BARCELONA TIKITAKA 2010-11 VERSION 2 4-3-3 WON ALL TROPHIES WITH BARCELONA

PEP'S 2010-11 TIKITAKA POSSESSION: MESSI TREQUARTISTA AND A MORE CREATIVE MIDFIELD

Hi guys, welcome back to this series dedicated to #pepguardiola tactics. Here we'll analyze a different version of his season 2010-11 tactic at Barcelona. In my last post, I reproduced the player roles as close as possible to reality, but this time I want to tweak some roles in a more effective way to play in FM

Therefore, I decided to change the F9 role to a trequartista, a more effective role in the game and we will see how Lewandowski who is neither a f9 neither a trequartista drops deep to link the play and also scores a lot of goals and he is like a fish in the water in this role. Then I changed something in the midfield, I switched the HB role to a DLP in defend. Many argue that Busquet's contribute to building the play was quite underestimated and I believe they are right. Sergio Busquets is not only a great defensive midfielder who can protect the defense and drop deep between the CBs to create a back trio defense and help to build the play (thus I chose the HB in my last tactic because it really drops between the CBs in game) but he is also great with the ball at his feet and very pressing resistant, if you watch Barcelona highlights until last season you can see how he often keeps the ball and dodges opponents pressing and starts the play. Therefore, in this new tactic inspirated by Barcelona's 2010-2011 tactic, I decided to give him the DLP role (defend) , he will not drop deeper as much as the HB but he still does it. For Xavi, since I already gave the DLP role to Busquets, I chose a Roaming playmaker role because Xavi as a right central midfielder often could move wider to receive the ball from Messi or Pedro (right winger) and create a triangle that helped possession and cut backs too (Messi from his central forward position dropped deeper and Pedro could cut inside from the right side behind Messi's back to occupy Messi's central position) or Xavi could receive the ball from Pedro and pass it to Messi.

For Iniesta's role, I chose a mezzala (attack) instead of an AP because Iniesta liked both to move forward into the box and wider on the left side while the FB Abidal did not push forward on his side.

That's all for this tactic analysis. I tested it with Barcelona in one season (2023-2024) and won all trophies, playing beautiful football and dominating possession (average possession more than 60%) and xg (2.68 per game) but also conceeding only a few goals becoming the best defense and best attack in Spanish La Liga.