At the beginning of the 2020–21 Serie A season, a strange thing happened, as many as two teams had the opportunity to put the historic symbol of the championship, lo scudetto, on their jersey.

Juve for winning the last championship and Spezia as honorary title for winning the 1944 Italian league during the war.

To be fair, that championship was never recognized by the Italian Federation as official, but in 2002 to Spezia was given the right to display on their jersey a tricolor badge to represent that success.

Newly promoted Spezia is the club I’m going to manage in Football Manager 2021.

Spezia is basically a Serie B team that unexpectedly found itself in Serie A, for the first time in 114 years, after a surprising campaign.
Moreover, due to the tight time frame for the current pandemic and the limited budget, they had serious problems in preparing to compete at this level.
The classic small fish in a big pond situation, my kind of game.
Benevento and Crotone, the other teams promoted from Serie B, look more ready than us to face the new league.

The challenge is real and we’ll try to stay up, obviously the bookies have a different idea.

Media prediction: 20th

Targets

I could set a series of objectives for the next few years and bore you to death, the usual things, but for greater realism I am sticking to the management’s request, more than a request a scream in the dark: to survive.

Surely the idea of making Spezia win a proper scudetto is attractive, but before we have to challenge Genoa and Sampdoria for local supremacy.

The team is largely made up of loans, if you like there are even too many players, not all of them so useful, but the transfer market during the Covid is very complicated, we will see what can be done.
I certainly cannot hope that the market will fix our problems: tactics, physical preparation and teamwork will be the key to overcome our limits.

The little eagles (gli aquilotti) are less than average in many departments, being mainly formed by experienced second-tier players and unproven youngsters, more on the team in another piece.

I will try to improve the staff, especially the scouting team, finding good prospects before the others will be vital for the survival of the club, improving the youth sector will be an issue that I will address later, not this year.

The stadium is another thorn in the side, the arena dedicated to Alberto Picco (first captain of the squad dead in the Great War) has a capacity of only 10330 seats and is owned by the municipality.

It seems that I cannot expand it or even buy it.

I’m going to start this journey when the full game will be released, so stay tuned for further updates, you’ll discover with me the style and the frequency of my next articles about Spezia.

I’m intrigued by the improved match engine, keep the faith, it could be fun and now a little preview while waiting for the journey to continue…

The shape was thus a 2–3–2–3, a W-W. At the time it seemed, as the journalist Mario Zappa put it in La Gazzetta dello Sport, a model of play that is the synthesis of the best elements of all the most admired systems.

Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid

Stay safe, wear a mask and don’t forget to follow my twitter account for more Football Manager talk: Crujffista

Football Manager 2021: born again? was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A new name for an old blog

As you see a little rebrand occured to this space, nothing major but I decided to open a new twitter account dedicated to my Football Manager ramblings (the old one will stay active for other stuff, mainly Calcio and politics) so the name of this blog changed as well, not the url address though.

If you’re interested in my oncoming Football Manager content be sure to check and follow this one: @Crujffista

Get ready for something new when FM21 will be released…

The beginning of the Crujffista was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Developing a high-scoring 4–5–1 tactic for Football Manager 20

After leaving Football Manager 20 inactive for a long time, recently, thanks to the considerable amount of free time I was given by this damn quarantine, I started to devote myself again to my beloved pastime with which, over the years, I developed a controversial relationship.
After a quick, one season only, save in France with Metz, I’m finally back to England, trying to turn Millwall into an established EPL team.
The first step to do this was, of course, to achieve promotion from the Championship.

Why Millwall? No one likes them…I hear you say.

I needed a minor club from London, a club with no trophies, a blue kit and a small but nice stadium.
The Lions met all of these requirements perfectly, as a bonus they’re the classic underdog, media predicted to finish 18th.
As you can see, I’m not one to choose teams at random.
My appointment as manager of Millwall was celebrated with the creation of a new logo for the team, this one below.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

The rules

I’m not a big fan of self-imposed rules in Football Manager, mainly because I like to change direction during a career, regarding the tactical aspect, however, I never change default set pieces routines, I think they are one of the weak points of the game, few changes can compromise and exploit the match engine.
Believe me, when at the end of the season you realize that you scored 30 or more goals from corners, it means that something is not properly working.

The market & the tactical plan

As revealed in the title the players available at Millwall work well in a 4–5–1, or 4–3–3 if you prefer, tactical asset. Some new faces were necessary to complete the team though, so I signed some interesting young players, some of them on loan while others joined permanently.

If you’ve already been here, you probably know that I like to achieve my goals by using players who are often underestimated and without great potential but who, if used in the right tactical framework, can integrate with the most talented players allowing the team to work perfectly.
Don’t forget that in Sacchi’s Milan, players like Van Basten and Maldini coexisted with water carriers like Angelo Colombo, Filippo Galli and Evani.

I’m going to follow once again that philosophy.

Fagioli (from Juventus), Baningime (Everton) and Curtis Jones (Liverpool) are all top youth prospects with agreed price clauses in their contracts, the others are good players with decent potential, ready for the Championship, a good mix of experience and rough talent.

The original plan was to adopt a balanced mentality, but very soon I realized the team was performing better when a more attacking mentality was employed, positive was the way to go.

The board asked for a direct and high pressing approach, more or less what I had in mind, vertical football without giving the ball away too much.

A standard line of engagement coupled with a similar defensive line will be the foundation of my medium block, having space behind the enemy line is vital for my pass into space instruction to work.

To be fair a quicker striker would be needed for this tactic, Tom Bradshow, my main forward, is not the fastest at this level, anyhow he will finish the season with 16 goals scored.

The halfback (instructed to take more risks) is another key role to balance this tactic, I use a creative player with good passing and vision skills here (Shaun Williams): 53 key passes overall, almost 2 per game.

Here I have an added third central defender always ready to step up and help the midfield when we begin to push the ball forward.

This tactic has been highly effective all the season long, we had the best scoring record of the league with 91 goals.

Was the season any good?

Yep, it was bloody brilliant with a terrific finale, we finished third and qualified for the playoffs, after two easy wins vs. W.B.A. we met Leeds United at Wembley for an intriguing final game.

An even and nervous match with few chances for both teams involved, 90 minutes were not enough to decide the winner.

Extra time.

111 min. Klich runs up to beat the penalty, a huge chance for Leeds…

…but Bialkoskwi reads the shoot well and saves the penalty!

118 min. After a nice one-two between Curtis Jones and Fagioli, Jones tries to shoot from a tight angle…

It’s a goal! 19yrs old Jones scores for Millwall, the winning goal of the match. Millwall are going up!!

Not a bad epilogue, right?

The narrative is always important in Football Manager, it’s not about winning or losing, it’s the way you win (or lose) that could keep you hooked into a savegame and this was surely an entertaining first season.

Notewhorty performers

I bet you want to know more about the players who led the team up there, many of them had an outstanding season, but above all four players emerged.

• Ben Thompson: dynamic midfield hammer capable of setting up goals, eradicating the ball from his opponents feet and even scoring some screamers.
  A fucking machine. [7.42 Av.rat-6 goals-9 assists]
• Connor Mahoney: keeping him injury free has been hard, but Connor is a gem at this level, a flamboyant winger with a bag full of tricks, a wizard on the right flank of my formation.[7.07 Av.rat-12 goals-14 assists]
• Jake Cooper: the rock of my defensive line, always reliable, the king of interceptions, 104 this season.
• Tom Bradshow: solid striker, with 16 goals my best scorer, probably a bit slow for the EPL in the lone striker role.

Tales from the Isle of Dogs was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are we ready to face Serie A again after 96 years?

The certain thing is that this year Pro Vercelli have not won the league in which they took part in this Football Manager 20 career, after two back-to-back titles, which have led us from Serie C to Serie A, the goal required by the board this season was to bravely fight against the relegation.
Perfectly in line with what the media predicted (17th place).

Our final league standing (12th place) sums up well what happened this year, a safe season where we had no problems to stay up with some pretty dull performances in the second half of the season, where the team looked generally lazy and our game quite involuted.

The strikers were awful, I know about their limited skills for the league we are in, but I had hoped for some improvements in the last part of the season, I got the opposite.

Nicolai Frederiksen, our best scorer, made 7 goals in 24 games, Erik Gerbi 4 in 21 and Demirovic 2 in 16 matches played, an utter disaster.

You’d understand that finishing 12th with these numbers is a brilliant achievement, surely Nicolò Fagioli (Mvp of the season), promising midfielder on loan from Juve, helped a lot with his 6 goals and 3 assists, the same did Lucien Agoume, signed in the summer for 3.5M, my most expensive player so far, who had another consistent season, best average rating of the team (7.13) for the French rising star.

The crazy thing was that we were 4th at the end of October after 10 games played, not bad for the youngest squad in Serie A.

There are positives too, of course, this first Serie A season boosted our bank balance up to 22M, even if we spent 10.75M for new players, and the board finally accepted to improve our training facilities, regarding the stadium it will be a tougher affair, we can’t expand the Silvio Piola, only build a new arena but it’s a bit early for that.

As a matter of fact, we’re still playing the 3–5–2 formation I talked about some posts ago, I only tried different strikers combinations for some time (the oddest one was a false nine paired with a target man on support duty) but I’m officially tired of it and I’m going to make some changes to the tactic for next season.

I must confess that match engine involution (no logical crosses, no through balls etc…) after the last patch played a role in my decision, but somehow it’s a chance to try something different so I’m not complaining here.

Surely such things need to be fixed, the game could improve a lot.

5 Quick facts about Pro Vercelli in 2021–22 season

• Most expensive signing: Lucien Agoume, 3.5M from Inter
• Top earner: Lucien Agoume, euro 747.000 p/a
• More assists: Manuel Nicoletti, 7
• More dribbles made per game: A.F. Bjorkan, 4.70
• More interceptions per game: A.F. Bjorkan, 2.61

By the way, these are Nicolò Fagioli, Lucien Agoume and A.F. Bjorkan:

Club progress over the years

We started three years ago as a cash-strapped team and lots of things are changed since then, firstly our balance and our training facilities (improvements will be soon ready), but most importantly we are an established Serie A club, finally we can afford to purchase the players who were previously only available on loan, adding great value to the club.
There are rumours about a new stadium but nothing has been decided so far.

The goal for next season?

Playing a more attacking style of football (the board will have something to say about this…) and improve this season 12th place, top half would be nice.

See you soon guys…

5. Growing up! was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pro Vercelli epic saga in Football Manager 20 continues….

In 1923, 96 years ago, Virginio Rosetta, then one of the best Italian defenders, moved from Pro Vercelli to Juventus, that moment marked the beginning of professionalism in Italian football and the beginning of the decline for Pro Vercelli, unable to compete economically with the clubs of large cities such as Milan and Turin.

Now, in the multiverse of 2020, things are slowly changing and big clubs will soon notice.
After the promotion to Serie B, the manager of Pro Vercelli, Alberto Gilardino, immediately signed four Juventus players to strengthen the Vercelli team for the new season.
Small things, I know, they’re only players from Juve reserve squad, but maybe there’s something more, a sign of things to come.

Erik Gerbi, Nikolai Frederiksen, Paolo Beruatto and Matteo Stoppa will wear the “bianche casacche” of Pro Vercelli.
They’re all interesting youngsters, but the story of Erik Gerbi deserves to be told.
Growing up in the Pro Vercelli youth teams, the young 20-year-old striker left his home team to establish himself with the Italian champions of Juve, but things didn’t go as planned.

After a year spent languishing on the bench of Juve under-23 in Serie C, without playing a single league game, the player decided to accept our offer and get back where his career had begun.
Other players were purchased to strengthen and add depth to the squad in preparation for this new and challenging Serie B campaign, all share some common traits: they’re younger than 23 years and are damn cheap.
Overall we spent 500K to sign eleven new players, five of them came on loan.
I didn’t sell any players mainly because of lack of interest, but I loaned out 15 players to keep costs down and allow them to play more regularly.

Our strategy is clear, having 25 players suitable for the 3–5–2 that worked so well last year and continuing this way my system of heavy rotations.

This is the team that Mister Gilardino has put together for the 2020–21 season, the Italian bias is always present, but signing a foreign player is obviously not a problem if he’s the right one.

For more info about my tactic and the way we play, you should check my previous article:

3. Football Manager 20 and 3–5–2 tactic: a match made in heaven?

What happened in our second season?

The season started out great with a resounding 6–1 win over Lecce, which has placed great trust in us, being Lecce one of the favourites for the promotion to Serie A.
Maybe our media prediction (18th place) was a bit wrong.
The next game we lost to Salernitana, but after that, we had an astonishing 14 games unbeaten run (9W 5D) that propelled us at the top of the table before Christmas.
Then we lost two difficult games vs. Entella and Perugia, our closest rivals in the league (both promoted at the end of the season), but in the second half of the season, we lost only other 3 games, winning the league once again and gaining a deserved promotion to bloody Serie A, the promised land, this also means back-to-back promotions for us.
The board asked for a mid-table finish, we did better.

Pro Vercelli are back to Serie A after 96 years!

How did the players perform?

Erik Gerbi had a complicated start to the season where he played little also because of some injuries, but in January he started to be employed more regularly.

He became a starter and formed a great partnership with Nicolai Frederiksen (7 goals & 7 assists), with 8 goals, all in the second part of the season, he’s our top scorer.
I don’t know if he can develop into a Serie A player but surely deserves a chance.
Another young man who will stay with us is Lucien Agoume, excellent regista who played at the Silvio Piola for two seasons on loan from Inter.
This summer I will try to buy him permanently, having an agreed price clause of 3.5M, cause this guy has a lot to offer and could be dominant at a higher level as well.
Nicoletti had another good year (see below) while our regular goalie, Tommaso Nobile, who had been loaned out to Carpi last season, came back just to break the league clean sheets record with 20.
In my solid back trio, Danish defender Rasmus Nicolaisen emerged as my best asset (33 apps. 2.25 interceptions/90min, 4.11 headers won/90min), while Raoul Mal (5 goals & 2 assists) and Leonardo Mazza (4 goals & 6 assists) both confirmed to be interesting prospects for the squad in midfield.

Compared to last year, the numbers say that we still have the best attack and the best defence, but we are no longer the ones with the most successful dribbles per game stat (we’re only 9th now), anyway we have the best cross completion ratio.

Future plans

Finally, I can see the stadium Silvio Piola often full, the next step will be to expand it or build a new one to ensure more revenue.
Being in Serie A with a 5500 seat stadium is not the best if you want the club to continue to grow.
The same can be said for the training facilities, as soon as there are funds available I’ll ask the management to improve them.

Our policy to bring in young players on loan to test them and fill the gaps in the squad showed to be effective so far, from now we’re going to buy some of them to build a solid core for years to come.

Serie A probably came too soon, we might struggle next season, however I’m confident we’re on the right track, we’ll make Pro Vercelli fans proud or we’ll fail trying.

Do you need more Armchair Gaffer content?
Then check the link below to discover how this Pro Vercelli story started.

1. Breaking my silence

A big “thank you” to my readers for supporting this publication and sharing my content, stay in touch!

Grazie.

4. The prodigal son was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How Pro Vercelli conquered Lega Pro

Hello again, season 2019–20 with Pro Vercelli in Lega Pro, or Serie C if you prefer, is already over, an excellent season where we dominated the league finishing in first place with 101 points, only one defeat, while Monza finished second 25 points behind.
After 81 goals score and only 16 conceded, we’re back to Serie B after two years!

Given the premises I’m very satisfied, the team I found was certainly not built for promotion, being media predicted to finish 6th.
A group of youngsters from the youth sector to which I added some hot prospects borrowed from clubs of higher category, mainly seventeen and eighteen years old.
Having a solid Italian core with some more experienced players like Gianmario Comi (club top scorer with 11), Alberto Masi e Gabriele Franchino (11 assists from the right-wing) surely helped to achieve an unpredictable first place, one of the most impressive runs I have ever had in Football Manager.

2. Forza Pro!

Despite the promotion to Serie B, the financial situation of the club is not so flourishing; the wage budget is under control, we’re only 11th in the salary per annum table with 1.75M, but the club has continued to lose money all year round, also because of the low turnout (1905 our average attendance) at the stadium Silvio Piola.

We currently are in the red and it’s a stressful situation.

Anyhow the management is happy for the results obtained and also the five-year plan has been widely respected so far, let’s see how it will change next year in Serie B.

Players overview

The player of the year award ranking explains well the dominance of Pro Vercelli in the league, as you know from my previous piece Manuel Nicoletti was the only player signed on a permanent basis when the season started, snapped for 50k he scored 7 goals with 11 assists and 7 POM’s in his first season.

Both Manuel Nicoletti and Simone Rosso (a winger retrained) played in the left wingback spot, surely this match engine looks biased toward wingbacks, but I’ll try to clarify later how the tactic I used played a major role in this successful season.

Keepers: my young keeper Gianluca Saro (19 yrs) quickly became my first choice over the more experienced Moschin, 15 clean sheets tell he did a good job.

Defenders: I already talked about Nicoletti, Rosso and Franchino, another one who impressed here has been another wingback, Roberto Iezzi with his 10 assists.
Simone Auriletto (20 yrs) clearly emerged among my central defenders, on the right of my back three, played 35 games with 7.32 av.rating.

Midfield: many good news come from this department, Leonardo Mazza (renewed loan for another season) was one of the biggest surprise of the year, he’s been our starting regista for the whole season, at just 18 years old he’s very mature for his age, his Pirlesque vision and awareness were the main reasons behind his 8 assists and 3 goals. Two players coming from Pro Vercelli youth sector had a brilliant season as well: Raoul Mal (20 yrs, 6 goals and 7 assists) and Michele Foglia (22 yrs, 6 and 4).

Forwards: Baldè was my best striker with Comi, they were both club top scorers with 11 goals, the good news is that from next summer the Spanish forward will join the “Bianche casacche” permanently, having signed a three-year deal after Sampdoria were hesitating to renew his contract.
Another one that deserves to be mentioned is Belgian striker on loan from Sampdoria, Jamie Yayi Mpie (19 yrs), the boy is really talented as he showed in his 18 apps with 9 goals.

We are red, we are white, we are Danish dynamite!

Some teams are remembered for the trophies won, some others for the emotions aroused in people’s hearts.
In the early 1980s, Denmark became one of the most innovative and spectacular national teams in European football.
They won nothing but their way of playing football enchanted fans all over the world.

If you’re interested in their story you should read this: Danish Dynamite the Story of the Football’s Greatest Cult Team

There were some great players in that team: the bio-luminescence of Michael Laudrup worked perfectly with Preben Elkiaer’s raw power and Morten Olsen sense of position. Sepp Piontek, their German manager, was able to give them discipline and focus, things that until then had been missing in Danish football, without restricting its naive inspiration.
They lost to Spain, their nemesis, both the Euro 84 semi-final and Mexico 86 second round, but the kind of football they showed before those games won’t be forgotten.

But how do you connect all this to Pro Vercelli?

Simple, their 3–5–2 was the inspiration for the tactic that Alberto Gilardino’s team is using.
Many coaches claim to have invented or reinvented the 3–5–2 formation, from Carlos Bilardo to Piontek, passing through Ciro Blazevic and arriving up to Antonio Conte, the truth is that each version of this tactic has its own peculiarities, talking about Football Manager you could check Keysie Rensie blog and read about his version of 3–5–2, different from mine but still effective.
Now let’s see how mine works.
That Danish side was a team of dribblers, on the flanks and in the middle, they always tried to beat their direct opponents, they liked to have the ball but their game wasn’t merely possession-based as the search for vertical play was always present.

We did the same.

These are my wide men average dribbling per game stats:

• Nicoletti: 4.21
• Iezzi: 3.38
• Franchino: 3.41
• Rosso: 2.68

Like the Danes we’re using a libero but we’re even more expansive, we also have a regista in our formation (Piontek employed a more defensive midfielder, Bertelsen, to screen the defensive line) to be more aggressive from the back and move the ball quickly forward.

Stretch your opponents to hit them in the middle still works

The wing-back on the right must, above all, cross balls inside the penalty box, remaining wider than its counterpart on the other flank, mainly to leave space for the runs of the mezzala.
The left wing-back, having more space in front of him often cuts towards the penalty area to shoot.

When we attack our first target is to widen the pitch, so to have gaps in the middle of which my three central midfielders could take advantage.

Crosses are a vital part of this tactic but we score in several ways, just check The graphic below to discover how our goals are well distributed among the various positions on the pitch.

The problem with 3–5–2 formation is that it’s really tiring, especially for the wingbacks forced to cover with exhausting runs the flanks of competence.
I replace them often during the second half of the game because if they have no more energy to keep the formation high, we could end up playing a low 5–3–2, with a real chance of being closed down in our own half.
Fit and strong players are vital for the success of this tactical asset, heavy rotation has been used in this first season to keeep them fresh.

I know the Football Manager match engine is still a work in progress but I have faith in what I have here, I’ll face Serie B still using this tactic as a solid starting point.

Meanwhile there’s a lot to plan for next season , the rebuilding of Pro Vercelli has just begun.

I know, Zebre are everywhere, it seems the fix didn’t work for Juve under-23 squad.
Shit happens.

Downloading…

Click here to download the Pro Vercelli 3–5–2 tactic

This is the end, for now, keep following the blog for more Football Manager content and Pro Vercelli goodness…

4. The prodigal son

3. Football Manager 20 and 3–5–2 tactic: a match made in heaven? was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pro Vercelli Club review in Football Manager 2020

Me & the beta

As far as I can remember, I never started a Football Manager save with its beta version, mainly cause I always look for the more stable version of the match engine before setting up a proper game, just to avoid game-breaking bugs.

After many years I realized that thing simply doesn’t exist, a bit late, I know.

The match engine is always evolving, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, every year it has got peculiar bugs and strong points, waiting for the Holy Grail is probably pointless.

Having said this, I decided to start my career with Pro Vercelli and see how this journey unfolds.

1. Breaking my silence

Club vision

• Sign players under 20 for the future
• Don’t sign players over 30

I had no problem with the second part while the first one obliged me to get some players on loan, having a budget of only 350k to sign new players.

The five-year plan

1. Work within wage budget (around 2M per season) and minimum 2-year contract for first-team players
2. For the end of this season, the minimum goal for Pro Vercelli is to reach the Lega Pro playoff (1st team is promoted, from 2nd to 10th go to playoff)

The same applies to the next four seasons, at least for now, this a new feature, let’s see how it works in the following years.

The squad and the players I signed

Only one player has been purchased permanently, Manuel Nicoletti, a 20 years old wingback who joined from Catanzaro for 50k.

All the other came on loan, they’re mainly hot and unexperienced prospects from Serie A clubs, I’m aware they’re short term solutions but we can’t afford anything else because of the budget constraints.

Some of these will probably shine at a higher level sooner or later, for now, their job is to help the “Bianche Casacche” to achieve their targets.

There are some intriguing young Italian talents at the club: keeper Gianluca Saro, Roberto Iezzi (wingback), Simone Auriletto (central defender), Raoul Mal and Michele Foglia, two versatile midfielders, they all come from Pro Vercelli youth team.

There are good youth facilities at the club, improving these could be vital to help our growth.

Most of my first team players have contracts expiring next season, I’ll have to wait and carefully evaluate who deserve to stay or leave, money is tight and we can’t change that.

We start our journey with a squad of twenty-three players, 22 years old is our average age.

Tactics and philosophy

After the transfer market Pro Vercelli squad have got strength (1st in the league), determination (1st), flair (1st) and composure (1st).

Looking at my players, I immediately started thinking about a 3–5–2 formation, the starting point is this tactic I created for FM19, more to come about it in another article.

In a nutshell this is a high pressure, short passing system that tries to widen the pitch to create space in the middle, where both my central attackers and the mezzala could create havoc.
An easy plan.

We all have targets, right?

I’m always in a difficult position to state what I want to achieve when I start a career.
The chances of being banal are high, that’s why this time I won’t write anything about it, a long and exciting game is all I want.

The average attendance at the Silvio Piola is really low (1000 season ticket holders), if I have to set myself a goal then to awaken the passion for the team in the hearts of the Vercelli fans would be a massive result.

Monza, owned by Berlusconi family, are the team to beat, Juventus under-23 and Alessandria two strong squads we’ll have to face in this first Lega Pro campaign.
Novara are our historic rivals, mainly for geographical reasons, we play the rice derby (derby del riso) against them.

That’s all guys, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more content!

2. Forza Pro! was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Enjoy!

Waiting for Football Manager 2020 was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My club in Football Manager 2020

Here we are, another year, another Football Manager arrives, are you ready to waste many hours of your meaningful life once again?
Football Manager 2020 will hit the shelves on 19th of November and even with less spare time it’s always one of my preferred hobby, last year I wrote eight articles on my blog about the game, mainly regarding its tactical aspects, always trying different formations with different clubs.
This year will be different, I want to focus on a single club, through good times and bad and obviously reporting back on the blog about how it goes.
First of all I need to pick the right club and like last year I’m going to write about Italian football, if you’re a loyal fan of calcio then you could find something for you here.

Three clubs, one career

Looking for a club I immediately thought about a serie C team, Italian third tier is a difficult league that could keep me busy in the months to come.
In serie C, or Lega Pro if you prefer, there are three divisions with 20 clubs per division fighting to gain promotion to serie B.
Initially I put together three names: Sud-Tirol, Pro Vercelli and L.R. Vicenza.
The last one is a big name with a glorious past, they fell from grace after a 2nd place in serie A, when a young Paolo Rossi scored 24 goals in his serie A debut season, a UEFA Cup Winners cup semi-final (lost to Chelsea) and a Coppa Italia win; after many financial problems last year a new owner (Renzo Rosso, 10th richest man in Italy and founder of Diesel, a well-known brand in the Italian fashion industry) arrived and rebuilt the club from scratch, now they’re a solid squad with a good chance of being promoted.
In 1983 a sixteen years old Roberto Baggio made his debut in professional football playing for Vicenza in serie C1.

Sud-Tirol are a young (founded in 1995) and ambitious club based in Bolzano, they’re the northernmost professional football club in Italy and the only one in the Trentino-Alto Adige region, where people with different cultural backgrounds, mainly Italian and German, live and work together.
They’re renewing their tiny stadium, named after Roman general Drusus, adding more seats, to be ready for a promotion to serie B.
Their training ground is a little gem at this level.

Last but not least there’s Pro Vercelli, a well known fallen giant in calcio, with their seven league titles from 1908 to 1922, after those years the club started to decline and those glory days are nothing more than sweet memories.
They played their last Serie A season in 1934–35 when their star striker Silvio Piola left Vercelli and joined Lazio, since then they’ve been playing mainly in serie C and serie D, at the end of 2013 they were finally able to bounce back and got promoted to serie B, but after a terrible season they were demoted to serie B immediately.

Current owner Massimo Secondo talked several times about his intention to leave but no serious offers arrived so far, so they started 2019–20 season with very low ambition, escaping from relegation looks to be their main goal with a squad full of unknown youngsters on low wages.
Three different clubs that offer different challenges and motivations to play, all of them are really tempting, but I think this year could be the right time to have a proper Pro Vercelli save and bring the lions (“i leoni”) back to their former glory, I’m charmed by this club club who ruled football in Italy from a small town and afterwards fell down into lower leagues obscurity, seriously risking to disappear.

Football changed a lot in the last 100 years, could Pro Vercelli come back to their previous brilliancy?

The Manager

Some FM players employ an alter-ego manager in the game, fictional or real, I was considering the idea to do the same this time, but Pro Vercelli board did that work for me, appointing Alberto Gilardino as their new manager they created a great opportunity for a riveting story.

“Il Gila” will be my in-game counterpart, so I’ll keep him in charge and we’ll become the same person for this journey.

The former 2006 Fifa World Cup winner was surprisingly appointed when he had just finished his Coverciano course to become a football manager, few months after the end of his career as a player in serie B for Spezia.

A difficult job for a novice.

The Stadium

Named after Pro Vercelli greatest player and Italy legend, Silvio Piola stadium is a tiny, but good for Lega Pro, stadium with 5500 seats and artificial turf, it’s used for home games since 1932.

I’m going to write more about Pro Vercelli when the full game will be out, meanwhile keep visiting this blog and remember that sharing is caring!

See you at the Silvio Piola stadium!

2. Forza Pro!

1. Breaking my silence was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to fix your tactic and keep winning in Football Manager 19

What do you do when your reliable tactic suddenly stops working in Football Manager? Do you perform a complete overhaul or you try to understand what’s no more working so to make some slight changes and regenerate your old tactic?

If your tactic is solid enough, fixing it with some tweaks could be the way to go.

In my last article, I wrote about how I developed a Sacchi inspired 4–4–2 tactic, then I wanted to test that formation with another club, different players etc…

Not an established club, but a very average and financially broken one, Venezia looked like a good choice, they’re the typical Serie B club with a squad mainly composed of players on loan.

Obviously, there were other good reasons to pick them:

• I love the city, Venezia is mesmerizing, every time I go there I discover something new, endless perspectives
• Valentino Mazzola, one of Calcio's greatest, played and won the Coppa Italia for them in 1940–41, just before his Toro years
• Ezio Loik, called the elephant for his strength, another one from Il Grande Torino, also played for the club alongside Mazzola
• Their stadium, Pier Luigi Penzo, is the 2nd oldest in Italy, it’s a tiny ground built on S.Elena, an island of the Venetian lagoon
• American lawyer Joe Tacopina, Venezia owner, often speaks about his ambitious plan for the club, but not enough money has been put into it so far, get out the money Joe!
• Last but not least their sexy black, green & orange kits!

Squad improvements

I spent the available budget to sign two central defenders: 200k for Jakob Glesnes and 500k for Erik Sandberg, the second could improve a lot in the future, while the first is good at Serie B level.

All the others joined on loan, some interesting youngsters to add more depth to the squad.

• Arnaud Nordin (winger)
• Julien Serrano (full back)
• Josh Sargent (striker)
• Mattia Viviani (midfielder)
• Moses Odjer (midfielder)

The tweaked tactic

You already know about my tactic (check the link at the top of the page for more info), a compact and tight 4–4–2, defensively solid but capable to deliver the goods up top, it’s a narrow formation based on discipline, short passing and a high defensive line.

It worked wonders for Frosinone but what about Venezia?

In the first half of the season I made no changes to the old tactic, in November after 12 games played we were sitting 12th in the table, more or less what the media predicted (14th) before the start of the season, but I wasn’t happy cause defensively we’re conceding too much and our scoring ratio was far from being impressive, too many shots, not enough goals.

It was time to change, so some team instructions have been tuned, while no roles or PI’s have been modified.

Basically, we’re now playing at a slower tempo, with a more attacking mentality (a major change), focusing our play down both flanks and working the ball into the box.

The tactic is now less possession-oriented, mentality is a risk/reward tool, if you become more expansive you’re more prone to take risks, somehow this riskier approach is toned down by moving the ball with less urgency and even the “work ball into box” instruction goes in that direction, both help against more organised teams, we’re no more wasteful with our shooting and crossing and we finally try to unlock more defensive systems with a patient buildup.

It might seem a bit counterintuitive, but the final outcome is a well-balanced system at this level.

Since this change we started to put together an impressive series of results and won the league comfortably with the best defensive record, going more attacking improved our defensive consistency.

Overall the squad is more entertaining to watch and the match engine seems to appreciate these settings, good enough for Serie A? This question could be material for another article.

The chart below shows a well-rounded assist distribution between through balls and crosses.

MVP of the season

Right winger Francesco Di Mariano truly deserved this award: 26 apps, 12 assists and 3 goals, but even my left winger had a brilliant season, Arnaud Nordin scored 7 with 6 assists.

In general creative wingers seem to shine playing in this tactical framework, focusing play down the flanks surely helped to keep them more involved, both have a support duty and this encourages them to track back often.

Thanks for reading and supporting the blog guys, many of you came here to read my previous piece, keep following and spread the word…

Breaking my silence

Small tweaks matter was originally published in Crujffista on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.