FM22: REPLICATING TACTICS — USING OPEN SOURCE DATA

For those of you who follow the likes of RDF Tactics and FM Treq you will have experienced these FM community pioneers/ambassadors replicate their fair share of real life tactics and certainly would have had a stab at creating your own.

I am no different, I often like to replicate philosophies of managers in the attempt to give my saves an increased realism and today I would like to share with you my replication of Domenico Tedesco’s RB Leipzig. (Thanks to FMCatenaccio for instigating this piece after discussions on Twitter).

I will show you my methodology in creating this tactic from scratch, using the wonderful world of open source data which is now readily available to us all through popular sites such as FBREF, WhoScored, SofaScore and Transfermarkt. (This list is not comprehensive)

The Formation

The first screen you will get directed towards before allowing to continue when starting a new save is the ‘Tactics’ hub where you will need to choose a primary tactic for you chosen side. Given the fact we are replicating Tedesco’s RB Leipzig the first task on a clean slate is to decide the formation.

WhoScored is my go to for this usually as they have a nice tool (above) which shows how many times your selected side have lined up in a set formation. For Leipzig the favourite is a 3421. However, for those of you who weren’t aware they have changed manager in 2021/22 as Jesse Marsch was sacked after 14 games due to his win ratio of only 36%.

Therefore I opted to carry out a quick scan of under the scores and fixtures (below) to confirm if this was indeed Tedesco’s system or a legacy of Marsch.

The above shows that Tedesco has indeed favoured the 3–4–1–2 using it on nine occasions.

Key Players

Before delving into the ‘Team Instructions’ I prefer to get a few players down on the team sheet to again an understanding of who the important individuals are from within the side. Starting a save midseason when players have a larger sample of minutes is always helpful for this task.

I have opted to use FBREF for this source and simply selected RB Leipzig and sorted the minutes played column to show me the players who have drawn down the most minutes in the Bundesliga.

A quick search on SofaScore for these individuals can help you to understand a little about their roles within the system through the use of the ‘Season Heatmap’.

Josko Gvardiol

I have used Gvardiol as an example here which clearly identifies him as operating on the left side of the defensive trio, most likely in the role of the Wide-Defender.

Ignore Player Roles

Team Instructions

Now we have established our formation of choice the next step is to decipher the data in order to establish what team instructions we will need to use, for this we will use FBREF and their advanced data.

In Possession

In order to establish if Leipzig play out of defence we can look at the advanced goalkeeping stats, these show us how many times sides look to launch the ball from the back (passes longer than 40 yards) or build play through passing. RB Leipzig have attempted 333 launched balls (4th lowest) which highlights their preference in playing out from the back.

Switching over to WhoScored and the ‘Team Statistics’ tab for RB Leipzig you can gain an understanding on preference in relation to focus play. The tidy visual above shows us that we should be looking to focus play down the left due to this side being favoured with 42% of attacks stemming from this side.

Back to FBREF and the ‘Squad Passing’ to gain an insight into the passing directness, sorting the passes attempted column we find out that RB Leipzig have attempted the third highest number of passes in the Bundesliga, with 40% of these attempted being short passes between five and 15 yards.

Now we have established how we should set up our approach play we need to then focus on how Leipzig look to play in the final third.

For this we again start our analysis through the ‘squad passing’ table in FBREF, this time focusing on the passes into penalty area ‘PPA’ and crosses into penalty area (CrsPA) data.

PPA

CrsPA

Leipzig have the second highest passes into the penalty area in the Bundesliga and only rank seventh in relation to the amount of crosses played into the area which in my opinion favours a Work Ball Into Box approach, this can be confirmed by looking into the ‘Squad Shooting’ data which ranks Leipzig as the second lowest average shooting distance in the league at 15.6 yards which rules out a Shoot on Sight policy. (Just FYI their average xG per shot is 0.13, again the highest in the Bundesliga).

Finally looking at the ‘Squad Possession’ data and the dibbles and carries data in particular we can see that Leipzig are attempting 20% less dribbles than leaders Bayern and find themselves in fourth place in the Bundesliga in relation to this metric. They do however have the fourth highest carrying distance so this rules out selecting the ‘Dribble Less’ option.

In Transition

The next in segment to cover is looking at how the side play when in the transitional phase of play.

Looking at FBREF you can see that RB Leipzig sit towards the bottom half when looking at the accumulated pressures. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t press often as this data doesn’t take into account the amount of time the team are in possession.

What we can ascertain from this data is where teams complete the largest amount of pressures which will give us an insight where Leipzig look to engage the opponent, others known as their ‘Line of Engagement’, which we will cover later when looking at the team ‘Out of Possession’.

WhoScored is my go to site in relation to assessing if the team like to play on the counter, they have a great tool which captures what situations shots stem from, looking at the above only 5% of RB Leipzig’s shots are from the transitional phase. To put this into context Leverkusen’s value stands at 10% which highlights that RB favour a more measured approach in transition.

Finally, to look at how to play when building from the back I looked into touches, Josko Gardiol has second most touches in the Bundesliga which leads me to believe that as the Left-sided wide centre back he will often be the distribution outlet for Gulacsi as RB Leipzig look to build from the back. (We all know the value of a good ball playing left footed central defender).

Out Of Possession

As previously stated the ‘Squad Defensive Actions’ tab on FBREF is an excellent place to establish what line of engagement sides use. At the tie of writing RB Leipzig have attempted 4577 pressures, 26% of these are in the defensive third, 49% in the middle of the park and 25% in the attacking third.

I would suggest that this data implies that they favour a ‘Higher’ line of engagement mid to high block, for context Bayern complete 29% of their pressures in the attacking third and therefore have a ‘Much Higher’ line of engagement.

Again, studying the ‘Squad Defensive Actions’, RB Leipzig are attempting the least amount of tackles in the defensive third and therefore in my opinion merit a ‘Higher Defensive Line’. They also have the third lowest tackles made in the Bundesliga along with committing the third lowest amount of fouls which could imply they ‘Stay On Feet’.

FBREF also allows you to view opponent stats, in doing so and comparing the average amount of touches in the penalty area it is clear to see that Tedesco looks to ‘Force Opponent Outside’ with a narrow defensive width.

Player Roles & Instructions

Now that we have established how our team plays, the next phase of the tactical replication is looking establish what roles individuals play in and what player instructions can be bolted on in order to attempt to reach certain outputs in relation to in-game metrics.

Kevin Kampl

In order to do this I use the FBREF Scouting Report along with SofaScore player heatmaps to see which areas of the pitch they often occupy along with what metrics the player sits within the 90th percentile.

In doing this you can get a real feel for what role the player operates in along with and additional player instructions which may need to be bolted on.

For example, looking at Kevin Kampl it is clear to see that he is the metronome within the side with passes attempted and passes completed sitting in the high percentile. In real life Kampl will often be found sitting just in-front of the back-line making everything tick, dictating the control of the game with his stellar short passing.

Christopher Nkuku

If we take Christopher Nkuku we can see that despite often lining up as a forward the Frenchman is contributing largely in the attacking third with his passing ability. He sits within the top 5% in relation to Key Passes and 3% when looking at balls played into the penalty area.

His heat-map shows that he often can be found in the left-sided half space, no doubt having a little more freedom to roam from his position in order to impact the game.

Further Reading

WhoScored have a nice little tool which captures the key playing characteristics of sides, I am not sure if this is created by algorithms from the data or is just someone’s opinion.

This can be used as a good touch-point after you have analysed the data to see if your assumptions are at least in line with reality.

There are also a few good sites which can be accessed such as TheMastermindSite, BreakingTheLines, Spielverlagerung and Total Football Analysis where you can look to carry out background reading to again make those informed decisions.

Tedesco’s RB Leipzig Replication