I love sports games, particularly how they provide their own, almost organic, heavily layered narrative. Every button-press matters not only in its effect on it’s own microsecond of play, but also in the context of a match, and ultimately a season. One late hit of the X can be the difference between scoring a goal that will decide whether many hours of play have been successful or in vain. It’s far more than any quick-time event will ever be.

 

Of late, my sports game of choice has been FIFA 11. I particularly love the “Live Season” mode which allows me to play through the season of my team, one game at a time, with the correct formation, team selection and form, lovingly crafted for me each week by whatever funky gremlins they employ at EA.

 

Awesome as it is, the downside of this is that rather than being able to play a season at my own pace, I need to wait a week between games for the next one to first be played, then coded and finally arrive for download. This isn’t enough football for a natural obsessive like me and has required me to be more creative in my team choices.

 

My normal plan over the years has been to try to play with Grimsby Town FC, a lower-league English team from a town famous for being very cold and making fish fingers. Times have been tough for them lately, the fish-finger factory closed down after a fire in 2005 and I think that the team has dropped to a league so low that it no longer exists in the game. Even if they are still there, there’s simply too much of a time commitment involved in dragging them through 3-4 leagues to get to the top now, and playing with such poor quality players is fairly limited in terms of fun.

 

Plan B has been to try and find interesting teams from around the world. First up was Stabek of Norway. They were tempting because I’d visited their rather nice stadium recently, but after playing about a dozen games with them I realised that, like Grimsby, they were just too poorly skilled to have fun with in FIFA.

 

I then moved my attentions to the Russian league. This promised more skill, a bit of a transfer budget, and ultimately quite a lot of fun. I had a great time playing through a season with Rubin Kazan, terrorising Russian defences with the pace of Obafeme Martins.

 

But then what next? A little burned by the fact that Russia, like most leagues, has a massive disparity between the good and bad teams, I decided to try out the Bundesliga. The Bundesliga is famously one of the most evenly matched and athletic leagues at the moment, and certainly a lot more skill than I’d seen in my teams on the coastline of the North Sea.

 

The only problem though, is that I’ve never so much as watched a Bundesliga game and had absolutely no attachment to any of the sides. I searched through the teams, trying to find one that matched the style I liked to play with a couple of players I liked. I didn’t have much luck.

 

Then a friend of mine heard about a cheat that allowed him to get 2 billion dollars in career mode, he went on a spending spree buying a bunch of talented youngsters (he set himself a rule of no-one over 25) and started having a lot of fun as Kaiserslautern.

 

I didn’t want to cheat, but suddenly I was inspired. I liked the youth approach, and the idea of starting off with a team built to play exactly the sort of football I wanted. I wasn’t going to “cheat” too badly to get it, but what if I could do it in some sort of fair way?

 

The plan

 

So, I picked a side to be the shell of the team I would use. I decided fairly quickly on Wolfsburg because;

a) I always thought it was awesome that around 1998/99 they were coached by a man called Wolfgang Wolf,

b) It was fun to displace Steve McLaren as their coach

3) they are owned by VW, and I own a VW

 

I set myself three rules for the project

1. No players over 25 in the entire squad

2. No players from other Bundesliga teams

3. Every player transferred in must be replaced with a player out, of similar quality basic position (GK, def, mid, att), so the team should get younger, but not necessarily be much better in terms of ovr ratings.

 

Part I; building the team.

 

Wolfsburg had around 13 players under the age of 25, three of whom were a really solid foundation for the new team. These were

Dzeko, a lethal striker who in real life had been sold to Manchester City for big money mid season, I was not going to make that sale.

Diego, a skilful Brazillian attacking midfielder who also filled the valuable role of free-kick specialist

Kjaer, a monstrous Danish central defender, tactically sound and strong in the air.

 

Of the oldies I was trading out, the best were Benaglio, the Swiss goalkeeper, and Wolfsburg captain, and Josue a regular defensive midfielder for the Brazillian national side.  The rest were a mix of solid first-team regulars and fairly ordinary back-ups. I wasn’t going to be a galacticos, but as a 4-star (out of 5) rated side, I was going to be rather competitive.

 

After an afternoon spent scanning the FIFA player database I came up with the following side

 

GK,

Hugo Lloris (Lyon), taking advantage of the very high rating of Benaglio I snagged Hugo Lloris, despite being very young he’s captained Les Blues and is rated amongst the top few in the world between the sticks.

Mannone (Arsenal) a 6’3” keeper, currently on loan to Hull in real life.  22 yrs old and Italian, very much a back-up.

Marwin Hitz, young swiss goalie, already in the squad

 

Wing-Backs,

Kolarov (Man City), very good defensively and solid going forward, strength at left-back is important for dealing with the very fast and talented right-wingers I could expect in the Bundesliga.

Ilsinho (Sao Paolo) Capped once for Brazil, extremely skilful dribbler, an attacking threat of my own down the right.

Carlinhos (Fluminense), essentially a slightly watered down and left-footed version of Ilsinho.

 

Centre-Backs

Simon Kjaer, 6’2” Danish defender, 21 years old, already in the squad, has played 15 games for his national team.

Ranocchia (I got him from Genoa, in real life he’d been on loan to Bari and has just been bought out by part-owners Inter) 22 years old, 6’5”, has played one game for the Azzuri

Bonucci (Juve) 6’3”, 23 yrs old, can play centre or right, has played 8 times for the Azzuri

Zelao (Saturn Moscow) a 6’2” Brazilian centreback with good all-around ball-skills, figured he’d be useful for games where the other team sits back a lot and I need defenders to be able to open up space with passing.

 

Midfielders

Sami Khedira (Real Madrid), a direct trade for the defensive midfield prowess of Josue.  At 6’2” he gave me a very tall, strong, and happily in terms of keeping a Bundesliga feel, German presence in midfield.

Afellay (PSV, in real life has gone to Barca), don’t really need to say much about him, was happy for him to be eligible.

Montolivo (Fiorentina), I didn’t have a player to trade for him, but I was able to buy him with the transfer funds available at the beginning of the game. He’s my favourite young Italian player at the moment, 5’11” playmaker, 19 games for the Azzuri.

Marlos (Sao Paolo) Very skilful passer and dribbler, a back-up for Diego

Elias (Atletico Madrid), classic box-to-box type midfielder, good passing, dribbling, and stamina

Ja-Cheol Koo, only brought in because the club had acquired him in real life, was very much a back-up

Medel (Boca, although in real life has been traded to Sevilla) a defensively oriented Chilean midfielder, bit of a Mascherano type, has played 28 games for his country

 

Forwards and Strikers,

Diego

Dzeko

Doumbia (CSKA Moscow) speed, skill and finishing.  Shame he isn’t a little taller.

Hernandez (Palermo) 20 year old, 6’1” Uruguayan striker, a useful back-up with similar pace to Doumbia.

Diego Ifran (Real Sociedad) 23 year old 5’8” Uruguayan striker, a super-sub type player, quick, skilful and good at finishing, but not much of a physical presence.  Can also play in Diego’s slot behind the strikers.

John Rodriguez (Burnley) a project player traded with an old and slow guy that probably needed to be cut, not likely to start any time soon, but has some promising basic skills, he’s quick and 6’1”

 

 

Part II, Tactics and Formation

 

I grew fond of the team immediately. It was packed with players that I like, in the positions I needed to build my favourite strategies.

 

Over the course of the season I settled on three different formations, and a small variety of tactical set-ups.

 

4-2-1-2

 

A very narrow but effective formation. Made by slightly modifying the base 4-2-1-2 in the game by moving the CAM to CF. In my experience, CAM is actually quite poor in the FIFA AI, neither making attacking runs against the opposition defensive line, or hanging back deep enough to pick up balls deflected behind the strikers. By moving Diego up to CAM I had all three of him, Dzeko and Doumbia making dangerous runs through the middle of defense.

 

In terms of tactical settings, I borrowed the default settings for the German national team, with the small change of Chance Creation from Organised to Free Form. What this gave me was a high-possession but unpredictable structure as I passed through the centre of the field.

 

As a formation and tactical combination it was extremely effective against teams with a high defensive line, and most teams that played a 4-2-3-1 for some reason (which is a lot of the Bundesliga). It was terrible against teams playing 4-1-4-1, 4-4-1-1 and 4-2-1-2 as in all cases the midfield became too crowded to work in.

 

4-2-2-2

 

The Brazilian box formation. I’ve liked this formation in a lot of football games over the years, and once again it didn’t disappoint. The basic theory of it is that apart from the wing-backs, everyone has a central position, which provides a lot of strength defensively, and then a lot of room to run into down the flanks when in attack.

 

For this team it worked extremely well. Kolarov and Ilsinho thrived as wing-backs with all that space in front of them, while Diego and Afellay proved to be perfect LAM and RAM players respectively. Tactically I either used the same approach as above, or one that I’d modified with a much higher cross setting to make more use of the runs down the wing. This was a good formation for breaking down the 4-1-2-1-2 and 4-1-4-1 formations as shifting the creative midfielders to the outside moved them away from the defensive midfielder.

 

4-2-3-1

 

This is the vogue formation of the moment in real life, and particularly in Germany. It was the formation that dominated the world cup, being employed by Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Brazil each in their own way. I chose the Brazilian variant, created by modifying the 4-2-2-2 above by shifting the second striker back to become a CF.

The result is a formation with a lot of skill and numbers in the middle of the park. It works quite well with the modified german tactics, and the crossing variant discussed above, and also with a copy-pasted set of the tactics from Barcelona. Mainly I found this to be a good formation to shift to in games where either the 4-1-2-1-2 wasn’t providing enough width, or where I wanted to shut the game down by maintaining possession. I did also settle on it as the formation from the start of games against 4-4-1-1 because it dominated that formation with more numbers in midfield, and an ability to completely shut it down defensively.

 

Results

 

Building a team to my own specifications proved to be both very fun and extremely dominant.  I won the Bundesliga by 14 points with a record of 26 wins, 8 draws, 0 losses, 86 points..  It was all over when with 4-5 games to go, I had a rather well-timed match-up against second-placed Bayer Leverkeusen who I thrashed 3-0 in their home stadium.

 

Dzeko finished the season with 29 goals, 11 more than the next highest scorer.  Doumbia was the 5^th highest scorer with 16 goals.  Overall the team finished with 63 goals for, 7 against.

 

The cup final was against Bayern, Dzeko scored early, within 30 minutes it was 3-0, and by the end of the game it was 4-0.

 

Overall it was a really great way of playing FIFA. A team I liked, playing the type of football I wanted, in a league that was actually really challenging along the way, despite the appearance of my dominance. As a play-style it fell neatly between the proper in-depth league simulation of career mode and the trading and grinding of Ultimate team. I strongly recommend it as an approach for anyone looking for a way to get a bit more fun out of FIFA or just to try out a wacky theory. In fact, right now I am in the process of setting up a second experiment, is it possible to win the English Premier League with an all-English team?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defensively I had the option to play the very aggressive Brazilian right-backs, or shut it down by putting Bonucci there.

 

Midfield is probably my weakest area, but I’m expecting Khedira to be an absolute rock, and I can choose to attack in front of that with players like Afellay and Elias, or shut it down with Medel and Montolivo (who is also quite good going forward).  Up front I have a really nice mix that allows me to choose pace, height, strength and finishing.  Diego looks like he will score a lot of my goals, but the pace of Doumbia is very hard to handle, and he is great at setting up Dzeko with chances.  I’ve played two friendlies against a brazillian and a dutch side, won 3-0 and 4-0 respectively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From what I can see, that means they have 13 keepable players, 4 or 5 of which might be solid starters, so a lot to replace.  Because the rosters don’t seem to have been updated for a while they might still have Dzeko, that’s a good thing, and in fact I might break the rule to bring him back, purely because at the start of the season he was there, and he certainly qualifies otherwise.  I’ll also claim Ja-Cheol Choo, because he was just signed by them, and is very young.

 

 

I’m half considering doing a season similar to yours, only with a team made of the under 25’s that you haven’t picked (helped by the fact that I will use the roster editing method to grab the ones you couldn’t), with a bit of fancy exporting I then might be able to set it up so that we can play games against each other with our respective teams.  If you give me a full list of your squad then I will work around that.  I might do it with Wolfsburg.

 

Ok, so it is;

 

GK:  Akinfeev, Scott Carson as back up (I may change this as I just selected anyone).

 

Def

Oscar Wendt,

Fabio Coentrao,

David Santon,

Micah Richards,

Per Mertesacker,

M Sakho,

Gary Cahill,

Adil Rami,

vd Wiel

 

 

Mid

Antoine Griezmann

Ganso

A Turan

Eden Hazard

Steven Defour

Nuri Sahin

 

Att

Lukaku,

Gervinho,

Neymar,

Toivonen,

Llorente

 

Hmm, that is interesting; I suppose I’d look at something like

 

GK, Neuer, Viviano, Romero

 

Def

Bonucci,

Di Silvestre,

Subotic,

Ansaldi,

Azpilicueta,

Beck,

Santon

Otamendi

 

Mid

Dimitri Payet

Brahimi

Sissoko

Pareja

Yarmolenko

Rudy

Reinartz

Trasch

Strootman

 

Att

 

Aguero

Podolski

Rossi

Berg

DongWon

 

 

Hmm, ok, I’ve decided.  I’ll play Wolfsburg and go with 3 rules;

 

 

From what I can see, that means they have 13 keepable players, 4 or 5 of which might be solid starters, so a lot to replace.  Because the rosters don’t seem to have been updated for a while they might still have Dzeko, that’s a good thing, and in fact I might break the rule to bring him back, purely because at the start of the season he was there, and he certainly qualifies otherwise.  I’ll also claim Ja-Cheol Choo, because he was just signed by them, and is very young.

 

It’s a different approach, but should create an interesting squad. I’ll try to build it tonight, I’ll let you know who I wind up with.

 

Well, there’s plenty of players to move, just how good they will be, I don’t know.  I reckon I’ll mainly pick the players based on searching the FIFA database for people that are going to match the formation and style that I want, so I really don’t know who I will wind up with.  That heightens the anticipation I reckon, it could be a very interesting squad indeed. I’m rather excited about it.

 

Oh, and of course there’s a 4^th rule which we knew but I didn’t write below, none will be players that you have  So it will be a case of a team built to match my style, vs a team of almost all the young players you wanted.  Could be a very interesting match-up.

 

Incidentally, the choice of Wolfsburg is a) because I always thought it was awesome that from 1998 they were coached by a man called Wolfgang Wolf, b) it’ll be fun to displace Steve McLaren as their coach 3) they are owned by VW, and I own a VW

 

Ok, so as it turned out, I couldn’t get those guys because a) they were better than what I had to trade away, b) Muller plays in Germany.

 

So, the two best players to keep were Dzeko, a slow but otherwise amazing striker rated 85 overall, Diego, who is happily an amazing free-kick taker (and despite being brazillian has a bit of a resemblance to Ballack), and Kjaer, a useful Danish defender.

 

The best guys I had to trade out were Benaglio, the Swiss goalkeeper, and my captain, he is rated 86, and Josue, a defensive midfielder who played 28 games in Dunga’s selecao (high praise to be picked to play Dunga’s position by Dunga), he is ranked 80.  The rest were a mix of mid-high 70s and a couple of high 60s, I also have a bunch of young guys from the club that are rated in the mid-60’s I kept them to give me depth, but won’t be getting any game time soon.  The best position to trade from was centre back, they had a pair of 79’s (one of whom was Barzagli, a player I’ve always wanted to see at Milan, he’s only about 26 and was sad to let go).

 

Unfortunately I left my pad with all my notes behind, but this is my team as I remember it;

 

GK,

Joe Hart (Man City), a decline of 4 points from Benaglio, but the best u-25 goalkeeper from outside the Bundesliga (would have loved to get Neuer).

Mannone (Arsenal) a 6’3” keeper, currently on loan to Hull in real life.  22 yrs old and Italian, very much a back-up.

Marwin Hitz, young swiss goalie, already in the squad

 

Wing-Backs,

Kolarov (Man City), very good defensively, wanted to invest in security there to be able to deal with right wingers, that’s an Italian thing 

Ilsinho (Sao Paolo) Capped once for Brazil, extremely skilful dribbler.

Carlinhos (Fluminense), essentially a slightly watered down version of Ilsinho.

 

Centre-Backs

Simon Kjaer, 6’2” Danish defender, 21 years old, already in the squad, has played 15 games for his national team, is rated around 79

Ranocchia (I bought him from Genoa, in real life he’d been on loan to Bari and has just been bought out by part-owners Inter) 22 years old, 6’5”, has played one game for the Azzuri

Bonucci (Juve), as we discussed the other day, 6’3”, 23 yrs old, can play centre or right, has played 8 times for the Azzuri

Zelao (Saturn Moscow) a 6’2” Brazilian centreback with good all-around ball-skills, figured he’d be useful for games where the other team sits back a lot and I need defenders to be able to open up space with passing.

 

Midfielders

Sami Khedira (Real Madrid), biggest signing, but a fair 80 for 80 trade for Josue.  At 6’2” he makes it a very tall centre of my defence to break down.

Arouca (Santos) A back-up for Khedira at CDM, very different player, 5’6”, skilful on the ball, but fit and defensively sound.

Afellay (PSV, in real life has gone to Barca), don’t really need to say much about him, was happy for him to be eligible.

Elias (Atletico Madrid), classic box-to-box type midfielder, good passing, dribbling, and tireless

Ja-Cheol Koo (acquisition actually made by the club) rated about 68, I don’t know if he’ll get much of a game.

Medel (Boca, in real life has been traded to Sevilla) defensively oriented Chilean midfielder, bit of a Mascherano type, has played 28 games for his country

Montolivo (Fiorentina, not traded, purchased with transfer funds after the game commenced), my favourite young Italian player at the moment, 5’11” playmaker, 19 games for the Azzuri.

 

Forwards and Strikers,

Diego

Dzeko

Doumbia (CSKA Moscow), need I say more, speed, skill and finishing.  Shame he isn’t a little taller.

Hernandez (Palermo) 20 year old, 6’1” Uruguayan striker.

Diego Ifran (Real Sociedad) 23 year old 5’8” Uruguayan striker, a super-sub type player, quick, skilful and good at finishing, but not much of a physical presence.  Can also play in Diego’s slot behind the strikers.

John Rodriguez (Burnley) a project player traded with an old and slow guy that probably needed to be cut, not likely to start any time soon, but has some promising basic skills, he’s quick and 6’1”

 

 

When I bought Montolivo I also had bids in for Muller, Podolski and Banega (from Villareal).  Muller refused to leave Bayern, and of the remaining three I decided that Montolivo gave me the biggest bonus over what I already had.

 

I’m really fond of it as a team, it’s full of players that I like, and it gives me a bunch of strategic options. Defensively I can have the very aggressive Brazilian right-backs, or shut it down by putting Bonucci there.  Midfield is probably my weakest area, but I’m expecting Khedira to be an absolute rock, and I can choose to attack in front of that with players like Afellay and Elias, or shut it down with Medel and Montolivo (who is also quite good going forward).  Up front I have a really nice mix that allows me to choose pace, height, strength and finishing.  Diego looks like he will score a lot of my goals, but the pace of Doumbia is very hard to handle, and he is great at setting up Dzeko with chances.  I’ve played two friendlies against a brazillian and a dutch side, won 3-0 and 4-0 respectively.

 

Ozil must have been slightly too high (I had the search set to 70-80 overall, he must be a bit above that).  I was very tempted to grab Obafeme Martins (who is miraculously still 25) to go up front, but I wanted to try something a bit different and Doumbia looks like an equally perfect (and slightly lower rated overall) pick.

 

The team was 4* before I started, and 4* after all the transfers, but slid up to 4.5* after I purchased Montolivo.

 

Ok, so I finally managed to finish the season.  I won it obviously, 26 wins, 8 draws, 0 losses, 86 points, 14 clear of the next best team.  It was all over with 4-5 games to go, I had a rather well-timed match-up against 2^nd place Bayer Leverkeusen who I managed to thrash 3-0 away from home.  I actually had a really strong finish to the season, a bunch of high scoring games as Dzeko just went off.  He finished the season with 29 goals, 11 more than the next highest scorer.  Doumbia was the 5^th highest scorer with 16 goals.  My team finished with 63 goals for, 7 against.

 

Cup final was against Bayern, Dzeko scored early, within 30 minutes it was 3-0, and by the end of the game it was 4-0.

 

Then I got to have the off-season.

 

First things first, I re-signed with Wolfsburg, turning down offers from Bayern, Inter and Manchester United.  Between the tournament rewards and the general generosity of the club I had 43 million pounds to spend, which I immediately began augmenting by selling off players that I hadn’t used all season.

 

First things first, I spent 30 million on a little Argentinean guy from Atletico, a certain Mr Sergio “Kun” Aguero.  Gives me some more flexibility up front, I’ll be able to push Diego out wide if I want now.  It was a tough call to buy him, I was also strongly considering Bendtner and Falcao, who are both the “good in the air” model of striker that I was interested in, but I just couldn’t turn down Aguero.

 

The second guy I bought was a young Moroccan/Belgian, from Everton, Fellaini.  Again he gives me a bit more flexibility in the middle, should allow me to shut things down a bit more.  Also, he can play CF, so if I really want to cross into the box I can throw him up with Dzeko in the box.

 

I now have about 8 million pounds left, if I can sell one or two more of my fringe players then I intend to use the money to buy some more depth or quality at wing-back, my weakest position now.

 

My squad now looks something like;

 

GK

Lloris

Mannone

Hartz

 

CB

Rannochia

Bonucci

Kjaer

Zelao

 

WB

Kolarov

Ilsinho

Carlinhos

Karimow

 

CDM

Khedira

Fellaini

Medel

 

CM

Affelay

Montolivo

Elias

 

CAM

Diego

Marlos

 

Forward

Dzeko

Aguero

Doumbia

Hernandez

 

My best team is probably;

 

Dzeko

Aguero

Diego                                                    Montolivo

Khedira                Fellaini

Kolarov                                                 Ilsinho

Rannochia           Bonucci

Lloris

 

With Affelay and Doumbia on the bench

 

We both seem to have completely dominated our respective leagues, I think we’ve definitively proven that young teams can be uber-successful.

 

I think that there was a massive separation in my league too, although I think it might have been a case of me – daylight – Leverkeusen, Bayern, Bremen – daylight, everyone else.  Kaiserslautern came dead last.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Wolfsburg didn’t look so good in your league either (given that they are struggling near the relegation zone in real life).

 

I thought Aguero might give you some pause for thought.  I think he will do quite well, I have a theory that he will be amazing at making through-runs onto the ball, I also think Falcao has that skill set, but that Aguero’s dribbling and finishing skills made him more promising.  I did VERY seriously consider the heading experts, in both cases Falcao  and Bendtner fall about half-way between the level of Dzeko and Llorente (by my calculation, Lukaku is between them and Llorente).  The main thing that stopped me in the end is that I don’t have a team of amazing ball-crossers (highest are Diego and Montolivo around 80), and none of my 4 formations really make extensive use of crossing.  Fellaini does give me that back-up ability to throw him forward in games where it is really the only option for me, and should definitely be a force at set-pieces (by my count he is as good as Llorente).  Also I was reluctant to give away the pace of my attacks, which has been my primary source of goals with Wolfsburg and Rubin.

 

I’m definitely hoping that my maximum defensive box of;

 

Khedira                Fellaini

Kolarov                                                 Bonucci

Kjaer                     Rannochia

Lloris

Should be able to deal with even the most physical of attacks.  I think the shortest person in that list is Kolarov at 6’2”, a few of them are 6’5” and all of them have very high strength, balance and jumping ability.  They aren’t extremely quick (although they’re not bad), but with that sort of presence I should be able to hold them back and narrow, and that I’m hoping will allow me to deal with the various threats posed by the Champions League (and by your team).

 

I find that I can use skill moves in some games, but not others, it depends a lot on whether the formation and pressing settings give you the time and pace or not.  The goal in there with all the moves is actually scored by two subs that came on, they often are very successful with their high ball-control against worn-out defenders.