I tried to recreate Morocco's World Cup tactic in Football Manager 2022 and tried to fix one of their problems
Having followed Morocco quite extensively during World Cup 2022, I wanted to try and recreate their tactic in Football Manager and see how close I can get to the real tactic.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas and Boxing Day with your loved ones! (or other holidays that you also celebrate as well!)
There is no denying that Morocco at the World Cup 2022 will go down as one of the most infamous underdog stories at a major football tournament. Qualifying from a tough group that had Croatia and Belgium, two of the top three teams from the 2018 World Cup, and then went on to beat Spain and Portugal on their way to the semi-final is an outstanding achievement on itself.
After analysing Morocco’s group stage performance, which you can still find the piece down below, I found myself obsessed with Walid Regragui’s team and was cheering for them as they advanced through the knockout rounds. Now, a week after the World Cup ended, I wanted to recreate Morocco’s tactic on Football Manager 2022 using my analysis from their group stage and knockout matches and the data tools in game to try and get as close as possible. At the same time, I also wanted to test the tactic on a national team that qualified for the World Cup in game to see if Morocco’s heroic achievement can be achieved on Football Manager or not. Let’s dive in.
The tactic
I am currently managing Cesena in Italy at club level and the Kosovo national team at international level, and I will be testing the tactic on at least one match for each team. But before I can do that, I have to use a different manager and pick a national team that qualified for the World Cup in game to set up the tactic. Unfortunately, Morocco failed to qualify in my save so they are out of the equation. However, I found a team who have a similar profile and personnel as Morocco that might fit this style of play. That team is Jamaica, who surprisingly qualified for the group stage.
Before we get to the test and the results, I want to tell you what I had in mind when I recreated this tactic.
At the time of writing, I have retired the manager that I used for Jamaica so I was not able to retrieve the original tactic. But the tactic above from my Kosovo team is very similar to the tactic that I used for Jamaica plus a few changes that I made after observing the results.
I usually do not use the Cautious mentality for my team as I prefer Balanced and Positive more often, even when my team are losing or are predicted to lose the match. But when I tried to use Positive for this tactic, the players are, well, more positive in the way that they play, which is not similar to what Morocco have shown at the World Cup. What do I mean by the players are more positive? It means the players want to control the game on many occasions and they are more likely to not focus on the defensive side more often during the match. This is extremely risky, especially when playing against better teams, since the AI for those teams can be very quick to adapt to this tactic and counter it using an Advanced Forward up top to run in behind the defensive line. When I switched to Cautious, the players are more reserved when they do not have the ball and the transition from defending to attacking when the team regain possession happen quicker than when I used Positive, which is what I want from this tactic.
Now, to the instructions. At first glance, the in possession instructions look like they are used for a team who expect a lot of possession in the match and they should be conflicting to the counter-attacking style. While that is true, I choose these instructions to ask the players to be more patient when they have the ball and try to create a high-quality scoring chance rather than the players taking a shot anywhere and anytime they find the opportunity to do so. Obviously when this tactic is used against a much stronger side or when we are losing, the Work Ball Into Box instruction can be removed to increase the probability of a shot-leading attack to happen in game.
The reason why I include the Play Out Of Defence instruction is because Morocco’s build-up style can be varied depending on the game state, situation, and opposition’s strength. They were comfortable to play the ball short and asked defensive midfielder Sofyan Amrabat to come deep to get the ball and then advanced forward with it. They were also comfortable to be direct using the long passes from goalkeeper Yassine Bounou and the centre-back pairing of Romain Saïss and Nayef Aguerd. There are also no specific instructions for what the goalkeeper should do in the tactic above to match Morocco’s flexibility while playing out from the back. However, Distribute Quickly can be turned on if we are looking to make the most of counter-attacks.
However, the out of possession instructions are what make this tactic look similar to Morocco’s tactic. Morocco’s mid-block during the World Cup was very compact and was pushed high up the pitch to prevent the opposition from playing down the central area. They also did not start pressing the opposition until they moved into the middle third with the ball. Those are the characteristics that I wanted to reflect in my recreation using the out of possession instructions that I picked.
Higher Defensive Line and Lower Line Of Engagement explain by themselves. When the team defend, their defensive line will be pushed higher up the pitch and the lone striker up top will not start engaging with the opposition’s players until they enter the middle third. As mentioned, the AI are quick to react to this tactic using an Advanced Forward up front and making long passes in behind the defensive line for that striker to receive.
This is not just a problem in game, but it was also a problem that Morocco faced during the World Cup, especially against Croatia in the group stage. To counter this while also keeping the compact mid-block intact, change the defensive line height to Standard and the line of engagement height to Much Lower. While this change will force the team to absorb more pressure from the opposition because they will have the ball higher up the pitch, this change will also allow the team to react to situations that happen close to the penalty box quicker and limit the threat from the long passes that the opposition might make. Having the Offside Trap turned on also help to an extent as this will tell the players to bait the Advanced Forward into an offside trap when a long pass is made by the opposition.
One of Morocco’s defensive characteristics that I did not mention here was they tended to force the opposition to pass down both flanks and then overload that area to regain possession. Naturally, the 4-1-4-1 shape is able to cover both the central and the half space areas because of numerical advantage in the middle of that shape and there are at least two players who can move out wide to cover the flank when it is being attacked. The idea for this tactic (and also Morocco’s tactic) is to use the defensive shape to force the opposition wide rather than deliberately doing so.
While turning on Force Opposition Wide might help, I do not recommend it because it increases the likelihood of the opposition attacking through the half space because the distance between the players are wider than in a normal shape. This tactic aims to limit the opposition to only being able to make crosses from out wide and even to take mostly long shots from outside of the box. In both situations, the team will rely on the defenders to deal with aerial challenges or blocking the shots and regain possession using second balls.
The personnel
A good tactic in concept needs the right players to turn it into a great tactic in reality. I cannot remember where I read that quote or a version of that quote, but the idea is for a manager to implement his idea on a team, they need the players who can excel in that tactic and style of play to make the idea come true. With that in mind, let us discuss about the players that the Morocco-inspired tactic need.
Firstly, a centre-back pairing that has good aerial ability and quick off the ball is a must to defend against crosses and long passes from the opposition. Another advantage of having at least one centre-back who is good in the air is set pieces become a viable option to find goals. I recommend looking for centre-backs who has good Jumping Reach, Heading, Acceleration, Pace, and Anticipation. If this is not possible, however, a pairing with an aerial-dominant centre-back (good Jumping Reach and Heading, decent Acceleration and Pace) and a quick centre-back (decent Jumping Reach and Heading, good Acceleration and Pace) is also an option.
For the full-backs, I choose the inverted wing-back role not just because I wanted to infuse a bit of what Ange Postecoglou are doing at Celtic into this tactic, but this is also what Morocco had shown at times during the World Cup. When they had the ball, both wingers tend to stay very wide to allow the full-backs to sit narrower. When either Sofiane Boufal or Hakim Ziyech has control of the ball, they will drift inwards to create the space for Noussair Mazraoui or Achraf Hakimi to overlap into.
Besides from taking on their usual defensive responsibilities, the inverted wing-backs in my Morocco-inspired tactic will also enter the penalty box using runs from deep and attack the channel on his run. This will create a potential goal-scoring outlet for the team because when the inverted wing-back makes his run, it is unlikely that any opposition player would follow him as other players in the team have already pinned them down. While not every team can have a Hakimi or Mazraoui to themselves, finding a full-back who has average Finishing (9 or above) and decent Crossing will fit what this tactic is looking for.
To allow the inverted wing-backs to excel, I set both wingers to the inverted wingers role and allow them the freedom to stay wide or sit narrower. On most occasions, the wingers will stay wide without the ball but will cut inside when he has the ball, which is what I am looking for. Generally, a winger who is quick, can dribble, make crosses and has decent finishing is what this tactic is looking for, similar to Bersant Celina below.
The midfield trio is also very crucial for this tactic, especially the two number 8s, with one player taking on the roaming playmaker role to mimic Morocco’s Azzedine Ounahi, while the other is a normal central midfielder on attack just to have another player attacking the box from deep. No specific instructions for the central midfielder on attack besides from moving into channels to allow him to attack the box using deep runs and creating another goal-scoring option inside the penalty box.
Last but not least, I set my lone striker up front as a pressing forward on support to ask the striker to press when the team do not have the ball and support the team’s attack more often when in possession, similar to Youssef En-Nesyri’s role in Morocco’s tactic. This role can be changed to a deep-lying forward which will produce more or less a similar result, or to a pressing forward on attack or a poacher when the team are losing.
The results
Jamaica
Having set the tactic (and a few set piece routines up, mainly corners to the far post with one player coming short), let’s test it out on all three teams! First up, it is Jamaica at the World Cup.
As mentioned, I had to use a different manager to manage Jamaica because of two reasons. The first obvious reason was they did not pick my main manager to be their manager when I applied for the role. The second reason was I did not want to give up on my ‘Project Kosovo’ less than a year into the job (basically the goal of the project is to take Kosovo to Euro 2024 with the current generation and get promoted to Nations League B; the dream goal is to qualify for World Cup 2026 or 2030).
Another problem that I faced was I created a manager a merely two days after every team had picked the squad for the World Cup, and for some reason, Jamaica opted not to pick Ethan Pinnock to go to Qatar. I would have loved to have him because he is a strong player in the air and a great set piece threat at that. So I was left with Michael Hector, Liam Moore (from Reading) and Reece Oxford as my starting centre-back options and Inter Miami’s Damion Lowe as a backup option. Hector was not bad, Moore was alright, and I chose to use Oxford as a half back rather than as a centre-back.
So, what was my result at the World Cup? My Jamaica finished with 6 points, which was one point less than Morocco’s real result, and usually that would have put us in a qualification spot for the knockout rounds. But when you are in the ‘group of death’ with Brazil, the Netherlands, and Japan, 6 points were not enough to even get out of the group. And it broke my heart when I knew that Jamaica were eliminated because the Netherlands scored one more goal thanks to a 90+1 goal from Arnaut Danjuma and secured them a 2-1 win over Japan. Still, the results were promising to say the least and I will break down all three matches down below.
For the first match against the Netherlands, I knew that we were going to be under a lot of pressure for this match and the opposition did just that. They went out with a 4-2-3-1, which was more offensive than I would have thought (especially after seeing Louis van Gaal’s 5-3-2 formation at the last World Cup). My Jamaica team went out with the exact same lineup as shown above with only one small change. I pushed the left-sided midfielder up to an attacking midfielder position since I could not trust Daniel Johnson (from Preston North End), Rekeem Harper (from West Brom), or Peter-Lee Vassell (cannot remember which club he was from) to start the match ahead of Bobby Decordova-Reid.
The Netherlands put us under a lot of pressure during the match and the fact that they used Myron Boadu as an Advanced Forward did not help either. But for the majority of the match, we were able to withstand the pressure thanks to Andre Blake’s performance in goal and limited the Netherlands to only crosses which Hector and Moore were able to deal with. It was fairly lucky that the Netherlands’ chances conversion in and around the 6-yard box were not good, which might have helped Jamaica a bit, but I will take everything that I can get.
On the offensive side, we relied quite heavily on counter-attacks thanks to Leon Bailey and Demarai Gray on both wings. The first goal was the result of that with an attack happened down the right-hand side and Decordova-Reid made a low cross towards the far post for Gray to score a tap in. The second goal came from a free kick situation by Lewis Baker (the former Chelsea midfielder) and the third goal was, surprisingly, came from a high press where the Netherlands lost the ball and Alvas Powell managed to capitalise on that error.
On the defensive side, it was promising to see the average positions of the players look slightly deep and create a slightly compact mid-block that I was looking for. The only surprise for me was why did Reece Oxford’s average position was as high as Baker or Decordova-Reid when he was used as a half-back. I still cannot find an answer to that question.
The second match was more tricky on the tactical side since Japan went out with a 5-2-1-2 formation. In this alternate universe, Hajime Moriyasu actually called up Kyogo Furuhashi to play up front with Takumi Minamino and Takefusa Kubo provided the support from behind. But the weakest link that I wanted to hit was the fact that Daichi Kamada was playing alongside Wataru Endo to form the central midfielder pairing. When they had the ball, I expected them to create a 3-1-4-2 formation, which they did just that.
Japan went ahead early, which was to be expected, but I made the change to the defensive line and line of engagement heights and that limited Japan from creating plenty of chances like the Netherlands did against Jamaica and allowed us to regain the match in the second half. Moore and Hector had an average match, which was reasonable given that they had to be in 1v1 situations with Minamino and Furuhashi on many occasions. I could have switched to a back five to deal with that problem but switching to a 5-1-2-2 or a 5-3-2 would mean that we had to be more defensive, which prevented us from finding the equalising goal that we needed.
The average positions this time look much more promising with Oxford dropping in between Hector and Moore to create a back five when we were defending. This was to be expected because Oxford was also on 1v1 situations with Kubo on most occasions, but this lined up with what I wanted to see. And again, it is possible to see that most of the team were inside of our own half when we defended, with only Michail Antonio staying inside Japan’s half.
We went into the third match with a surprising top spot and a three-point lead over Brazil, which led me to believe that I could make some changes to the starting lineup to give the key players a rest before we entered the knockout rounds. I do not know if that was a mistake or not, and if playing the key players would have given us a better chance of at least getting the point out of the third match or not. Maybe it was my mistake, maybe the outcome would stay the same, I do not know.
Again, Brazil gave us a tough time as expected. They also went out with a 4-2-3-1 formation with the intention to dominate the match but we were able to hold them back right up to the 60th minute. The goal that we conceded were not deserved either, it came from an easy lofted pass from Lucas Paquetá and Damion Lowe dealt with it really bad, allowing Vinícius Junior to close him down inside of our own box, take the ball and score. We had a few late chances from Shamar Nicholson (also from both flanks and from counter-attacks) but Alisson was too good.
The average positions for this match were slightly weird with Wes Harding leaving an entire left channel uncovered and the same for the space in between Daniel Johnson and Demarai Gray (now you see why I did not trust Johnson to start ahead of Baker and Decordova-Reid). Still, the slightly compact low block was there, it was just under a lot of pressure and had to be pushed back a bit more than against the Netherlands.
So, two wins and a narrow loss to Brazil in a World Cup. That was not bad, a qualification to the second round would have been better but I will take that as a small win. Now to bring that tactic to Kosovo.
Kosovo
At this time of writing, my Kosovo side are three matches into our Euro 2024 qualifiers and we have only faced Iceland and Cyprus (on two occasions) and I did not think that we need to use the Morocco-inspired tactic against those teams. However, I have used it against… Cape Verde of all teams. I wanted to test out the tactic after they scored literally from kick off (when I used the normal 4-1-2-3) and it worked out slightly well. We were able to limit Cape Verde from creating more chances after that and allowed us to get back into the match as the first half went on.
The average positions of the players were slightly more positive (even when I chose to see the positions without the ball) and it was because I had to push the team forward to find an equaliser after we conceded early. I also expected us to match Cape Verde rather than letting them control the match so the fact that the average positions were more positive than the average positions of Jamaica was not a huge surprise for me. Maybe when Kosovo play against France, I will test out this tactic to see if it can overcome a third team who are currently in the top ten-ish of the world.
Cesena
For the final test, I used this tactic for my Cesena side when we played against Juventus… in a friendly match. I had two opportunities to use it against Torino and Atalanta but their 5-2-2-1 formation will completely tear down the 4-1-4-1 so I opted not to, but Juventus were still a good test. During the last couple of transfer windows, I was able to find two centre-backs who fit my usual 4-1-2-3 and 4-1-3-2 formations and they happen to also fit the Morocco-inspired tactic as well.
Michael Svoboda was surprisingly good and the fact that I managed to buy him on a cheap price (about 750k Euros with some add-ons) from Venezia when they got relegated was a shocker for me. He became an immediate starter in my lineup and was one of the best defenders in Serie B while also guided my Cesena back to Serie A. He is very strong in the air while also being slightly quick off the ball, which makes him a good threat from set pieces and a towering defender to defend the penalty box.
The current transfer window (at the time of writing), I wanted to find another solid centre-back who can challenge Andrea Ciofi for a starting spot and I found Ruan Tressoldi from Sassuolo. He wanted to leave Sassuolo and was available for a similar price as Svoboda so I could not pass up the opportunity to sign a centre-back who is both good in the air and is extremely quick.
Their presence at the back was a major factor to help my Cesena side dealt with the crosses that came in from Owen Wijndal and Dani Carvajal while also keeping Dušan Vlahović quiet on the day. Up front, I used Ola Brynhildsen (bought from Internazionale) on the left and he challenged Carvajal quite often during the match. But my test of using Dante Vanzeir (bought from Union Saint-Gilloise) as a deep-lying forward did not work out so well and I had to brought on Cristian Shpendi and changed the role to a pressing forward on attack.
I found the tactic to be extremely useful because we managed to limit the number of dangerous chances that Juventus were able to create in the match. They had a few shots on target inside of the box but most of them were headers that came from crosses and Nediljko Labrović (bought from Rijeka) dealt with those attempts quite comfortably. The goal that we conceded from Morata was when they switched to a 4-4-2, we switched to a flat 5-4-1, and I brought on my backup keeper Ammar Helak (bought from Austria Wien). It was gutted that we could not hold on to a win but it was a very promising result during the pre-season.
Once again, the average positions of the players were surprisingly similar to Jamaica’s match with the Netherlands. Gustavo Hamer pushed up quite high which left a decent gap in between the defensive lines but overall, the slightly compact mid-block is still possible to see and was made the most of.
Conclusion
I did not expect this article to be this long, but if you have made it to this section then thank you very much for reading through this fun article! What do I think of this tactic? It worked and I definitely recommend using it during international tournaments, cups, or important matches, just not use it as a main formation. This tactic can be a good tactic to use in matches where you are expected to lose or want to cause some problems for teams who are stronger than your team. But the more you use it, the sooner the AI will find a way to counter against this tactic. So I highly recommend using this tactic along with your main tactic as a backup option or a switch when you want to make a cup run with your club team or achieve something on an international level. There is also a level of flexibility for this tactic so I also recommend adjusting this tactic to the players that you have and your own style of play. Have fun and enjoy your Football Manager save!