The RE-builders of Pripyat: A Valeriy Lobanovskiy tactical recreation. Part Three

Parts one and two of this little tactical series looked at the formation and the team instructions of my Lobanovskiy pressing tactic.

I also have a version that I use when I want to sit deeper and hit teams on the counter-attack. Lobanovskiy would employ such a plan very often away from home. He was one of the first proponents of the idea that winning at home and drawing away would secure the title in most seasons. Most smaller sides would happily accept a draw at home when playing the mighty Kyiv so it became almost mutually beneficial. Eventually, in response to this, the Soviet league introduced a cap on the number of draws that sides were allowed and any draws over this total would not accrue any points.

I did not plan to write about this tactic but I have had a couple of people ask me about it (when I say a couple, I do mean two.) and I am using it more than I thought I might. The formation remains the same with only a couple of role changes that I'll discuss at the end. Similar to my last post, I will take each section of the tactical creator in turn, and outline why I have selected certain options. Unlike my pressing tactic, this time I will be using a blank canvass and customising the tactic from there. First off, I decided to play on a balanced mentality, funnily enough, I felt this gave me the best balance between defending and attacking.

I have watched hours of Kyiv games recently and one that really stood out was their 1975 Cup Winners Cup win against Ferencváros from Hungary. Kyiv played solely on the counter-attack throughout the match, winning 3-0.

In Possession

My Selections - Pass Into Space; Higher Tempo.

Pass Into Space is a no brainer for a counter-attacking tactic, in my opinion. It is the space that our opponents leave in behind their defence, when they attack us, that we are trying to exploit. I did consider increasing the passing directness, but I felt that passing into space, coupled with other elements of the tactic, that I will discuss below, would encourage more direct passing anyway.

Higher Tempo when in possession also fits what I am trying to do with this tactic. Players will make decisions quickly in an attempt to maximise any turnovers we get. We play on at a similar tempo in my pressing tactic so this also helps a little with tactical familiarity.

In Transition

My Selections - Regroup; Counter; Distribute Quickly

If a counter-attacking tactic is to be successful, it will be strong in transition. I have selected Regroup when possession is lost. We need to keep our shape intact as much as possible. There is little point setting up a great defensive tactic then leaving yourself exposed during the defensive transition. Whenever Lobanovskiy played on the counter-attack his players always regrouped very quickly. Below is a screenshot showing three Kyiv forward players all with their back turned on the ball in order to get into position when possession is lost. As clear an example of 'Regroup' as you will see. This would rarely happen in today's game but highlights the importance of the defensive shape to Lobanvoskiy when he played this way.

Regroup in action.

Unsurprisingly counter and distribute quickly are selected. When we win the ball we want to attack and attack quickly. Both these selections are vital to that.

Out Of Possession

My Selections - Lower Line Of Engagement; Lower Defensive Line; More Urgent Pressing; Get Stuck In.

If we look again at footage from the Ferencváros game (below) we see that Kyiv players do not engage their Ferencváros counterparts, in any way, until they reach the halfway line. While the press may not come until halfway line when it comes it is urgent, so I've selected more urgent pressing. The defensive line was set around the 18-yard line in the 1975 final. This is a perfect strategy when you are set up to counter-attack. You are drawing the opposition onto you and encouraging them to leave copious amounts of space in behind for you to exploit. I have also selected Get Stuck In, I am unsure if this is something Lobanovskiy would've instructed players to do so I will keep this under review.

Lower Line of Engagement

Final Tactic

So all this has led to the tactic below. In my mind, it represents, fairly well, how Lobanovskiy set his sides up when he wanted to sit deep and hit the opposition on the counter-attack.

The only changes to the roles I have made are to use Wide Midfielders exclusively and change my wing-backs to full-backs on support. I think this makes us stronger in both offensive and defensive transitions. I have also removed the ball-playing defender 'stopper' and made him a simple ball-playing defender on defend, we are sitting deep and compact, I don't want him charging out of defence when we are likely very close to our own goal. I have also changed the Pressing Forward on support to an Advanced Forward on attack (still not sure about this). I want him to challenge the last man, making early runs in behind the opposition defence that our more direct play should expose. I don't, however, want him to become isolated, this is fine if he is a special player but my strikers at the moment are only a little bit better than me.

Season One (Quick) Review

So I've described these tactics and the next logical question should be, how have they performed?

Apart from a short spell in September things have gone exceptionally well. The promotion rules in the Ukrainian Amateur Leagues (4th tier) are a little odd, to me at least. The division is split into three leagues by region; roughly. The top two teams at the end of the season enter the promotion playoffs, along with the best two third-placed sides. This gives eight teams who are randomly drawn against each other in two-legged knockouts until two teams remain, it is these two sides that are promoted to the Druha Liga (3rd tier). So, theoretically, you could win your division and not be promoted. Where did we finish, I hear you ask.

A 4-1 win against champions MFC Pervomaysk, whilst using my counter-attacking tactic,  on the last day, secured 2nd place and a playoff spot. Victoria Mykolaivka joined us as one of the best third-placed teams.

We were drawn to play ODEK, champions from Division A, in the semi-finals of the promotion playoff. They were clear favourites having won 19 of their 20 games all season. The bookies gave us little chance so I used my counter-attacking strategy. We managed to  prevail via a penalty shoot-out after both sides won their home leg 2-1.

The winning penalty, what a moment.

The winning penalty, what a moment.

We moved onto the final where Dnipro-1-Borysfen were waiting for us. I was sure we were the better side so employed my pressing tactic in the first leg. A 6-1 win set us up for a 9-3 victory over two legs, and promotion to the professional ranks of the Druha Liga was achieved.

Promotion!

Our promotion has come much quicker than I anticipated. The amateur leagues are a bit strange, some teams are pretty good, while others are truly awful and don't seem to do anything to improve. I'm expecting things to be a lot tougher in the professional Druha Liga next season. We have no money, next to no income, and none of my players have a proper contract. I did plan to do a lovely FC Pripyat team DNA piece but to be honest, this season was all about getting enough players to fill the bench. When I first entered the player search screen I had 12 players interested in joining, beggars can't be choosers. In time I hope to implement some sort of team identity, based around Lobanovskiy's core principles of Teamwork, Work-Rate and Physicality, but it will have to wait until we are more established financially.

Summer recruitment is going to be tough, not least as our "real wage budget" is around £2,000 per week. I plan to tie up around eleven players to professional contracts and leave the rest of the squad on rolling pay as you play contracts.

If you have made it this far thanks very much for reading. If you haven’t a clue what is going on you can read earlier posts here.

You can find me on twitter here and I will also be providing sporadic updates about the save and various other things on my slack channel #fmeadster.

Over and out

FMEadster!

The RE-builders of Pripyat: A Valeriy Lobanovskiy tactical recreation. Part Two

In my last post, I outlined the formation I will be using and the reasoning behind it. This post will cover the team instructions I will be using at FC Pripyat. As mentioned last time, I have been watching games managed by Valeriy Lobanovskiy on this website. The two main games I analysed were;

In addition to these games, I have paid particular attention to this article from Spielverlagerung.de and have referenced their article throughout this post.

I'm not really one for tactical replications and was unsure where to start. Thankfully the FM tactics module has been updated in recent years making this sort of thing easier to do by breaking up each element of the tactic into three constituent parts, in possession, in transition, and out of possession. So, when I was watching footage of an old match I simply paid attention to what happened in that phase of the game and made some notes as I went along.

Lobanovskiy was famous for only playing in one half of the pitch. Either the opposition's half, when he was looking to take the game to them or his own half, drawing the opposition in, before launching swift and deadly counter-attacks. I have attempted to recreate both systems based on what I watched.

My number one tactic I have called Lobanovskiy Press - as the name suggests we will be pressing the opposition in their half of the pitch; it will be the focus of this post. I decided to use the Gegenpress pre-set, with a positive mentality, as a starting point. I feel the presets are, perhaps, undervalued. I used them in my Russian save in FM19 and I found them fairly good. I have, however, made small adjustments to refine the style a little better to try match what Lobanovskiy's sides would have done.

In possession

Selected by default: Fairly narrow; Pass Into Space; Play Out Of Defence; Extremely High Tempo 

Taking attacking width first,

Lobanovskyi was a strong believer of the idea that the best way to overcome rivals is to manipulate the size of the playing area, making the field larger when in possession and smaller when defending. In order to do that, full-backs and wingers usually provided width by moving upfield.

For this reason, I have set this to fairly wide, which is one notch to the right. I will keep this under review, as playing wide with four midfielders may not be necessary.

One thing that is clear from watching Kyiv games from the 1980s is that they passed into space. Very often the centre-backs would pass the ball between them before playing a long cross-field ball into space. For this reason, I have kept both Pass Into Space and Play Out of Defence selected. I will monitor the Play Out of defence selection, as this means something very different to how Lobanovskiy used it 35 years ago. In early games, I have already hidden behind the sofa a number of times as my centre-backs receive the ball in our area from a goal-kick. I'm also uncomfortable using extremely high tempo. I believe, at the time, Kyiv's play would've been described as extremely high tempo, but in comparison to today's football, it really wasn't. I have moved this one notch to the left, high tempo.

The Soviet defenders often enjoyed some degree of freedom in the initial build-up, and they exploited that well by accurately hitting long-range passes over the opposing back line. The long balls were accurate to move the ball forward and to throw Protasov and Belanov into the final third of the pitch.

I have also added Run at Defence after reading Inverting the Pyramid in which Johnathan Wilson suggested Lobanovskiy expected his advanced payers to carry out around 50 dribbles per game.

Changes: Fairly Wide; High Tempo; Run At Defence

In Transition

Selected by default: Counter-Press; Counter; Distribute to Centre-Backs; Take Short Kicks

Counter-Press and Counter will be retained. Both represent the very essence of Lobanovskiy's football philosophy.

Always emphasising on the fitness of his players, Lobanovskyi enabled his sides to produce intense pressing over the course of 90 minutes.

One of the basic USSR’s attacking approaches was built upon quick counterattacking combinations between both forwards Igor Belanov and Oleh Protasov.

The following two images are stills, roughly two seconds apart, from the USSR versus the Republic of Ireland in Euro '88. In the first image, Ray Houghton (green) has just won the ball for Ireland. He is immediately counter pressed by Soviet midfielders. He loses the ball, and in one movement the three Soviet midfielders counter and are goalside of their opposite number. I particularly like the Irish fullback throwing his arms in the air in despair.

 
 
 
 

Personally, I don't agree with the goalkeeper instructions being here but they are. From watching Kyiv v Atlético in 1986, it is clear that the Kyiv 'keeper was instructed to distribute it quickly to the full-backs. This is a common way to get around the sides of the opposition, moving up the pitch rapidly. I have adjusted the presets to reflect this.

Changes: Distribute to Full-Backs; Distribute Quickly.

Out of possession

Selected by default: Much Higher Line of Engagement; Higher Defensive Line; Extremely Urgent Pressing Intensity; Prevent Short GK Distribution.

I decided to lower the line of engagement to 'Higher Line of Engagement' which is one notch down. From the games I watched, while Kyiv pressed high, they rarely pressed all the way into the opposition box. The defensive line was certainly higher, but one centre-back was always covering behind the other and I have also reduced the pressing to urgent. From discussions on Slack, I decided that counter-pressing, positive mentality, and extremely urgent pressing would disorganise the side more than Lobanovskiy would have ever allowed.

Changes: Higher Line Of Engagement; Urgent Pressing Intensity

Final Tactics

First of all, this isn't in any way a plug and win tactic. It is merely my first attempt at replicating something from over 30 years ago. It may fail miserably, or it may do well, that is the point of this journey, I have no idea how it will go.

If you have made it this far thanks very much for reading. If you haven’t a clue what is going on you can read earlier posts here.

You can find me on twitter here and I will also be providing sporadic updates about the save and various other things on my slack channel #fmeadster.

Over and out

FMEadster!

The RE-Builders of Pripyat: A Valeriy Lobanovskiy tactical recreation Part One

Little more than nine days after the disaster at Chernobyl, with radioactive isotopes still falling across Western Europe, Soviet Cup Winners, Dynamo Kyiv lined up to play Spanish giants Atlético Madrid in the final of the Cup Winners Cup in Lyon. Kyiv sits only 100Km to the south of Chernobyl and the Kyiv youth sides, including a nine-year-old Andriy Schevchenko, had already been evacuated to a camp near the Black Sea.

Dynamo were coached by football's premier scientist, Valeriy Lobanovskiy.  His Dynamo side were extremely well drilled, each player a cog in a much bigger eleven-part machine. Kyiv dismantled Atlético 3-0, their relentless pressing and fitness levels, along with guile from Blokhin proved too much for the Spanish. You can watch some highlights below.

 

Lobanovskiy stands out as one of the greatest managers in the history of the game and is a giant in Ukrainian football to this day. He essentially created three great Dynamo Kyiv sides across three decades before his death in 2002. He won eight Soviet Top league titles, six Soviet Cups, the Cup Winners Cup twice and was runner up in the Euro '88 finals with the Soviet Union. I remember him as a rather portly gentleman rocking backwards and forwards on the touchline while Schevchenko and Rebrov fired Kyiv to the semi-finals of the Champions League in 1999, there is so much more to this man than I had appreciated at the time. Below is a little montage of his career with a Russian twist.

 

Systems and evolution

There is a term in biological science, convergent evolution, whereby a similar trait, such as the ability to sense light, has manifested itself in two completely distinct populations, at completely different times, in the evolutionary record. The eye of an Octopus, for example, has developed, evolutionarily speaking, completely separate from the eyes of mammals. Scientists believe the eye may have independently evolved upwards of 50 different times across the geological record. If something is advantageous to a population, it seems, natural selection will select similar solutions again and again.

Convergent evolution also happened with certain football philosophies in Eastern and Western Europe, during the 20th Century. If you mention total football, pressing, and universality people will almost certainly think about the great Dutch sides of the 1970s, they will think about Johan Cruyff and his latter-day disciples. Very few (me included) will think about Dynamo Kyiv, the Soviet Union, and Valeriy Lobanovskiy. But, around the same time as the world was mesmerised by the Dutch World Cup sides of 1974 and 1978, Dynamo Kyiv emerged from behind the Iron Curtain playing their own brand of high pressing, total football. While Lobanovskiy's sides were known for their relentless pressing and supreme fitness, he was more pragmatic in his approach than the Dutch sides of the time. Lobanovskiy was happy to sit deep and play on the counter-attack when the situation demanded it. The pinnacle of his success came in 1974/75 and 1986 seasons when Kyiv won the Cup Winners Cup with a 3-0 demolition of Hungarian giants Ferencváros and latterly, as mentioned, Atlético Madrid. Lobanovskiy also managed the Soviet Union three times. At the Mexico World Cup in 1986, they played some fantastic football before being eliminated by Belgium 4-3 in the quarter-finals. His most successful Soviet side was the 1988 European Championship side that lost 2-0 to the Netherlands in the final. It's the game Marco Van Basten scored 'that' volley.

Lobanovskiy was a trained systems scientists and he took this into his management. Each player was a cog in a much larger machine. He was one of the first managers to collect statistics on player actions during a game, each position would have targets to meet. While teams in Blightly were spending time bonding down the pub, Lobanovskiy was collating inceptions per 90 data, distance covered, passes completed. This may seem standard stuff today in the Opa Stats era but it wasn't always the case. Lobanovskiy's reliance on sports science and data analysts was truly revolutionary, and in a way, truly communist.

If the Chernobyl disaster represented everything that is wrong with unabated scientific advancement and the communist regime that supported it, then Lobanovskiy represents everything that is good about science and the communist ethic of collective success before personal accomplishment.

This save is an attempt to bring the two together.

Tactics Part one - the formation.

Where to start with a tactical recreation? My first port of call was 'Inverting the Pyramid' by Johnathan Wilson, I remembered he had a chapter on Lobanovskiy. Wilson suggested Kyiv lined up in a 4-1-3-2 formation in 1986, so I was excited to try and replicate something a little different.

Dynamo Kyiv line up and formation as suggested by Johnathan Wilson for the 1986 Cup Winners Cup final.

Secondly, I recently came across a fantastic website called Footballia It hosts a monumental amount of old match footage. There is even a search function where you can enter a player or coach and results return all the matches they hold with that person involved. I decided to watch the Dynamo Kyiv final against Atlético Madrid to see if it was possible to replicate what I saw.

Tactical recreations are not something I have really done before. So I've decided to split this into two posts as it may get a bit wordy otherwise. In this part, I will discuss the formation and roles I have decided to use and how I came to that decision. In the second part, I will discuss Team Instructions.

So upon opening the tactical creator I immediately chose a 4-1-3-2 formation similar to that shown above. I tested this with a number of different teams in Football Manager 2020, with many different role combinations, but I could not really get the same style of play I had watched in the old footage from the 1980s. In fact, very often the players weren't even in the correct position. I changed roles and duties but was unable to find any combination that adequately replicated what I was seeing.

Dan Gear and DMs.

I recently appeared on the Grass 'N' Gear podcast and backstage I mentioned to Gear that I was struggling to make it work as I would like. Then a few nights later I got a notification, someone had crept into my DMs, it was Gear, and I was afraid. He sent a link over to a Spielverlagerung article about Lobanovskiy's Soviet Union side and the 4-4-2 they played. I made sure the sound was off on my phone before I tentatively opened the link.

USSR 4-4-2

I had already seen the article but discarded it as it was describing a 4-4-2, my thinking was Lobanovskiy may have employed different tactics as the national coach than he did with his club team. But Dan said, "you could still make it a 4-1-3-2 in possession and 4-4-2 out of possession". Finally, the penny dropped. What followed was a 'Late night with Gear' masterclass. I was getting sent colour coded in-game screenshots of his team in, and out, of possession showing how the 4-4-2 transformed into a 4-1-3-2. As I climbed into bed at 2.00am, completely spent, Dan was still banging away at my DMs.

A 4-4-2 that could morph into a 4-`1-3-2 as suggested by Dan Gear

A common mistake among FM players (and one I made) is to fail to understand what the tactics screen is showing you. The above image shows how our side lines up in defence. It is the roles and duties that you select that determine how your side look during the attacking phase. I have added arrows to show how the roles and duties, as selected, will affect player movement when we have the ball. So how does this play out in-game?

Here Michael Keane has the ball for Everton in our half. You can see we are in our defensive shape, two banks of four, nice and compact. Now see the difference in shape when we have the ball.

Harry Maguire has the ball for us in this example. McTominay is key here (circled blue) he is the CM-d and holds his position. Both Inverted Wingers move forwards and come narrow alongside CM-s Pogba forming a nice 4-1-3-2.

This will be my starting tactic for my #FM20 FC Pripyat save. I may tweak some things a little, for example, Oleg Kuznetsov very often stepped out of the defensive line to carry the ball into midfield. While his centre back partner, Sergi Baltacha (father of the late British tennis player Elena Baltacha) was often sat much deeper as a Sweeper. It may be too much to ask fourth-tier players to do this so I will implement that over time perhaps. I'm still to be totally convinced on the two striker roles but I will keep this under review.

Finally a little word of thanks to Dan Gear for taking the time to read around a bit and help come up with this. I've listed below some words of advice from the best manager Bolivia ever had.

  • Watch early games slower and on at least comprehensive

  • Highlight important players and watch them (the midfield in this case)

  • Pause at turnovers in possession see where everyone is.

  • Play in FM touch so that familiarity, or lack of it, isn't an issue.

  • Play 10 games then make small changes

  • Play another 10 games and monitor the changes.

  • Give yourself 50 matches for the tactic to be finally right.

If you have made it this far thanks very much for reading. If you haven’t a clue what is going on you can read earlier posts here.

You can find me on twitter here and I will also be providing sporadic updates about the save and various other things on my slack channel #fmeadster.

Over and out

FMEadster!