Defending Freekicks

This is not a step by step guide in how to defend free kicks, but rather a piece of writing which will hopefully explain to you about free kicks, so you can make up your own instructions.

Free kicks are an important set piece in any football game. Defending free kicks in Football manager is as important in any real life football game. As it can only takes one free kick to change the course of the game. Free kicks are difficult to defend against as the variety of options available to the free kick taker is abandon. But in FM these options along with the defending options are limited. Which makes the task more manageable.

There are 7 defending options you can set to each of your players in FM. These include : 1.Default 2.Back 3.Forward 4.Man Mark 5.Form Wall 6.Near post 7.Far Post.

If you don't want to tweak with the free kick settings you can just leave the setting at Default. This recommended for new managers.
The other options are all self explanatory. Back = the player will go back to help out defending the free kicks. Forward = the player will stay forward to take advantage of any situation that may arise. Man Mark = the player will mark opposition players. Form Wall = the player will form 'the wall'. Near and Far post = the player will stay near the respective post to deal with ball or any opposition players.

The Wall
The wall is a major part of any attempt to defend against a free kick. The wall will not only hinder the free kick taker's ability to hit the ball on target, it will also make it difficult for the free kick take to pass the ball to a team mate.

The size of the wall depends on the position of the free kick in relation to the goal. The closer the free kick is to the goal, the larger the wall. As you can see from this graphics. FM also for most part fallows this. Depending on the distance and position of the free kick your players will form the wall and mark opposition players accordingly.

Different Situations
As i mentioned the opposition (specifically the free kick taker) has many options depending on the distance and position of the free kick, in relation to the goal.
A major advantage in FM is that the players will set themselves to defend the free kick according to the situation.

Take this situation for example.

The free kick taker is A5. The player marked in blue are the players he can pass the ball to. The players in yellow are the players who can attack the ball from/in air, if the free kick taker decides to cross the ball.


Here is a screen shot of a similar situations in FM.

In this particular case i set 4 of my defender to man mark and the rest to form wall.
Despite this as you can see two of my players are staying forward and only one player is forming the wall. The rest are marking opposition players.

This means you cannot go too much wrong when setting the instructions.

My recommendations
I hope i have explained the workings of free kicks enough so that you can set your own instructions for your team.

The logic i follows when setting defensive free kick instructions is, Since you cannot change the instructions according to every free kick when a match is being played. You should set the best general instructions, which will work for all the situations.

You should at least set 4 of your players to form wall. This doesn't mean all these players will form a wall, even if the free kick is at the half way line. The number of players will be proportionate to the distance and position of the free kick. These 4 players can be midfielders or a combination of strikers, defenders and midfielders.

You should also have 3 or 4 players set to Man mark. Preferably players with good marking, positioning, jumping and tackling (likely to be your defenders or defensive midfielders).

Hope that was helpful.

Sorry and what happened to TI?

I own everyone who has been trying to download tactics from the tactic center, a big SORRY. My hosting is totally f**ked up, i am delaying changing hosting until i am come up with a new main site. Hopefully this will be finished soon.
So my apologies. Meanwhile i will be updating this blog regularly with tactical stuff.

By the way what the hell happened to throw-in?

Tailor made for Aston Villa

This recent thing i am working on. I start a game with a team, and try to make a tactic which suites the players already in the team.

Aston Villa is my first team, what i did with Aston Villa was try to make a tactics which resembles the real life tactic used by Martin. Also i did try to make a tactic which is defensively solid. The result is a 433 or a 451 or a 4321 formation.

The team is set to play a normal paced, short passing attacking game.

The defensive unit is flat back four, plus a defensively minded center Midfielder, with a barrow. The fullbacks have forward runs and their mentality set to Normal. This unit work pretty well against team with lower and same quality of players as Villa. Against teams with very good winger or wide midfielders, the tactic does has defensive problems. Mostly due to the crosses and through passes from the opposition players in the wide areas. I did try to solve this problem with farrows for the fullbacks, but this made the problem even worse. So i created another version of this tactics, to be used against teams with quality wide players.

The midfield three of this tactic play a very important role in both defense and attack. As i mentioned above, the middle center midfielder has defensive instructions. He will try to breakup the opposition attacks through the middle and will fit into make a back 5, when the opposition has the ball in your wide area. The other two center midfielders have attacking instructions, with forward runs set to often. They will support the 'three strikers' through the middle.

The two wide wingers/strikers have very attacking instructions and are key to the attacking play. The center striker has normal striker instructions.

The away tactic has borrows for the two wingers/strikers. As well as changes to the team mentality, passing and pace of the game. The team is set to play a much faster, direct passing game.

The use of barrows for the two wingers/striker means the team is more solid defensively. Also to make the tactic more solid, i changed the instruction of one of the center midfielder to a bit more defensive.

I changed the corner and free kick instruction to suite the players in the Villa team. And generally works well.

Download the Villa tactic and the Villa away tactic.