot of goals , 172 goals in one season (all competitions), and conceding not much (51 goals, 28 in Liga).

You can see tactic creation, stats and highlights in my video on Youtube, if you like it, please smash the like button and subscribe