#FM21 Save Reveal - Royal Antwerp "The Great Old"

Welcome to my FM21 save reveal. Having left Ruslan Chepiga behind somewhere on the shores of the Bering Strait, I will be starting a new journey in Belgium. It is hopefully obvious that I have decided to manage the oldest club in Belgium, Royal Antwerp - "The Great Old".

Before embarking on a save that I will play for around 11 months I like to make a list of things that I want to get out of it. This makes it much easier to narrow down leagues and clubs that could fulfil my needs. I have included this year's the wish-list below. We will return to this at the end and see how many things I was able to tick off.

  1. Link to current affairs

  2. European

  3. Not in one of Europe's big five leagues

  4. Prize money present in the league structure

  5. Some type of league playoff system at the end of the season

  6. No long winter break

  7. Potential for early continental competition

  8. 1st or 2nd Division

  9. Room for the club to grow

  10. A club with a rich history

Typically I start to think about a new save around May/June time each year. As a starting point, I very often take inspiration from current affairs. For example, Ruslan Chepiga was born out of the Salisbury poisonings that occurred around March 2018. I decided to create FC Pripyat after watching the HBO series, Chernobyl,  around the anniversary of the disaster in May 2019. So why have I settled on Belgium?

Why Belgium?

With everything that has happened this year, I did consider a Chinese save but, in the end, even I want an escape from all that shit.

The other news story that really grabbed my attention this year around May time, was the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by state police, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement that spread around the world. Unfortunately George Floyd was not the first black male killed by police in the US, and he will almost certainly not be the last.

George Floyd killing - Panorama

Protests took place on a nightly basis in many states in the US, and further afield. There were demonstrations in Canada, Australia, Denmark, France and the UK. As the movement gained momentum I was struck by the revisionist history that started to take hold, and how this manifested itself in the destruction/desecration of statues. In the UK we saw protestors daub graffiti on Churchill's statue, a man once voted as the "Greatest" Britain. In Bristol, the statue of Edward Colston was torn down by an angry mob and dumped into Bristol Channel in protest against his links to the African slave trade. This is despite his philanthropic work building schools, houses for the poor, hospitals, and Churches in Bristol and London.

Personally I obviously support the message within Black Lives Matter but I do have an issue with revisionist history that forces us to judge people of the past based upon what is deemed acceptable today. It is a moral quandary that I am still trying to work out if I am honest.

Anyway, while reading around about these statues I came across a news article about another statue being removed, this time in Belgium. Showing my own initial ignorance, I couldn't fathom why a statue in the heart of the European Union would cause anyone any offence.

The offending statue in this case was of King Leopold II, King of the Belgians. I hadn't realised what an important role he had played during the scramble for Africa between, 1881 and 1914. Leopold had essentially, under the guise of humanitarian work through a number of agents, managed to gain control of large swathes of land around the Congo. Surprisingly enough, to me at least, he achieved this as a personal venture and not for the Belgian state. By the time the Berlin Conference came around in 1884, Leopold was recognised by the fourteen countries in attendance as Sovereign ruler of what he later called the Congo Free State.

Leopold II statue

Berlin Conference 1884-1885

Leopold managed to extract a massive personal fortune from the land through the exploitation of Ivory, at first, and subsequently rubber. The processing of rubber required intensive labour on a massive scale, and as with anything involving Europeans, at the time, in Africa this labour was obtained through oppression and force. Slave labour was however forbidden under the agreement reached at the Berlin Conference, something Leopold, and his private army, the 'Force Publique', overtly ignored.

The atrocities carried out on the people under his rule at the time was so brutal, so horrific, that even his contemporaries were shocked and called for it to end. Remember many of his contemporaries were themselves involved in the slave trade to some extent.

In the end word of these atrocities (conservative estimates put the death toll in the millions) reached the parliaments of the other countries involved in the Berlin conference. In 1904 British diplomat Roger Casement, was commissioned to write a report on the human rights violations in the Congo Free State, that included slave labour, summary executions, and mutilation of limbs.

Casement's findings put immense pressure on the Belgian government, who eventually forced Leopold II to cede control of the Congo Free state in 1908 (Leopold was still financially compensated of course). The colony was then renamed the Belgian Congo, and was under Belgian parliamentary control until independence was granted in 1960.

King Leopold II's statue being removed in Antwerp after being set on fire the night before.

So I find myself looking at Belgium as a potential save location. The tenuous link to current affairs has been established above and wish list points 2-6 are also taken care of. It is European (2), it is not one of the five big leagues (3), there is prize money (4), the Belgian league structure is also interesting in that 18 teams play each other twice before the top four split off to play the Championship Group and play each other a further two times having halved their points, to determine the league champions and European places. Teams placed fifth to eighth enter the European Places Playoff with the team finishing fifth playing off against the fourth placed team for the final European place. So that takes care of point 5, and thankfully there is no winter break (6) I have suffered three editions of winter breaks and they now do my head in! All that remains then is to find a club to take care of the remaining points 7-10.

Why Antwerp?

King Leopold's statue was in Antwerp, and whilst doing some research into him, I remembered a link between Manchester United and Royal Antwerp. United would send young players there on loan to either gain playing experience, or help with work permit issues. This seems much more commonplace now but back then I remember it being pretty controversial. The link lasted 15 years from 1998-2013, and involved some good players actually. Frazier Campbell, Johnny Evans, Craig Cathcart, Tom Heaton, Ryan Shawcross, John O'Shea and Danny Simpson to name a few.

So I started to dig around Antwerp's history and that was when I stumbled upon the fact they are the oldest club in Belgium, having been formed in 1880 by some English students. This is further highlighted on the club's badge as they have a great big number one on the bottom recognising them as Belgium's first club, and their nickname "the Great Old". Another nice touch is the crown on the badge, anything royal gets a thumbs up from me. For further context the club was formed four years before Leopold was granted sovereign status of the Congo Free State.

The club has spent many years in the recent past in the second division of Belgium and was last promoted in 2017, after a thirteen year stint in the second tier. This is a club on the up and this was never highlighted more than during August 2020 when they managed to overcome Club Brugge 1-0 to win the Belgian Cup, for only the third time in their long history, and the first time since 1991/92. They have four league titles to their name, but the last triumph was in 1956/57, the year my father was born.

I decided to have a look through their current squad and noticed they already had four players from the DR Congo on the books. The most recognisable, to me at least was, Dieumerci Mbokani who had a short spell in the premier league with Norwich in 2015/16 and again with Hull in 2016/17. In my mind a #narrative was aligning nicely, and a FM save idea was crystallising in my head.

With the old United link still at the forefront of my mind I started to think about possible novel transfer strategies to make things a little more interesting; or not.  I mentioned in my "It's (probably not) coming home episode five with FMSamo" that his blog was one of the very first I ever read. One of my own particular favourite saves of Samo's at that time was a rather short one where he recreated the idea of the Glenn Hoddle Academy, but with Tenerife.

FMSamo - A home abroad

The main premise of the Hoddle academy was to give young players, released from academies, in England's top two tiers a further chance to 'make it', by signing with his academy, playing regular football, and receiving top level coaching before reigniting their careers at the top level. Sam Clucas of Stoke City, and Scottish International Ikechi Anya are probably the most notable graduates.

What if I could implement something similar at Antwerp?

My plan will be to only sign players who have already been released from their club, and are under the age of 23. We will develop them, give them minutes on the pitch, before selling them on for profit after two years in our 'academy', without exception. However, instead of signing English players, I will sign players from the European Union only, an EU wide second chance academy if you will. Playing in Belgium, so often at the heart of the European Union, it just seemed the right thing to do. Each year, as players leave I will make a note of them and follow their subsequent career after leaving Royal Antwerp.

What then of the DR Congo link?

Alongside signing released EU players I plan to sign at least one Congolese youth player per season*, they will be developed alongside our own youth players with a view to selling them on with as many future clauses as I can get my hands on. I may employ a specialist scout with knowledge of DR Congo to oversee this for me, but I will wait and see. (*edit hotfix dependent)

I am going to disable the first transfer window so this will allow me to concentrate on a system of play and assess what areas of the side need improved when the first batch of players get released at the end of the first season. In my next post I will look at the squad we have inherited and discuss how I intend to actually go about recruiting players.

The overall aim of this model will be to make Royal Antwerp financially stable off the pitch while still being, relatively, successful on it.

So do Royal Antwerp tick off anymore of my wish list? 

Items 1-6 have already been taken care of by playing in the Belgian league.

  1. Link to current affairs

  2. European

  3. Not in one of Europe's big five leagues

  4. Prize money present in the league structure

  5. Some type of league playoff system at the end of the season

  6. No long winter break

  7. Potential for early continental competition

  8. 1st or 2nd Division

  9. Room for the club to grow

  10. A club with a rich history

By winning the Belgian Cup Antwerp will enter the Europa League group stages this season, which is probably sooner than I would have liked ideally, but there you go (7).

Royal Antwerp play in the top division of Belgium (8).

The club has just moved into a new stadium in real life and are establishing themselves as a top division club, but there is still a lot of work to do after 13 years of stagnation the second tier. I hope to be able to develop the club into one of the best sides in Belgium both on and off the field (9).

Facilities image

The club clearly has a long history, and a nice backstory, so I am satisfied we have crossed number 10 off the list.

My Manager

I always have a back story of some kind in my head for my manager. This year I don't intend to write too much about him, and he certainly won't be leading an Army or trying to assassinate other FM player's imaginary managers. Nevertheless, I thought by introducing him now it would bring this post full circle and round off things off rather nicely.

A statue has been in the local news here, for a more positive reason, in Northern Ireland just recently. Belfast City Council have agreed to erect a statue of former slave and famous abolitionist Fredrick Douglass (above) who visited Belfast in 1845 as part of a lecturing tour of Ireland.

Belfast City Council approve statue to Fredrick Douglass

I am not going to extend this post any further by giving you a whole run down on his life, you can do that on Wikipedia if you so wish. Safe to say that Fredrick Douglass is widely regarded as one of the most influential African Americans of the 19th Century. Having fallen in love with a free black woman from Baltimore he escaped slavery by dressing as a naval man onboard a steam ship that traversed a number of states by river. He then fled to New York where he set up home with his loves money before sending for her. They were married within 11 days and initially assumed new identities to evade recapture. He taught himself to read using the Bible and became a rather famous orator, which ended up with him travelling to Britain to give a series of lectures on abolitionism and equal rights.

I shall leave you with an excerpt from his journal during his visit to Ireland.

Eleven days and a half gone and I have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the slave becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlour—I dine at the same table—and no one is offended ... I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip.

Thanks once again for making this far and reading through my ramblings. I am aware this may not be every Football Manager player's cup of tea but I enjoy reading and researching new things and this allows me to fill that need while playing my favourite game.

If you like to talk FM to like minded people might I suggest you consider joining the Football Manager Slack. Many of your favourite bloggers are already in there with their own channels discussing their saves in depth.

slack-image.jpg

How to create a club in Football Manager - FC Pripyat FM20.

This post first appeared in Issue Two of Latte Quarterly, a quarterly Football Manager e-magazine created by FMGrasshopper, AccordingtoFM, FMAdventure, and FMSamo. I'd thoroughly recommend you download all the issues and dive in for a read.


This year on FM I decided to create a club in the pre-game editor and enter them in the amateur leagues in Ukraine. The club in  question is FC Pripyat,Pripytat was founded in 1970 as the ninth Atomgrad in the USSR, a one industry super-bloc, and part of the 'peaceful atom' project to house workers for the nearby Vladimir I Lenin nuclear power plant in Chernobyl.   The football team had been making steady progress in the Soviet Union regional leagues before disaster struck in 1986 with the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster. If you want to read more background on my save you can read my introductory post here. Read on below to find out how I brought FC Pripyat back to life in Football Manager 20.

To create the Ukrainian league structure that FC Pripyat will enter into I used Classen's FM19 database and imported it in into the FM20 editor. Originally I did intend to create the Ukrainian football pyramid myself, but I found the editor to be somewhat counter-intuitive at times and updating a league in one part of the editor didn’t necessarily mean it was correctly updated across the entire database. My major stumbling block was setting up regional divisions which offered promotion into a country-wide division above. I searched the SI forums in the “editors hideaway” but very often my searches turned up no results or results that were not really relevant. There is so much historical stuff on there, and given I have never had a presence on the forums it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming for someone new coming along. Reading some of the comments and answers to other people’s questions it was clear to me that prior knowledge of the editor would be assumed by any potential helpers, something I don’t have. Constructing an entire football pyramid was a step too far, but creating a city and a football club was not. Below I have outlined how I went about creating FC Pripyat.

Step 1 - Create a City.

Upon loading up the database you wish to edit, in this case Classen's FM19 Ukrainian league structure. This is the screen you are presented with.

On the bottom left (Red Box) are all the things you can edit within the selected database. You can see I have selected Cities. In the highlighted yellow box you can search for anything, within the parameter you've selected on the bottom left, and filter results how you wish.

I searched for Pripyat and, unsurprisingly, Pripyat is not in the database. I had to create the entire city itself. This is easier than you might think.

On the same screen click ADD at the bottom (Highlighted in Red) and the following page will load.

First thing to do is make a note of your new city's unique ID, keep a note of this as it will be easier to search via ID later on. You can give your city a name and use the drop down menus (Orange) to search for a nation, language and local region.

Next is attraction this attribute is important. It governs how attractive a place your city is to live in, on a scale of 1-20. This impacts directly on how many players want to come and join your club. Initially, I thought to set this as 1. It is, after all, a nuclear exclusion zone. However, after some testing I found that when I loaded the game only six players in the entire database were interested in joining FC Pripyat. I decided to search other cities in the Ukraine for comparison. Kyiv is rated 19 in the database, Lyiv (another large city in the west of Ukraine) scored 16. Clearly these are too high for my new city. So I decided to check some cities in the Donbass region of Ukraine. This area is essentially a warzone at the present time with Russian backed rebels holding control of large areas. Shakhtar Donetsk can no longer play their home games in the city due to the fighting. Donetsk scores 4/20 and Mariupol 5/20. I decided that as we are, "RE-building Pripyat" it should score slightly higher than these two war torn cities. You can see I settled on 7/20. This resulted in 16 players happy to join us when we started the save.

Inhabitants - At the time of the evacuation Pripyat was home to around 51,000 people and was still growing. A fifth nuclear reactor was due to be completed at Chernobyl with another two being planned.

Latitude, Longitude and altitude I looked up these values.

Weather - Initially, I thought about creating the climate myself but upon search cities closest to Pripyat I found that they all used the same weather database. I searched for this and entered it here.

Now we have a city, next we need to put a stadium in our city.

Step 2 - Create the Stadium.

Following the same procedure as before, this time selecting Stadium from the menu on the bottom left then selecting ADD, we are presented with this screen.

Once again make a note of your unique ID. Once you have named your stadium you will need to tell the database what city the stadium is in. To do this click the drop down menu and click search. Here you can enter the unique ID of your newly created City, Pripyat. Everything else in this section is fairly self explanatory. I have used capacities that the new stadium in Pripyat was due to hold. It was never opened due to the disaster but in Ruslan Chepiga's world they have spent the last 6 months redeveloping the site to its former glory.

We have a City, we have a stadium, now we need to give them a Football Club.

Step 3 - Creating the Club.

Finally we are ready to actually create the club. This time when you select Club from the bottom left hand side menu and click add, you’ll notice there are many more options along the left hand side. I didn't edit everything here, being new to the editor I wanted to keep things as simple as I could.

This is where things get interesting and you need to consider your options carefully. I'll not go through them all but lets look at the 'details' section.

Once again your club will be given an unique ID, keep this for later. Now you can give your club a name, nickname and hastag amongst other things. Select your nation, and the city you've created in the database.

The next important parameter to decided on is the clubs starting reputation. This is absolutely vital, you can see I decided on 400, I did a bit of searching through the division I intended to put FC Pripyat and found the lowest reputation in the division was 500. For comparison Manchester United's reputation in the database is 8,650.

club-2.png

Next we need to assign the stadium we created to our new club. Click Stadium from the menu on the bottom left and you will be presented with this screen.

You can search for the stadium name by selecting the drop down menu and entering your stadium's unique ID. You then need to give an estimate of the attendance, I have gone for 2,000 I read in some literature that FC Pripyat was attracting crowds of around 2,000 despite playing in the fifth tier.

Assigning values for the facilities was difficult. In the end I compared values from across the division I would be going into. The lowest for any parameter was 3 so I selected that for Training, Youth Coaching and Youth facilities. I gave Youth Recruitment and Youth Importance higher values as Pripyat had a very young demographic at the time of the disaster and it is something I am keen to continue in the save.

Step 4 - Putting your club into a league.

We need to find the league you want to put your club into. As mentioned at the start I am using Claassen's extended database which activates the fourth tier of the Ukrainian football pyramid. After some studying I decided to put FC Pripyat into the Ukrainian Amateur League - Group 2. The fourth tier is split into three groups, roughly by region. Most of the teams in Group 2 were from the Ky'iv Oblast, the same as Pripyat.

After clicking Edit you will be taken to the following screen where you can, unsurprisingly, edit the league.

So what I did here was check the teams listed above and, as this is a FM19 database, some of the teams are no longer in this league. I clicked one of them and removed them. I then simply clicked ADD and I could search for my newly created club and add them to the division, simples.

Step 5 - Add players and staff to your club.

After much deliberation I decided that when I set up the save I would allow the game to create players for playable teams. I was concerned I would not have enough players interested in joining the team at the start. In all my test runs FC Pripyat were relegated as they didn't have enough real (i.e. not greyed out) players. If this happened the save would be over before it had really started. This meant I didn't need to add any players in the editor. So, I decided to have a bit of fun with some staff members. If you read my save reveal you should know who Valentin Letvin is. If you don't you can read about him here.

I created Valentin Letvin in the database and made him FC Pripyat's Director of Football and Head of Youth Development. I even got a photograph of him and put it in the graphics folder.

So, how did I do this. It is much easier than you might imagine. This time we select 'people' from the menu on the left and then select ADD to create a new person. You'll then be taken to the screen below. You can see there are many parameters you can edit here. The first thing you need to do is select 'details' and give your staff member a name, date of birth, place of birth etc. You can be as in-depth as you want to be with this. Below I have highlighted the 'club contract' section. First things first, use the drop down menu beside 'club' to search for your new club. Next give your staff member a job, you can see I have given Valentin two jobs, I felt this was realistic given the small stature of the club. I've also given him a very long contract and high loyalty rating. He can't leave!

I hope you enjoyed this little insight into how I used the editor, it is by no means comprehensive but should help anyone starting out to do some simple editing. Why not give it a go and create something unique.

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!