Previously in Faceless, Cuiabá recruited three players ahead of a return to Série A.

Intro

It’s 2025 and Cuiabá are back in the big time of Série A! The Board’s aim is to “fight bravely against relegation”, and with very little money available to recruit players that fight looked like a real possibility. However, I had a couple of ideas to avoid impending doom:

1. Conduct sensible recruitment by being data driven, something I wrote about last time on the blog.

2. Play a different brand of football, moving from 4312 to 352 with a DM. Something I will write about today.

Would we pay the price of our frugalities in the transfer market? Or would those signings slot into the First Team, in a new system that could do enough to survive? If any of this interests you, then please read on…

The Gondor 3-5-2

There’s a school of thought that would have recommended playing the same style of football that got us promoted from Série B to Série A. After all, the football was good and Cuiabá steamrolled their way to promotion with the 4312 Gold Rush tactic. But my reason for switching to be more conservative is twofold.

(1) The gulf in class between the top 10 Série A sides and the bottom 10 is clear to see. Cuiabá are ranked 19th in terms of salary per year ($6.11m), with 13th ranked Atlético Goianiense paying double that amount ($12.29m). For added context, rank 1 Flamengo pay $47.36m per year on salary with a further four sides paying over $20m on salary per year.

and

(2) The Board have revised our club visions, and now want us to play more defensive solid soccer in a counter attacking style:

So, I immediately knew that I needed to change the 4312 as it was contrary to what the Board wanted in terms of Club Visions. In the previous 4312 tactic, our GK slowed the pace down…we played it out from the back and the team was passing it shorter. With an AM too, we were top heavy, so our starting shape needed to change to try and meet the defensive solid target. Revised club visions and their contextual guidance provided a nice, and welcome, challenge for me in FM22.

Player Roles

If you wanted to go back and compare Gold Rush with Gondor (naming rights to be explained later), then you would see that the majority of player roles are the same between the two setups. This is an evolution of my previous 4312 tactic, not a diversely different system with a whole new squad. I did not want the tactics to be too dissimilar (in case I needed to revert back to 4312, which I did on three occasions over 2025 against lower league opposition in Copa Brasil). Gone is the AM, who is replaced with a Half-Back - one of my most loved roles in recent Football Manager editions. I used the HB role extensively in FM21 with Junior Club (read here) and Ondrej/FM Rensie wrote a nice piece on it during the FM20 era (read here). This role essentially widens the CBs, and drops in to make a back-three shape. This means we can push the wing backs higher up the field and also give licence to a couple of the two central midfielders to get forward. Obviously, I’ve opted for another cult favourite role in the CM-A - who will make ridiculous surges from deep, and the supportive Mezzala who will move into channels and provide some width. To add a sprinkle of counter attacking intent, we’ve got a Sweeper Keeper and a Ball Playing Defender. This in itself isn’t overly counter attacking, but I’ve changed some Team Instructions to help with that…

Team Instructions

We still press more often. But when the ball is won back, we’re now playing on the counter. We’ll pass into space and we’ve got the Sweeper Keeper distributing quickly. Starting Mentality is Balanced, which I predominantly used throughout the 2025 season, however I would drop down to more cautious mentalities if leading in the last quarter of matches. It’s worth nothing that I hardly ever went ‘up’ the mentalities towards Positive or Attacking…when I did I felt we played awful by making poor decisions on the ball and rushing our chances.

I’ve called this a 3-5-2, but in reality it is not so simple. Sometimes the DLF dropped deeper than the CM-A, sometimes the CWB is a Winger, sometimes there is an overload on the right side of the penalty area between Mez and WB etc etc. The shape is fluid.

Season 2025: Série A

Equipped with the 352, we managed to secure a comfortable 10th placed finish (Copa Sudamericana qualification) in Série A. Some stats from the season:

1. We were never lower than 14th at any point of the season. A rough patch in June made me think we’d be sucked into a relegation battle, but luckily we grabbed a few wins even in the dark moments in July-October. Seven of our 15 defeats were by one goal, showing that we did relatively well not to get hammered by the big boys…Grêmio aside 🤮

2. Our 16 wins were split nicely between home and away (8 each), meaning we were never afraid to pick up points away from home.

3. Luciano Gondou, our General Manager signing from last time out, was the league’s 3rd best scorer with 18 Série A goals. A $5,075 loan signing from the Argentine 2nd division who has been absolutely devastating at times in either of the two striker roles (Deep Lying Forward or Poacher). I’ve named the 352 tactic ‘Gondor’ in his honour, because that’s the nickname I’ve given him in my head. He is amazing.

4. We outperformed xG (+4), xGA (-4) and xPTS (+4). Credit must go to our Goalkeeper signing using Stag’s calculator. Phelipe Megiolaro came on a free from the Brazilian 3rd Division, jumping up two leagues and finishing in the top right of the GK Save Performance scatter graph. He made a lot of saves and saved most shots.

Sadly, we did not meet the defensive soccer club vision. We were on track to meet this for most of the season, but the Board become ‘disappointed’ after the 7-3 hammering given to us by Grêmio and failures to keep a clean sheet in the final eight games of the season. However, the counter attacking style has been achieved and if I had to choose between the two I would have chosen to meet the style of football…rather than the defensive stats. I’m sure further investment in better defenders would address this (as hinted at earlier, defeats were marginal at times like the six 0-1 defeats).

Have we Moneyball’ed?

Players

Now for a brief statistical review of a few player roles, effectively flipping the Zealand process on its head by looking at our own side’s performance: exporting player search results, (ensuring that Cuiabá are not excluded), and then filtering on my side:

1. Both Deep Lying Forward and Poacher roles had the highest non penalty xG in the whole league. The aforementioned Luciano Gondou getting 15.95 npxG and Rodrigo Farofa ranking highest in Série A with 16.4 npxG. That’s a brilliant outturn of xG for relegation fodder such as ourselves. Perhaps with even better creators supplying them in the 352, both roles could easily get 20+ npxG in Série A.

2. The Wing Backs in the 352 tactic are the most common interceptors (CWB - 3.14 per 90, WB - 3.69 per 90) and tacklers of the side (CWB 1.89 per 90, WB - 1.8 per 90) . Perhaps their stats are heightened by being the sole wide players (effectively meaning more duels), so getting competent 1v1 players in these positions would be logical if you’re using this tactic.

3. My Central Midfielder on Attack has a very high Key Passes per 90 stat of 3.6. He’s basically a No.10 in all but starting position, so get a creative player in this position and watch him unleash sexy football on your foes!

4. The Half-Back role is naturally getting through some serious passing stats, as it looks to recycle possession and start moves from the base of our midfield. It’s good then that the two players who predominantly played here have Passing % of 96% and finish up the season with the highest completed passes per 90 from Cuiabá players (63 and 51 completed passes per 90 respectively). The Free signing of 36-year-old Víctor Cuesta, who was our first choice Half-Back, looks to have been a shrewd bit of business!

Disclaimer: end of year statistics are slightly inflated with some of these first teamers playing a few games in the State Championships, albeit for the likes of Moneyball signings Cuesta, and Gondou their involvement was minimal in this tournament.

Team

According to my Data Hub analysis, the 352 faced 11 formations over the course of the 2025 season and did ok against the most common variant in Brazil: 4231 wide (played against 62% of time) with +12 CCC (For/Against). Gondor was most devastating against a 442 (played against 13% of the time), where the 352 produced a clear cut chance every 36 minutes. Despite a numerical advantage out wide and in favour of the AI, our central overloads proved to be too effective against 442s as the goal type analysis below shows.

The area where we make most of our assists is in central areas outside of the penalty area (equating for 47% of goals), with 56% of goals coming from through balls. There are LOTS of third-man runs, inherent in a narrow formation with two midfielders linking up with the two strikers. Recently, Chris/FM Old Timer wrote about the concept really well here. One worry however is the left-hand side, because despite playing with a CWB on this flank, only 6 assists were made from here. It’s doubly worrying when you consider that this is the side most exposed by the opposition, as detailed in my next paragraph.

The weakest area for assists locations against my Cuiabá side is sadly the left-hand side which features the CWB. 34% of goals (total of 14) were crosses from the left flank. To improve defensively I could tone down that player to a Wing Back and/or consider switching the BPD to the other side, if see myself exposed in this area. It’s perhaps the one side of the tactic that isn’t quite right at this minute, and something that would need tweaking going into another season. However…I’m just not feeling it.

“Not Feeling It”

I have enjoyed this extension from The MLS Save. Sampaio Corrêa proved to be a real challenge in 2023, and Cuiabá 2024-2025 has allowed me to experience promotion and apply some of the data driven recruitment as a carry-on from what I did with Stag at Inter Miami. But I also know when to stop playing this game, and for the first time in about 7 years I’m finishing up save updating before the English Summer Holidays.

Continuing in Série A with Cuiabá just doesn’t appeal to me, whether it’s the league or FM22 in general, I’d rather park the journey here and seal The Faceless’ fate with a creative conclusion [coming soon]. Once that’s done I will likely take a break and do other bits IRL or within other video games™. I’ve still got a couple of FM22 bits I could consider doing and coming back to write, but they’ll be standalone pieces outside of this wonderful save universe; which I have had the pleasure of sharing with @FMEadster since November last year.

Thanks to everybody who has read these Brazilian updates, and I’m hoping they’ve been a good follow after the post-MLS stuff we did earlier on in the cycle.

Thank you,

FM Grasshopper