Previously on La Plata: Mexico, Hugo Ojeda left Murciélagos FC for local rivals Dorados.

Intro

Firefighting - the practice of dealing with problems as they arise rather than planning strategically to avoid them. Can occur in all countries, including Ukraine.

Hugo Ojeda’s first 6 months in Culiacán were explosive. Not only did the drug war against Tijuana rage on, the Dorados Board’s ambitious of a Closing Stage Playoff finish was almost up in flames. Ojeda’s time in the Mexican Second Division could probably be described as ‘firefighting’, where we’ve moved on from one problem (Murciélagos FC) to the next (Dorados).

But always make [or learn] something from a good crisis, as we look at the conclusion of Season 2 in Mexico and how my 4-4-2 [work in progress] developed over the first 4 months of football…

Season 2024/25

I’m going to start with transfer deals briefly, as I feel we made a trio of top signings for the Closing Stage; at not much expense. Dorados were already in a negative bank balance when I joined, and although the Board are happy for me to go a further in the red (with a Transfer Budget of €600k); I wanted to be responsible. In comes Albano Ballari, on loan from Newell’s Old Boys, who I had hoped would also be willing to come permanently when his contract expires in July 2025. Sadly, he rejected the permanent contract…instead opting to join Club León in the Mexican top tier. Nevertheless, Albano is a Dorados player for 6 months and I really like the look of him. He’s strong, tall and defensively sound.

My second signing is Néicer Acosta, who is a young Ecuadorian who was unattached to a club. I narrowed my focus on a few attribute when finding him (as is the way with recruiting at this level). Acosta has good Acceleration, Pace, Off The Ball and Crossing…my decision to sign him was confirmed with two goals in a friendly during his trial.

Lastly, my favourite signing at Dorados has been Nazareno Yomaha…aka ‘El Loco’. He’s been brilliant for me, if not a bit crazy with the ball at times (but just look at his Passing & Vision). It’s what you get after all with a GK who has 16 score in Eccentricity. I’ve also liked the way he has come for crosses, with good Aerial and Jumping Reach. The best Goalkeepers for me in real-life have always been a bit crazy, Yomaha is no different. He also ticked the club vision around signing from Argentina (along with Ballari).

I will come on to results in a moment. But I wanted to show you the Closing Stage league table first. For a team the media predicted to finish 3rd, we were lucky to make the playoffs. Goals were hard to come by, as our GD of +3 shows.

However, the more interesting part of this update is how we ended up in the playoffs and the tactical evolution that my 4-4-2 underwent to get me there…

The Firefighting 4-4-2: A Tactical Evolution

Documenting the changes to this 4-4-2 is as much for my benefit as well as the reader’s. After all, I don’t want to make the same mistakes in midfield again when building a 4-4-2. But firstly, why did I initially choose a direct 4-4-2 with Dorados? To put it simply, my two best players were forwards (as mentioned last time out on the blog) with good Fitness, Off the Ball and Work Rate. My next two best players are probably my two wingers (left and right sided), who both have good crossing ability. In addition to this, my team showed Passing as a strength and were league leaders in this attribute via the Team Reports.

A common misconception here is that a good passing team means it’s more sensible to adopt a short tiki-taka style, and it’s a common mistake I am sometimes led towards too. When I think of good passers, I naturally think of the Barcelona team with Andrés Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Xavi with their relentless carousel of short passes. But good passing is critical to the opposite style of football (more direct). I was painfully reminded about this at Murciélagos FC too, we passed shorter in my 4-3-3 and it worked ok…it was only until I started to transition more quickly from back-to-front that things went downhill for me. The team’s collective passing was awful and they just didn’t have the technical and mental grounding to adapt to this direct style. On the other hand, Dorados gives me a 2nd chance at this and 4-4-2 is the shell to do it in.

Over the course of this Closing Stage league format (17 league games), we used three different variations of the 4-4-2. It’s worth noting that they are all similar in styles: Direct & on the Counter. Below are the results with using these…v1 was the initial interpretation of “Ojeda Shithouse”. This ran for 10 games…the time I usually stop and reflect “is this working?”.

V1 - you can see below that Ojeda v1 was direct (and on the most part predictable with how we would attack). We had two No-Nonsense Centre-Backs that would pass it long…the Wingers would hit early and low crosses in the hope that we would provide our fast Poacher with a decent chance. But on the most part…the setup was largely passive. The Full-Backs and Central Midfield offered very little offensively and I was narrow minded in wanting to get the best out of the Poacher role (at the expense of everything else), meaning I ignored the attacking potential elsewhere in the team. After 4 wins, 1 draw and 5 defeats in the first 10 games (my usual reflection point)…it was time to make a change.

V2 - So, v2 was my attempt to be more aggressive…whilst keeping within the general remit of countering when we had the ball and regrouping when we did not. We were not a bad side, but we were not scoring enough. So, I tucked my left midfielder in as a Wide Midfielder with a Player Instruction to Sit Narrower (something I did successfully with Stewart Downing at Blackburn Rovers for a Byline piece), the space opened up & the security offered by this change allows my Full-Back to be set as Attack. On the other side of the WM, I switched to an Attacking Central Midfielder…with the aim to offer a central runner. The only Team Instruction changed was to remove a Narrow Attack, the reason was that both the Winger and Attacking Full-Back may be stifled with this on.

Success? Kind of, we had a record of 2 wins and 2 draws…but there was a lingering feeling that I was still not convincing in the matches. From watching the games, I could see we were fortunate in a lot of moments and I did not feel confident going into my last three games, against teams that were higher placed than me in the league. I had already played my Snake Card (switching teams within the state of Sinaloa to avoid the sack), so I really needed to fix the mess I was in. I therefore opted for the Phone A Friend Card, a discussion with my podcasting hero: Dan Gear [of Bolivia fame]. Could his tweaks result in a late playoff push?

V3 - If you have read all of the above…you’d know that two wins and a draw would see us through to 7th place on the final day. But what did Dan suggest? And do I think it helped?

The conversation went something like this:

To recap, if you don’t want to slide into our DMS, Dan made these points:

• Change to DLP-S 💪🏻

• Remove Hit Early Crosses ❌

• Change Poacher to AF, and swap roles around 🔁

• Winger on Attack now has AF, CM-A and WM to aim for when crossing…as opposed to before [just the Poacher at the near post] 🔥

So I took all of Dan’s tactical tweaks and would run with it for the remaining three games. At this point in my save, the playoff dream was slipping away from me. It could have been too little, too late…but fortunately results on the final day were to Dorados’ favour. Cue some minor celebrations in my FM Slack channel and a couple of people congratulating me.

I didn’t tell Dan at the time, I still haven’t actually, but the first goal we scored (1-0 Vs Cancún) was: the supportive Deep Lying Playmaker releasing the Advanced Forward (thanks homie). It’s a highlight I had yet to see from this team and it suggested the 4-4-2 was on the right path offensively from central areas. Despite the frustrating 1-1 draw away at Zacatepec, we were on top for long periods and created a number of chances to win and take all 4 points. But it was the 2-0 home win Vs Oaxaca that left me giddy with excitement. Ojeda’s Dorados were brilliant and yes, Dan’s tips certainly helped.

Could Hugo Ojeda’s 4-4-2 v3 therefore crack the playoffs at the first attempt? Well, I’m leaving that all for a follow up post: out soon [when I play the games].

As always, thanks for reading/sharing & caring,

FM Grasshopper