I read a lot of great tactics and articles posted by a lot of people on this forum. They have been immeasurably valuable to assist me in developing and understanding this game. It is my hope that I can add a little to collective knowledge and maybe offer a different perspective. I also promised some people via pm that I would post this and explain the system.

As background, I am an American with almost zero soccer experience. Prior to picking up FM16, I had never seen a club match in my life and had only watched a few US men’s and women’s national team games. Aside from a short stint on a soccer-based MMO, I had no experience with soccer video games. I had no idea what a holding midfielder was or anything much about formations and tactics. I still don’t know how to properly kick a soccer ball. I only discovered FM by accident looking for a similarly designed game for American NFL Football. I bring literally no soccer background or knowledge (or biases) into this, but I like team building games and the FM franchise was well reviewed so I gave it a shot. I’m now hooked.

Not knowing what I was doing in the game, I started a quick 1 season save to get familiar with the interfaces and understand the depth of the game. The goal was to then resurrect the Michigan-Carolina Wildlings from the MMO and take them to the top of the footballing world from the bottom of the English pyramid. But I wanted to do it playing American Football. As of posting this, we just completed our 6th season as Champions of Skybet League 1 after starting in the National South. 4 promotions in 6 seasons and the worst I have ever finished is 10th. I’m not there yet, but I’m doing a lot better than I expected and I’m confident that I’m going to be able to get there eventually.

But this post isn’t about my results. I only mention them to lend some creditability to the system. I want is to discuss the system I am developing and share some of my methods with the forum. I think new players may benefit from seeing how I built the system from the ground up and maybe encourage them in developing or refining their own tactics. Believe me, if I can do it, so can you. As for the vets, I think they may find this interesting as it’s, at least as far as I can tell, a unique tactical approach to the game and may offer new ideas and perspective to spruce up the game.

As a quick summary of the system, I run 3 TI setups which are universally applied to 9 different formations. I also have a few alternate PI/role setups for certain players to alter the formations as needed in the game. The end result is an American Football style playbook with dozens of options giving me tons of versatility and adaptability to expose and exploit weaknesses in my opponents tactics.

It’s fun to play, engaging to watch, and I’m excited to share it with y’all. I hope you’ll enjoy yourself some American Football.