The weakest part of FIFA 09 is the defence. The back line pushes up too much. They easily get overpowered and outmuscled. You get a feeling that a definite advantage is given to the attacking side over the defensive side. Everytime the defence pushes up unnecessarily and concedes a goal due to that, you get wild. ‘It’s not my fault’ is what you scream.

Now you want the defence to do what they’re expected to do – defend the goal. You want them to be in the right places at the right times. You don’t want them to leave spaces mindlessly. You want them to make it difficult for the attackers. You don’t want them to concede any cheap goals.

I’ve always said that the best way to improve FIFA 09 is tweaking – custom tactics and player attributes. The solution for a disciplined defence is also in tweaking custom tactics. The good thing about tweaking custom tactics is, it takes hardly 10 seconds, unlike player attribute editing. The other good thing is, you can use it ONLINE as well!!!

Ok, here is what you do.

In custom tactics, under BUILD-UP:

Positioning: Set this to ‘organised’. This positioning affects the movement of your players in your half of the pitch. This will have no impact on the randomness of your chance creation or in the final third. This is just for the own half positioning.

In custom tactics, under DEFENCE:

Pressure: Just bring this slider to the minimum. The least it would go to is a value of 1. What this would do is, the players won’t move up to pressure the opposition. You’ll find that your players allow the opponents to have the ball and you can nip it when it matters most. This does not mean they will stand still in their respective places. They would move forward as with the action zone but they would be more position conscious.

Aggression: This determines the tendency of the defence to commit tackles and fouls. This is more relevant for the teams where the AI controls all the players. As far as your team goes, no player would tackle unless you order them to do so. So, with this setting what happens is that the players get into a position where they only wait for your button press to tackle the opponent. By setting aggression to a low number, say between 30 and 40, your players will stay in their zones.

Team width: Set this to a low number, say, again between 30 and 40. This would mean the defensive back line would stay closer to each other in front of the goal. This is especially effective against opponents who play throughballs to the lone striker. With low team width setting, the lone striker of the opponent will be seriously hindered. The downside is that, there would be some space in the flanks which the opponents can use but still the crosses or cut backs can be managed because you have a crowded defence in the box to handle them.

Plus, always first line of defence must be the midfielders. Use the midfielders to defend and tackle. That would buy some time for the defenders to get back to their areas as per the above settings.

I tried these things today. I got to play a lot of intense, tight matches where really had to find ways to break the defence. This also meant both teams got a lot of time on the ball in the midfield. The midfielders really came into existence, orchestrating the attacks and making the killer passes to outfox the defence. Plus, play in LEGENDARY difficulty. That’s where teams play true to their strengths. The games in legendary are very challenging, random and fun.

Try this and let me know.

Having tweaked the custom tactics and adjusted the speed and acceleration attributes, I thought I had hit the sweet spot with FIFA 09. But then I could feel that something wasn’t right. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I put FIFA 08 (not 09) on my XBOX 360 just to remind myself of how it played. Having finished one game in FIFA 08, I realised what had to happen in 09.

FIFA 08 is being seen as a more tactical game ONLY because it was slower. In all other respects, FIFA 09 is far superior. We have already reduced the speed and acceleration attributes by 15 points. So what had happened is, the players have become slower and very reasonable in their ability to move. It does give a lot of opportunities for tactical gameplay but for one little thing. While the players have slowed down, their passing has not. So what happens is, players move slowly but when they decide to pass, the pass goes lightning quick which makes the game look very ping-pong. Also if the passes are so quick, you don’t get to see players moving as the ball is still transiting. It is important because even before you receive the ball, you should have multiple options to proceed.

So, I decided to reduce the short passing attribute by 15 points. That should now sync well with the reduction of player speeds. It works perfectly. When you make a 20-yard pass, it should go at a certain speed. And that passing speed is very important for the dynamics of the attacking game. With slower passing speed, my ability to receive passes successfully has also improved. The ball receiver now gets a fraction more time to react. With reduced passing speed, I’ve even started using the first touch skill with the right analog stick. More than my convenience, I find the game incredibly realistic now. For whatever reason, I think EA has deliberately boosted the speed, acceleration and short passing which makes the game very arcadish.

I know there has been a lot of efforts to have the player edits done. I wish I had realised this point on short passing much before so that when you guys were editing the player attributes you had also take care of short passing values. But I had to test this myself to confirm if it has an impact and more importantly a positive impact on the gameplay. I could only confirm it now. As of now, I don’t know if I’m done with the tweaks. As I learn the game and nuances, ideas keep coming so it’s always possible that there is another discovery from me or anyone else.

Now onto the super players. I see that people complain about Messi not being Messi and Xavi not being Xavi. I have observed that this is primarily to do with three key attributes that separate star players and normal players. They are consistency, aggression and strength. Consistency refers to how often the player plays true to his rest of the attributes. If the finishing is 92 and consistency is 100, he always plays with a 92 finishing ability. When the consistency is say 65 and the finishing is 92, he could make some amazing finishes every now and then but could be on and off in terms of form. Aggression refers to the determination of the players. It shows how the players want to keep the ball or win the ball. Players with high aggression are difficult to be shoved away. If you notice, EA have rated a lot of star players very low on aggression. If aggression is a mental attribute, strength is the equivalent physical attribute. Even if your aggression is 100, if your strength is 60, your player might want to keep the ball at any cost but his physical strength won’t help him.

What I have done is, picked out those real star players and improved their stats on consistency, aggression and strength. If you ask me if I have increased them by 10 or 15, I’d say I inceased the stats on a case to case basis. It’s purely my opinion and belief based on which I propped up the stars. For instance, I’ve put a 90 for Messi when it comes to consistency. For players like Iniesta and Xavi, I’ve put the aggression in 90s and strength in 80s. For someone like Essien, both those attributes would in 90s. I’d put Adriano high on strength and low on aggression; Fabregas, low on strength and high on aggression. So I suggest you to identify the star players who want to improve and adjust these attributes as per your judgement.

In the tweaked custom tactics, make sure that teams do not have more than a value of 50 in shooting. If you set it beyond 50, the AI keeps shooting from unreasonable positions and very stupidly at times which results in numerous shots most of which wouldn’t have troubled you.

Finally, I can cross now! Crossing in this game has been such a let down for me. Practically, my inability to cross in this game has changed the way I play this game. Because I couldn’t cross, I have always been looking for passing the ball even from fantastic crossing positions. I think I have the definitive solution to crossing – set crossing to SEMI. Yes, it doesn’t work well in manual or assisted. In SEMI, my crossing is back to its best. Now my custom tactics for crossing does have a meaning. I tried setting the crossing my custom tactics to 80 so that I have people in crossing positions and also have people crowding in the box to receive the crosses. It was fantastic. Now crossing is one of my potent weapons. I’m gonna make AI taste a dose of its own medicine!

And now, personally my biggest discovery wrto visuals: DYNAMIC camera. Yup. I’m generally a fan of wide and far camera angles. I always used to play in WIDE camera or TELE camera (co-op in Euro 2008) because I want to see the spaces in the pitch to exploit. I never thought dynamic camera can be useful. The advantages of a wide camera is the ability to see spaces. If you don’t exploit those spaces, there is no point in playing a wide angle because the dynamic angle provides a lot more in terms of playability. In DYNAMIC camera angle, I’ve set the height to maximum and zoom to zero (no zoom at all). With this, my game has vastly improved, especially my possession football. The camera angle being so close, it certainly gives that extra fraction of a time which is more than enough or the human brain to react and make the best use of it. Believe it or not, my quality of passing/shots has highly improved in dynamic camera. Please try this yourself and enjoy. Again, don’t write this off without actually testing it.

To remind you, I play in SLOW gamespeed, use assisted controls (semi crossing), use dynamic cam, play in world class difficulty and player select set to automatic, two points from the left. I no longer play online and in offline I play only exhibition matches, single player and also co-op with my mates. My style of play is possession football.

To summarise:

1. I take it that you’ve already tweaked the custom tactics and the speed/acceleration attributes
2. Now reduce the short passing attribute by 15 points for all players in the teams you play or play against
3. For star players, improve these attributes – consistency, aggression and strength
4. In custom tactics for all teams, ensure that the shooting value is not beyond 50
5. Set the crossing to SEMI
6. Use DYNAMIC cam – maximum height & zero zoom

All the above in totality is what I’ve named as ‘FIFA Revolution update’. If you apply this FIFA Revolution update, I can bet that this game becomes ‘unputdownable’. As always, try these and let me know how these work! Your comments are most welcome.

Truth be told I love defending more than attacking. I love tackles, ball winning, blocks and interceptions. Now we’ll talk about how do we defend in FIFA 09. This is one area which gamers have complained a lot about this FIFA. The common complaint is that the defence pushes up. Of course it does but not more than it happens in real football. Well, that’s my opinion.

We’ll talk about how I learnt defending in FIFA and if that can work for you. In defence, you have some key areas such as (a) formation setting (b) misuse of defenders (c) pressure (d) aggression (d) read the passing lanes (f) player select. If you get these right, you’ll see a sea change in your defending.

Formation settings: Before we complain about the defensive AI, we should check if all the settings are in place properly in your custom tactics and in your formation. If written quite a bit about custom tactics, so you know what are the important things there. In a nutshell, set pressure to 20 or something, set aggression to 70, set team width at 30 to 40 and let defender line be cover. In formation settings, you will be able to set the defensive and attacking mentality of each and every player. If you want your defence to stay back, just do this. Pick one centre back. Mark his attacking movement backwards, that is towards our own goal. This means when the ball is in your possession, he would be running behind and not forward.

In workrate, set his attacking work rate to low and defensive work rate to high. Most probably that’s how it would have been set. Now, if you wish, you can even edit the formation to place these defenders closer to the goal keeper. And now the full backs. The settings would depend on how you want to use them. If you just want regular full backs, set the attacking runs to neutral, that is neither forward nor backward, as opposed to centre backs whose attacking runs are set by us now to backwards. Also set the attack word rate to low and defensive work rate to medium. If you want Carlos-like wing backs, set their attacking runs to forward, attacking work rate to medium and also defensive work rate to medium.

Okay now, we’re all set. Having set all our defenders in the right place with right instructions, it’s left to us to use them properly. Now we’ll look at the principles of defending. There are certain very fundamentals that we should know and practice.

Misuse of defenders: This is one of the very common problems. John Terry has the ball and you keep dribbling forward because you’ve got space. So you’ve created a hole in your central defence and if you lose the ball now, you know where your opponent would run. We should learn to use defenders as defenders. Especially when you play multiplayer co-op games, you and your mate would be dragging your defenders everywhere leaving huge spaces in your defence. So, don’t roam around too much with your defenders. They should pass to midfielders and wait for their further involvement in the game, instead of trying dictate the attacks themselves. Try not to step nto the opponent half as any of your defenders. If you think you might touch the half line, pass it on. Maintain the discipline and organisation yourselves, before blaming it on the defensive AI.

Use midfielders: Back in PES days, I remember screaming to my mates (co-op multiplayer), “defend with midfielders”. That’s a great tactic. Don’t disturb your defensive organisation. Chase down the opponents with your midfielders and tackle them, if need be. In worst case, it’s you midfielder who might get sent off and not a defender which is a more specialist position. In other words, use your defenders as the last resort. This would also mean trying to nip the attacks in the bud, instead of preparing for a head-on collision as a defender. Especially when you want to apply pressure, don’t do it with the defenders, because just one quick piece of skill would leave your defender biting the grass and your opponent could be straight on goal. The mantra is “defend with midfielders”.

Pressure: In custom tactics, we have already set the pressure to 20 which means our defensive AI will wait until their zone is attacked by the opponent. In other words, they won’t pressure, they’d wait. Now that means, if you want to pressure, you have to take that effort with the player that you control. Applying pressure is not the same as tackling and ball winning. They could be the results of applying pressure. By the term pressure, what we need to understand is that to make the ball carrier’s life as difficult as possible. You run closer to him, run along side him, jockey him, disturb him or simply make him uncomfortable. Remember, you need to decide whether you need to apply pressure or not. Unfortunately, applying pressure is the default way of defending for most of us. Whenever the opponent has the ball, you keep running towards him, behind him and along side him.

Think for a moment. Do you need to pressurise him now or you can let him do his stuff. Sometimes you can let him do his stuff and snatch the ball when it matters and where it matters. So what you can also try is not to chase the ball carrier instead of that, run your man to a place where you want him to be, may be to the penalty box, because that’s where the attack has to culminate. So basically, you need to judge whether to pressure or not. When you don’t pressure, make an intelligent movement which would turn out to be much more useful than a 50-50 pressure tactic. Know who you’re defending with. If you’re controlling a big, strong defender, you have a great chance of winning the ball. So know who you’re defending as.

Penalty box defending is an art. This is where your common sense and street-smartness will come to the fore. Having gotten so close to the goal, your only target should be to prevent the goal. To prevent the goal, you don’t always have to make a tackle at the risk of conceding a penalty. Primarily, you have to get in the way for the attacker. Don’t give him a good angle to shoot. Position yourself in such a way that even if he shoots, you would be able to block it. Blocking is a very useful method of goal prevention but in order to do that you have to “get in the way”.

Aggression: Saying enough’s enough in footballing terms. Hard tackles are not that hard to pull off. It’s just like shooting. If you get the timing and direction right, you got it. Mostly you perform a hard tackle in two occasions (a) you’re very confident that you’ll nick the ball (b) you’re fed up with your opponents running around or skills moves. If it’s the former, you’re fine. if it’s the latter, control your temper. Just let him run around in circles but remember whatever trick he pulls off in the middle of the park, for him to score he should come towards the penalty box. As I said before, if you want to tackle hard, just for a moment see if that’s a midfielder or a defender or a forward. To the extent possible, avoid hard tackling with a defender. Use the midfielders to do this dirty job.

Read the passing lanes: Study the game and the opponent as you play. Anticipate. Look for the passing lanes. As in, just try to guess what would be his next probable move. Where could he pass? Do I have someone covered there? Can I intercept that pass? Anticipate. Anticipate. Anticipate. That’s the name of the game in defending. It might go wrong sometimes but with experience and practice, you’d mostly get it right. If you have difficulty in reading the passing lane, just watch a AI vs AI match. In exhibition mode, you can set the controller symbol right in the middle (not on either teams) and that would bring up an AI vs AI match. While you’re watching constantly try to guess the next move by AI, where would he pass, would he shoot or not, would he dribble or not . . it would surely help.

Player Select: You can be rather smart in deciding which player to control and when exactly to control him. If in your custom tactics, the pressure is set beyond 70, you can rather watch the AI defender (of your team) take on the attackers and only when it really matters, you can jump in and control that player for the no-nonsense ending. I normally play on manual player select setting. So when I’m a midfielder and the opponent AI is making an attack, I would quickly decide whether to leave the matter with our AI defenders or I should take control there. If decide to let the AI defenders handle the attack, what I would be doing is to drag the midfielder I’m controlling, to the zone of action and finally if required, control the defender. Also, if you can anticipate the opponent’s moves and manoeuvres, if you can see those possible passing lanes, you can do player select accordingly and get that extra time on the ball carrier. As we all know, player select does not happen instantly. So if you choose to do player select at the very last moment, you should be ready for that delay. I’d suggest that you follow and understand the game to anticipate possible attacks.

All this does not mean I’m a defence guru or something. I still let in goals cheaply. One thing is about knowing and other is about executing it. It’s easy to say ‘get the timing right’ but it’s rather difficult to in fact get the timing right. So I’m sharing this with you because I thought I can share with you what I’ve learnt in this game the hard way. Hope it’s useful to you.

Exhibition matches – That’s where you’d get the best out of FIFA 09. I have played online games, offline competitions, offline leagues, manager mode, be a pro seasons, exhibition matches – every mode that’s available, all in WORDL CLASS difficulty. I can tell you with confidence that the game plays best in exhibition matches more than anything else.

I gave up on online games the very first week I had the game. All offline competition/league/MM game modes are crippled by two things (a) the AI’s scripted game play (b) your tactics and tweaks won’t work best. So there’s something unreal about the offline game modes. I’m not saying games are fully scripted. The results are scripted. And your team is being crippled to achieve that scripted result. Before the start of the game itself, there is a result that AI fixes for this game and achieves it SOMEHOW. Ok, scripting is in every game. I should be a good enough player to overcome that. But I’m not. That’s why I have made this thread.

Whereas exhibition games play such a great game of football devoid of AI scripting. So I have decided now that I would play a series of exhibition matches instead of playing a competition where I can’t (not allowed to?) progress beyond the second round. I don’t want to reduce my difficulty level to PROFESSIONAL because that’s way too easy and the game play is realistic in WORLD CLASS only.

In every gaming session, I would play about 6 to 10 matches. I would invariably start as Chelsea in a champions league or league, and start losing and drawing big time before I call it a day. Instead of going through this pain, I have decided to play that many number of exhibition matches for various reasons:

1. Unlike the other offline modes, the AI does not play with a desired result in its mind (?). Exhibition matches are the most open, natural and unspoilt version of this beautiful game. When you’re a goal up, in offline game modes, you’ll see your defenders pushing up when you don’t want to, you’ll see your defenders messing up with two-yard passes, you’ll find yourself passing to your opponent, you’ll find that none of your defenders bother to jump to win the incoming cross no matter how much you mash the buttons. In exhibition matches, the game played by the numbers – the player attributes with no turbo boost by AI to any of the values.

2. AI plays a very good game of football. It just plays a natural game with the flow and ebb of the game. AI plays a better open and creative game that can keep you guessing and you’ll be on your toes. Also it’s nice to see the AI challenge you in a very appropriate, honest manner. The teams will play true to their strengths and weaknesses only in exhibition matches. A good team plays like a good team and a crap team plays like a crap team. May be it’s not a coincidence that my best goals and my most satisfactory goals have come from exhibition matches.

3. The custom tactics and the speed/acceleration tweaks work best in exhibition matches. Try this yourself. Play team A vs team B in a competition or a manager mode or whatever offline mode. And then play the same team A vs team B in an exhibition match. See the difference. The exhibition match is much much more fluid and natural.

4. You can play as any team, instead of your favourite team. When you play in any of the game modes as one of your favourite teams, you mostly play the same formation (because that suits the team well) and the almost in a similar playing style every match because you’re using the same set of players. In exhibition matches, you could play as Chelsea one match, Lyon another, Napoli in anothere and so on. The variety keeps you going and makes a great gaming session.

5. You can choose which stadium to play, whether you want to play day, night or dusk. This is a big one for me. When I kick off in a pitch that I don’t like, it turns me off and shows up in my performance. Also I hate playing night matches in FIFA (be it 08 or 09). When I play exhibition matches, I can play in the choicest of stadiums in day or preferably dusk.

So it’s exhibition mode for me henceforth. When I play champions league, I might play Fenerbahce in knock out round, Valencia in quarters, Liverpool in semis and Barca in final. I might as well play four exhibition matches, one each against Fener, Valencia, Liverpool and Barca. It’s not that we need to win stuff to unlock anything. I just want to enjoy the game as much as I want to.

If exhibition matches are your most ignored offline game mode, please change your mind. Compare the gameplay and AI behaviour/style in exhibition matches and in other offline modes. You’ll realise it and agree with me. I’m going to play exhibition matches only and enjoy the game to its fullest potential. What do you feel?

Ok guys, be ready with the bouquets and everything. I’m presenting you the biggest discovery in FIFA 09. This discovery would change the way you play FIFA and will make you go crazy over it.

The below has been tested and found successful only in OFFLINE games so far. I play in WORLD CLASS difficulty with assisted passing/shooting and manual with the rest. I play with SLOW pace setting. Importantly, I DO NOT USE ADIDAS Live Season.

Firstly, let me start by saying why this discovery was needed. I’m now going to list down all the points which are affecting the FIFA 09 gameplay on the pitch:

1. The game play is a bit too fast, even on slow settings
2. Unable to hold the ball; AI always puts pressure and wins
3. Ends up being just a quick one-touch passing game all the time
4. Attacks are monotonous; there is not enough variety
5. Attacks and chance creation are not random and realistic
6. AI plays with the same plan in all through the match
7. Quite difficult to pull off the tricks

What I’m going to suggest could be a time consuming process but certainly worthwhile, if you want to realistic football in FIFA 09. Just follow me very carefully. All that we need to do is to reduce the values of two attributes for each player in a team. Then in my FIFA 09 profile, set my favourite team as Tottenham (I’ll explain you the reasons later). Then I went to the ‘manage teams’ and chose ‘edit player’. Now this opens up the squad list of Tottenham so that I can edit each player. This is why I set Tottenham as my favourite team temporarily so that I don’t have to browse from Chelsea (my favourite team) to Tottenham every time.

Now I opened the first player for editing. I went to ‘movement’ attributes. In there, the first two attributes are acceleration and sprint speed. Now for these two attributes, I reduced the values by 15 points. For instance, if the acceleration is 86, changed it to 71, if the sprint speed is 83, changed it to 68. After I changed them, I hit the start button or back button to carefully ’save and exit’. Now I was back to the squad list. Then I kept repeating this for all the possible first teamers and the bench. It took about 5 minutes to make these tweaks for Tottenham team. Now I have a team that has no one in their 80s in sprint speed and acceleration. Then I edited the Sunderland squad. I set a match up between an edited Tottenham and an edited Sunderland.

The final result: I won 2-1. You won’t believe how much I enjoyed that match. Forget the result. The process was fabulous. My players were slower but they played like professional footballers. They had control on the ball. They were able to dribble tactically. I had the time to think how I can build the attack. When I was pressurised by the opponents, I could keep the ball by evading the opponent, something I just could never do before.

Earlier, whenever I was under pressure, all I would try to do was to hurriedly pass the ball to the nearest player. Now I could dodge the opponent just like how the AI players will evade your pressure or tackle. More than all this, the game play experience was fantastic. As players move slowly, you’re not in a mindset to hurry the attack. You keep the ball and try to look for spaces. The more I kept the ball, I started seeing the AI players making intelligent runs or even overlapping runs.

Earlier, when the game is played fast no one has time to make these runs. Typically, My CB will pass to CM, CM to LM, LM to CAM and CAM to ST (and the ST to fumble it!). There was some amount of routine in which the game was played by me. That was because, the players ran faster, passes were delivered quickly and hence the players received the ball even before they could start their attacking runs. In effect, all players would be in their respective positions as per the formation when they received the ball. They weren’t making too many runs primarily because I didn’t allow them to, as I would pass the ball to them to wherever they are, before they could make runs.

With the game now slowing down due to the reduced acceleration and sprint speed, the pitch now looks bigger! Yes! Earlier the pitch was small and the players in high speed made the pitch look even smaller. If someone like Torres could cover one half of the pitch in 5 real seconds earlier, now he will take 7 to 8 seconds. That’s a lot of additional time for you to react. Now you may ask, that if the defender’s speed is also reduced what difference it will make? Good question. Remember that the defenders’ pushing up is also slowed down and even if you lose ball to allow a breakaway, you have a lot of time to select the correct defender or to make the right decisions.

More time on the ball also makes you think creatively. That’s what happened to me. With that extra second on the ball, I started looking to surprise the AI (which is by the way, the best way to beat the AI) and even tried to do outrageous moves. This is all too good to be true but I have started shooting better than before, because of the overall adjusted speeds all around.

More than anything, I’m playing good football and I’m very satisfied with the way I play and AI plays. Because the sprint speed and acceleration of AI players are also reduced, the way AI played the game also changed. Granted it takes only milliseconds to process but certainly with more time at its disposal, it can take better decisions and that was very evident. Someone made this brilliant comment: ‘when the players run it looks like they have more than two legs’. Completely agree. But now, in reduced speeds, even the running animation looks nicer.

I’m very convinced that this is the way to play the game. I wished there was a quicker way to edit the attributes but I’m happy that we are at least able to edit them. Then I went ahead and edited for Chelsea and played against an unedited Man Utd, got beat 3-0 but again, was a very satisfying match. Then I edited Man Utd and they won in penalties after a 1-1 result at the end of extra time. I ended up editing Arsenal and Liverpool too. I’m planning to edit 4 teams per league per day. I’m not going to edit the players of a team which I’m never going to play as or play against. I did not edit any other attribute other than the two I mentioned above.

We generally know that the league two teams produce great matches in FIFA 09. Ever wondered why? Because they’re slower, you can control them better. Imagine a very controllable and slower Man Utd or Chelsea with the same level of their own skill and other capabilities. Remember, we’re only reducing the acceleration and sprint speed. We are leaving all other attributes as it is. There could be a top striker with a sprint speed of 68 with a ball control or 92. This means he will have controllable pace with having very good ball control. This is why my shooting (not finishing) has improved.

My suggestion to you is to edit the acceleration and sprint speed values for players in two decent mid-table teams and play out an exhibition match for a proof of concept. Play 10-minute halves in world class difficulty or professional difficulty, preferably the former. If you’re impressed, you can then go ahead and edit the values of players of all other teams that you might use. In a week’s time I’d have edited the player values for all champions league teams and the premier league teams. After you’re done with the editing, make sure you save the squad file in two or three different names so that your hardwork is safe.

Okay then, let me summarise what needs to be done in short bullet points:

1. Choose the team for which you want to edit the values
2. Set this team as your favourite team in your FIFA 09 profile
3. For all players in that team, reduce the values of speed sprint and acceleration by 15 points.
4. Save the squad file in two or three names to be safe
5. For another team, go to step 1

Finally, if this is the way the game should have been, why did EA set the values of sprint speed and acceleration so high? Because, most of the millions of copies sold, were sold to very casual gamers or casual footie fans who may not look for realism, as much as you and I do. Those were the ones who kept EA in the FIFA business when they were sh1t. No disrespect to those type of gamers; each one can have different expectations from a same game. Out of the FIFA 09 buyers, the football connoisseurs would be a very very small minority. It makes sense to make the game to please the majority instead of an obscure purist minority.

Finally, if it works for you (certainly works for me), please drop a line here so that we all know. And, try to spread this message as much as possible so that everyone know about this. Please DO NOT WRITE OFF this idea without TESTING it. EA has hidden a great game within FIFA 09. The tweaked game that I play is incredibly better than the original retail copy. I would thank EA for making this great game and also for making it in such a way that it can be customised to your needs. Let’s FIFA 09! ]]> http://www.football-gamer.com/ultimate-guide-to-realistic-football-in-fifa-09/feed/ 0 http://www.football-gamer.com/tactics-for-top-teams-for-brilliant-gameplay-in-fifa-09/ http://www.football-gamer.com/tactics-for-top-teams-for-brilliant-gameplay-in-fifa-09/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:12:44 +0000 vjkrishna http://www.football-gamer.com/?p=25

I’m back. I’m sure a lot of you have read my earlier post on custom tactics suggestion for realistic gameplay in FIFA 09. That’s what about 7500 views in EA’s forums are telling me. Now, this time, I’ve going to suggest custom tactics for the top top teams. I’ve tried these setting myself and I find that the games are very open, random and very attacking. The more I play, the more I’m able to study the game. The more I experiment the more I understand about the tactical sliders and how they impact the game. I’ve had new learnings every day. The below is the latest of my understanding and suggestions.

Build up speed: The maximum that you set this for any team should be 50. Again, don’t set it to more than 50 to any team. The reason is, the pitch size in FIFA 09 is small. It is not as big as it’s in Pro Evo. In a small-sized pitch, it the build up speed is set to 70 or 80, it would just be a game of counterattacks. When you lose the ball in your attacking third, because of the high build up speed, you’ll see the ball the opponents attacking third in the very next moment. With high build up speed there won’t be midfield battles. That’s why you should slow down the build up speed to 50 for the quickest team and then may be 10 or 15, for the slowest team. For Man Utd and Arsenal, it should be 50. For Chelsea and Liverpool, it can be 40.

Build up passing: Set this to a maximum of 70. For teams like Man Utd and Chelsea, set this to 60. For Liverpool, set this to 70. For Arsenal, set this to 40. This will determine what mix of short and long passing will be made by the team. Long passes will mean there will be 50-50 balls in the air which really adds to the excitement. A 40 for Arsenal will mean they will make mostly short passes and very occasional short passes. Even here, the pitch size makes a difference. Too much of short passing will create a lot of congestion while the long passes will change the sides of play and even out the player distribution on the pitch.

Chance creation passing: This shows how much risk the teams would take while making the passes. This means looking for the killer passes and also the off the ball players making runs to get those killer passes. Set this to as high as possible. For teams like Chelsea and Man Utd, I’ve set this to 90. This means these teams would play some very enterprising football which adds to the excitement. For Liverpool, I’ve set this to 80 and for Arsenal I’ve put this to 70. I don’t want to set this to less than 50 for any top half teams. This tactical slider plays a major role in making your games play an unpredictable attacking game.

Chance creation crossing: This slider’s value would determine where and how off the ball players would make themselves available to receive the ball and whether they would make movements expecting a cross. I have no suggestions here. Please set this up as you find it appropriate. I’ve set Chelsea’s crossing at 60, Man Utd’s crossing at 50, Arsenal’s at 30 and Liverpool’s at 60. Feel free to set this as per your choice.

Chance creation shooting: This slider’s value would determine whether the off the ball players position themselves to take a shot and whether they would think it’s a priority to position themselves for a shot instead of looking for a passing position. I have no suggestions here. Please set this up as you find it appropriate. I’ve set Chelsea’s shooting at 80, Man Utd’s shooting at 80, Arsenal’s at 50 and Liverpool’s at 70. Feel free to set this as per your choice.

Team width: For all the top teams, the team width is set to 60 – 70. Teams with good full backs should have a 70 here. I’ve seen that with the team width set highly, players get spread out on the pitch. The full backs participate in the attacks. When you set it to low, the defenders narrow down in the centre which created invariably the same type of games where you’d pass it to the flanks and then bring it in. With the team width set high, you’re challenged at every part of the pitch, instead of leaving you room and space in the flanks which produces similar games.

Pressure: For the top teams set this to just 15. Anything higher, again, produces similar kind of games such which have mostly throughballs and lobbed throughballs. When you set the pressure to just 15, you’ll see your defenders backing up when the opponent has the ball (that’s quite a sight!). And then when you win the ball with a defender, you have about 75 to 80% of the pitch still to be covered and with slow build up, it creates a lovely football game.

Aggression: This will have to be set to 70. This is as explained in my other thread. The higher this is, the higher the tackling/ball winning mentality of the players. If set this any higher, you might see a lot of cards and sending offs. If you set this any lower, the crucial tackles may not be made in time. Unless you use skill, you won’t be able to waltz past the players. Forces you to pass around and build up creative attacks.

Positioning – Build up & Chance Creation: Set both these to FREE FORM. The top teams have top quality players who have varied attributes to be able to do well with ‘free form’ positioning. Again, with ‘free form’ positioning, players do make overlapping runs and making unpredictable build ups and attacks. Also, it is the AI which is playing so ‘free form’ would do well.

My settings: I play on ‘world class’. I use ‘assisted’ passing, crossing and through balls, ‘manual’ crossing and lobs. I use TELE camera angle with height and zoom set to ZERO. My player change setting is set to about 2/10 of the bar. I do not play MM. I just play custom created tournaments. I generally love to play possession football while trying to surprise the opposition at every chance! I play only OFFLINE games despite having access to xbox live gold membership valid until next year.

Remember, the tactics numbers for the top teams are set based on my opinions. Let’s not have an argument on whether Arsenal should be 40 in buildup passing or Liverpool should be 80 in chance creation passing. You’re free to set the numbers to your beliefs/liking.

Just understand the logic and set your numbers accordingly. For the la liga, serie a and other league top teams, you can set the sliders accordingly. I played a league with just Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool, with home and away games. All matches were very tight and challenging. They were very random and unpredictable too. I have not put the tactics in the locker. There are very few changes to be done, so you can do it yourselves manually. If I learn more, I’ll share more. Cheers!

It’s me again! One more painfully long post! This time I’m gonna talk about how to play possession football in FIFA 09. Playing possession football may not guarantee you goals or success but certainly it will make you confident on the ball and confident about the game. And I assume that you have tweaked the custom tactics for realistic gameplay already!

Before I proceed, here comes my standard disclaimer. I’m not a great FIFA player and I don’t claim to be so. I don’t play ranked matches at all. I don’t even know how many skill points I have. I’m a football enthusiast. I love football and football gaming. I’m just writing what I think would be useful for some if not many. So if you’re beyond all these, I’m gonna bore you, so buzz off. Okay so if you’re still reading this, you might be either curious or you genuinely need help. Let’s resume. This post is for the players who are struggling with the game, struggling to keep the ball, tired of losing the ball or simply out of form. Before you start playing champagne football, you should be able to keep the ball. Try playing possession football for a few days and then slowly open up for stylish stuff. And yes, I play offline games mostly. All my experiments are with the offline games! But by general logic these could apply for the online games as well.

Set the tactics to your best advantage. In build up play, set passing to 30 (short passes) and set speed to 40 (slow build up). In chance creation, set passing to 20 (very safe passes), crossing to 10 (no crosses) and shooting to 60. I’m assuming that your crossing sucks just like mine. Let’s get some wins under our belt before we experiment with crossing. In defence set pressure to 20, aggression to 70 and team width to 30 and defender line to cover. For this set of tactics, you need to build up slowly. Pass and move, pass and move. Don’t be in a hurry, wait for your colleagues to move up the pitch. For you to use this tactic effectively, your players should be moving when you have the ball. For that, go to edit formation and edit the player movement arrows for the players. You might want the wingers to move ahead when you have the ball. You might want to move your attacking midfielder but you might want your holding midfielder to stay put. Also edit the work rate of the players. The defensive players to have high defensive work rate and low attacking work rate and so on. If you don’t do these tweaks, the rest may not be effective.

The formation, the player selection, the player movement arrows, the player work rate settings, the surface of the pitch etc will all decide how well you’re able to play. One basic advice is: Don’t sprint forever. Use the sprint button only when needed. Instead of chasing a player in full sprint select another player and defend. Don’t run at full speed when there is no need. With more speed you have less control. Also, the more your sprint, the fatigue sets in and by 60th minute, your players will refuse to run and only jog. If you stop your constant sprinting you’ll see how beautiful this game is.

Choose a challenging opponent who has similar attack, midfield, defence, speed attributes as your team. Having chosen the opponent, choose a contrasting jersey for him. This looks like a dumb suggestion but you won’t know what kind of impact it can make. If you’re playing in white kits and your opponent is playing in black kits, you don’t even need to see where your players are. It would be subconsciuosly recorded in your mind because of the contrasting colours. If you’re dark grey and he is light grey, it requires your conscious efforts to locate your players. This is not difficult but you’re losing some valuable micro seconds in the process, without even knowing that.

Don’t get worked up with the semi/assisted/manual thing. Just have everything on assisted. You just want play the game and enjoy, right? When you play on assisted, your football thinking is what is rewarded and not your dexterity. When you’re confident about your accuracy levels because you’ve set them on assisted, you start thinking about other constructive things like how to build up the play, how to hold the lead etc. In terms of which camera to choose, I strongly suggest wide camera angle with maximum or a bit less than maximum and fully zoomed out. This way you’d be able to see a good part of the pitch. This helps a lot in passing accuracy and in attacking moves. Close camera angles help defence but can be disastrous for attacks. A nice useful radar would have solved the problem but FIFA’s radar is still not of PES quality. In terms of stadiums, try playing in those stadiums where you’d love to play. I play most of my matches in Camp Nou dusk or San Siro dusk. It’s very important because you don’t want any distraction for whatever reason. Let all settings be to your heart’s content.

And more importantly, play 10 minutes a half. A 20-minute match gives you enough time to try out everything you can. If you’re particular about playing possession football, you should have enough time as each attack would consume a lot of time for you. Don’t play 5-minute or 6-minute halves. Play 10-minute halves and you’ll understand the impact it makes on your game.

Why do we lose possession? That’s what I’m gonna talk about, today. As we all know, the opponent won’t score if he doesn’t have the ball (’Gary Neville + Robinson’ comes to mind). So that means we need to have the ball as much as possible. In 08, we complained about all possible things for not being able to keep possession. Now that most of those things have been fixed. The players respond so quickly and if you’re on assist, the passes can be near perfect. So why do we lose the ball then? That could be because of various reasons. (a) late to react (b) trying a risky pass (c) unwilling to go backwards (d) delayed player select (e) poor vision (f) turn (g) lack of understanding of player capabilities.

(a) Late to react: This happens most of the time, especially when you’re new to the game. If you have not come to terms with the pace and responsiveness in the game, you wouldn’t know the exact timing to release the ball. Or you wouldn’t expect the opponent to close you down so soon. What happens here is you have the ball but you’re thinking what to do now because you have multiple options including your own pre-determined ones. Just when you’re about to pass (everytime it’s like that), the opponent steals the ball. How do we prevent this? You can obviously try to hold, shield and trap the ball. Otherwise, draw an imaginary circle around the player with a radius of about a yard. The moment an opponent threatens to break into that circle, pass the ball quickly to the nearest option. Don’t have to see if that would help you in the attack and all. Now you’re just trying to keep the ball. For you to make that quick pass, you should have options available around you. Safe and short passing sliders in custom tactics would help you there. This looks like a simple solution but it can be hard because you need to have that discipline. It’s much more difficult that it sounds. When you play like this you’ll even be worried how to set up your attack. This worry would make you deliver another incorrect pass and that’s it. So just maintain this 1-yard radius discipline and as the players make their movements, there would be spaces to exploit. You’ll be fine. Remember, one-twos are a great way to keep the ball.

(b) trying a risky pass: Because the game is so fluid and possible, we tend to play that hollywood pass every now and then. I’ve tried them many times. Those were the kind of passes, if you pull them off, would be very decisive ones. If you’re keen on keeping possession, there are the types of passes that are most easily avoidable. If you’re not fully confident that the ball would be received by your player, just simply don’t pass. Wait for a better opportunity. So every time, a second before you hit the pass button you should quickly answer this question – ‘am I 100% confident that my player will receive the ball’. Make the pass only if you think the answer is yes. Never pass to a marked player.

(c) unwillingness to go backwards: This is a very common mindset. Once we’ve started an attack, we don’t want to go backwards. Somehow, we’ll try to go forward and forward. That’s a psychological thing. There is nothing wrong in going backwards. Sending the ball backwards is much better than delivering a hurried nonsense pass. How many times we have delivered a useless cross because we were being closed down by the full back? What we should do is to have that maturity to pass it around even from the most delicious positions. Sometimes, certain passes and shots are too hard to resist, but if you do that you’ll feel that you’re completely in control of the game which improves your confidence.

(d) delayed player select: Not every unsuccessful pass is caused by the passer. The receiver might always mess up. So what you do is make the pass and quickly change the selected player and control the receiver and receive the pass carefully. Player select is a very important tool in football games. The one who performs timely and correct player selections, will have that additional amount of time on the ball than his opponent. Some of us ignore the importance of player select and pay less attention to it. I’ve set my player select to manual because I want to time my player selection myself. That might help for you too.

(e) Poor vision: The game is dynamic. The players are constantly moving. That’s why, the space that you saw is now gone by the time you hit the pass button. Every second that you delay your pass, the players keep moving and the existing gaps are being closed and new ones are being created. As you’re gearing to make the pass, look how players are moving and try to extrapolate to see how the field would be in a couple of seconds later. That’s vision. Being able to see what’s not there already. You should be able to guess and anticipate the spaces and gaps as the game moves along. Because the game is dynamic, what should have been a good pass could be a wasted possession and even the otherwise is possible. So, before you pass, ensure that the pass would be a successful one considering that the players are constantly moving.

(f) Turn: In the final third or in midfield, once you receive the ball, your natural next step is to turn the other side with the ball to face the goal. This is instinctive. You get the ball, you turn. You have an option to turn the right side or left side. You’ll have your marker to your right or left. If you receive your ball on your left, it is natural that you’d turn on the left side, so the AI would anticipate and nick the ball as soon as you turn. So what you need to do is, when the ball is travelling to you, see which side the marker is and turn on the other side. If you find this too difficult to do, there is a simple solution. When you receive the ball, don’t turn immediately. Just hold for a second or even go towards the direction from where the ball came, instead of turning. This whold e turn thing might look little and silly but in the game, it makes a big difference on how you handle it.

(g) lack of understanding of player capabilities: Sometimes how much ever you try to make an accurate short or long pass, you can still go wrong because the player you control may have poor passing abilities. You need to find out who’s the best passer in your team and use him for the special passes.

If you practice the above thoroughly, you might end up with 60% or more possession with a goal dry game. You may or may not score. And your opponent may score with just one corner. Don’t lose hope. Keep playing this way. What this will do is to make you very familiar with the player movements and reactions, their capabilities, ball physics, AI behaviour and a general feel of the game. Over a period of time, you’re going to be very confident on the ball. You would no longer be worried about the defenders that pressurise you, in fact you would welcome them because defenders applying pressure means lots of space to exploit!

The above is just to get you back in form. You don’t have to follow these always. Once you start winning and once you become confident of your capabilities, you can play the way you want..

In my previous post, I had talked about how some tweaking of the custom tactics for the opponent teams would make this game absolutely brilliant with variety and randomness. Thanks for your overwhelming response for that idea. As a result of your support, now I’m going to suggest you some custom tactic set ups for various types of opponents. My basic assumption is that you would be playing for a top team or a champions league team.

Relegation battlers: Let’s see how they normally play. Primarily, draw is a great result for them. They may not have matching skill or pace to weave an attack from back to front too often. They would go for route one football of hoofing it up to the target men or in the D-area in some hope. They may not be tactically sound in defending and organisation but they would make it up with spirited tackles and interceptions. They would defend in numbers while leaving very few in attack. They would cross a lot and given the opportunity, they’d rather shoot instead of wasting it with a hopeful further build up play. Build Up – Speed: 40 Passing: 85 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation – Passing: 30 Crossing: 80 Shooting: 55 Positioning: Organised. Defence – Pressure: 35 Aggression: 75 Team width: 20 Defender Line: Cover.

In build-up, they’re slow and long. That means when they have the ball in their own half, they won’t hurry up the attack and that they use a lot of long balls. Because they’ll use long balls, their attackers would position themselves to receive the long passes, which might give you some space in the midfield. In chance creation, they pass safely, cross and shoot a lot. In defence, they won’t chase you when you’re in your half but will get involved as you get closer to your final third. They’re also very aggressive in winning the ball from you. They wouldn’t mind a crunching tackle. Defender line should be set to cover if you want a challenging game.

Mid-tablers: Must be pretty average in attack and should concentrate on defending. They might have one or two star players and the rest should be decent but may not be good enough. I’d make quicker than the relegation battlers in build up speed. I’ll make it 50. The passing in build up should be 70 which means both short passes and long passes but still more of the latter. In chance creation I’d expect them to take more risks in passing so that would be 50 and I’d keep the crossing at 80 and bring down the shooting to 40 as I think they are more comfortable on the ball than the relegation battlers. In defence, I’d bring down the pressure to 30 as it would help with a quicker build up play, if the ball is won. I’d keep the aggression at 75 as I think that’s the ideal setting for aggression across all teams. I can put the team width to 30 as the defenders could be a bit better and hence should be able to make up the lateral distance. Build Up – Speed: 50 Passing: 70 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation – Passing: 50 Crossing: 80 Shooting: 40 Positioning: Organised. Defence – Pressure: 30 Aggression: 75 Team width: 30 Defender Line: Cover.

Euro-aspirants: These are good teams that may not have those five star players but still can give a great challenge to the biggies. They should have some skillful players and can be pacy. I’ll give them a 60 in build up play speed and passing in build up should be 55 or 60. This means they can play short passes as well as long passes. It’s more situational. The riskiness of passing in chance creation must be 65, which means they’ll go for the risky passes but they might have the players to back it up. Crossing should be 55 or 60 while shooting can be 50 or 60. Basically, they’ll rely less on crossing and more on passing and shooting. This could be different in various leagues, so I suggest you make you appropriate customisations. In positioning in chance creation, you can make it ‘free form’ for certain teams which would make the game lot more interesting and random. Pressure and aggression should remain as 30 and 75 respectively while the team width can be 40 or 45, which will help them cut down our crosses. I suggest you alwasy have the defender line as ‘cover’ across all teams. Build Up – Speed: 60 Passing: 60 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation – Passing: 65 Crossing: 55 Shooting: 60 Positioning: Freeform. Defence – Pressure: 30 Aggression: 75 Team width: 40. Defender Line: Cover.

For the champions league teams, especially the so-called big teams, the custom tactics set up for build up and chance creation is almost perfect already. But since the defence sliders are messed up, you might have to change that alone for them. Once again, pressure can be 30 and aggression 75. For a team like Chelsea if you set the aggression slider to 75, they might be a massive challenge to your attackers, because they have a top class defence and most of the team could tackle rather well. The team width can be 50 for teams which uses wing backs and 40 otherwise.

If you don’t know already, there are only 28 slots for saving custom tactics. That’s a shame. Anyway, I’m using it this way. 3 slots for my team (Chelsea), 1 for relegation battlers, 1 for mid-tablers, 1 for Euro-aspirants and 18 other slots for specific top teams which are Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City (love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t ignore ‘em!), Real Madrid, Barca, Sevilla, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Villareal, Inter, Milan, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina, Bayern, Lyon and Porto. Now this leaves 4 empty slots which can be used for the in-game tactical changes.

So I’ll have unique tactic setups for the above mentioned top teams and the other teams in English, Spanish and Italian leagues would get one of the tactics of (a) relegation battlers (b) mid-tablers (c) euro aspirants. As long as I’ve the teams fixed in the premier league, la liga and serie a, I’m fine. These leagues account for 90% of my matches. This might have left some leagues untouched. That’s fine. Either I don’t use them or I’m fine with the occasional random match where I can run past the defence through the centre. May be, I’d be playing samba football by then that I’d not think of route ones!

XBOX 360 users – These tactics are saved in my FIFA 09 locker (XBL: bluechampblogger)

PS3 users – Click on the below image and update the values manually.

Custom Tactics Values

P.S: The slider values are ased on my own opinions and preferences. Please change it for yourself if you wish. Don’t need to bash me but certainly we can have a matured discussion on what the sliders should be. But I have tested the above values and they work for me superbly.

I think I’ve found the ideal camera setting for FIFA 09. It is TELE and then in custom, both height and zoom should be zero. This way the camera angle like you’re watching from the stands. You see a lot of pitch at the same time, you feel closer to the players so your moves and tackles can be followed better. Some time you’re also shown some parts of the stands which adds to the excitement. In this camera set up, I feel closer to the game than ever before. May be, it’s looks more like the telecast of matches at Stamford Bridge, which between the telecast angles of erstwhile Highbury (which was very close like you’re standing on the pitch) and that of Camp Nou (which is very far that you see the full rectangle of the pitch most of the times).

Try it out and let me know.

I love this game. As I get better I realise that very often the scoring happens to be from a throughball that results in on one-on-one situation, which you can finish with a finesse shot. Nowadays, it is happening too very often. This is what people complain as ‘route one football’ of FIFA 09. This is not a bug or a glitch. I’ll explain you why this happens and I’ll also suggest you a solution which would make your game lot more tactical and lateral. If you haven’t experienced this one-on-one thingy, you are not spoilt yet.

See this game plays so beautifully that you can almost score a goal anyway you want. You can build up to the goal to your heart’s content. When there is an easy way out, you can exploit it. You don’t want to exploit that because you want realism and simulation as much as possible. When you’re playing a league or a cup competition, when you badly need a goal, you’d get it cheaply but wouldn’t really enjoy it. Am I right? This “throughball + one on one” happens to be one such quick way of scoring. I don’t want route one football and I don’t need a readymade way of scoring a goal.

Lot of people have written and said that this game rewards only route one football and does not reward or even facilitate patient build up football with lateral movement. That’s primarily because of the number of one-on-ones that people have seen so far in the game. When you keep zipping throughballs to the centre one-on-ones, it’s not fun. You are unchallenged. You have one quick way to get out of jail. It subconsciously restricts your creative thinking in building the game up and does not encourage you to play enterprising football. So why does this happen? I’ll break the suspense upfront. It’s all because of the custom tactics set up of your opponent teams.

I was playing against Real Madrid the other night. Throughball right through the centre, one-on-one to Drogba, goal! I was thinking how this could happen. It can’t be that I’m too good at this game. I ruled that out. In reality, they would have floored Drogba instead of watching sprint through 30 yards. The defenders didn’t even make a decent attempt to stop Drogba.So I went about investigating further. If you see the custom tactics set up of Real Madrid, you’ll understand.

Go to the defence numbers in custom tactics for Real Madrid. Pressure is 65. Aggression is 35. Team width is 65. What does this mean? The 65 for pressure means that the Real Madrid players would start pressurising you quite high on the pitch. When they pressurise, with the kind of responsiveness in FIFA 09, you can quickly exploit the gap created by the pressure with a quick throughpass and boom. But why don’t their defenders jockey, tackle and give Drogba a hard time? Because the aggression is set at 35. This means they won’t really pounce on you. They would try to contain you but won’t tackle you hard. At least they must be blocking Drogba in numbers right? No they won’t because the team width is set at 65. That shows that the defence will not narrow down at the back. They would in fact be quite wide and spread, and in case of a quick attack, their full backs will not be able to come to rescue. Goodness me, they also have the defender line as offside trap – good movement or bad movement, they’re in it together, the back four.

So now, what settings for Real Madrid here would have challenged Drogba? Pressure is not quite effective without aggression. And I don’t want the defender to be activated so high on the pitch. I’d put the pressure in the region of 30-35. Aggression should be between 70 and 80. This way, you won’t have it easy. It would be a massive challenge to get through. AI will tackle you, would even foul you and might double the pressure by asking one more defender to help stop you. Your route one football would be effectively over here. The more your ’striker runs’ are intercepted by the opposition defence, you’ll start thinking of how else to play, build up and score.

So what have I done here. For certain top teams, I have gone and edited the custom tactics set up so that they don’t play like absolute idiots. And then I have created certain standard set ups. For instance, relegation battlers. They all mostly play very similarly. So I have personally edited their custom tactics to reflect their deep defending, hard tackling, long balling etc. But I did not want to do this for all of them individually. I started with Stoke City. Edited the custom tactics for them. And then for the similar teams, I just pointed their custom tactics to this saved custom tactics of Stoke City. So simple.

As per the original set up, Stoke had a fast build up play. The players are not as fast as Chelsea players. So when they play fast build up and lose the possession high up on the pitch, they won’t even tackle because of the original defence set up in custom tactics and they can’t even catch up a monster like Didier Drogba. If they lose the ball in my half, it could be a matter of two or three passes, before you see another one of those Didier Drogba goals. Not anymore. Now they will tackle me, challenge me, double up on me and even crowd in the centre. Lovely isn’t it? That’s no guarantee for Stoke City that they won’t concede, it only improves their defence. Remember, we’re not trying to boost any statistics here. If that Stoke defender is rated only 55 in tackling, when you set the their team aggression to 75 or 80, this 55-rated defender would do as much as possible in the framework of his own capabilities.

Apart from the unique tactics I’d like to customise and keep for the champions league teams, I would create more such generalised customised custom tactics for groups like relegation battlers, mid-tablers, euro-aspirants etc. My special concern would be on editing the defence set ups. I’m already half way through this. I love my games now. AI gives me a tough fight through the centre forcing me to come up with new ideas to break it up. With the gameplay of FIFA 09 at my disposal, I love this challenge!

Finally, if you’re fine with the game as it is, no worries. Don’t tweak anything. Just enjoy your game. Also if you’re finding the game already difficult enough, good for you. Keep trying. But just keep checking if your goals are from everywhere and if your goals are produced from varied types of attacks. The moment you realise that all that you do is one-on-ones, use this little tutorial. But remember, one-on-ones are not bad. They are in real football so they must be in FIFA 09 as well. I’m just saying that the proportion should also stay true.

If you think that you’re unable to control the game as much as you’d like to, set the passing in chance creation in custom tactics to somewhere around 30 which means safe passing. If you do this alongwith 30 or 40 for passing in build up, there will always be players around you to pass the ball and you can slowly build up and play your game. Having made these tweaks, I’m enjoying this game so much. The quality of my football has really improved and I’m truly enjoying the way I play. Now I have multiple options in mind, I’m trying out new things. Heck, I’ve strarted to use crossing as a weapon and even putting corners to good use! Let’s use the game to its fullest potential!

P.S: (a) I’m referring only to the offline games. (b) I play in ‘professional’ difficulty. (c) I use ‘assisted’ for pass, cross and through. ’semi’ for shots and ‘manual’ for lob pass.