Arrigo Sacchi's Milan IMMORTALS

Hi guys and welcome to my new tactical emulation.

This time I created Arrigo Sacchi's Milan degli Immortali tactic.

Sacchi's revolution changed football forever, especially Italian football which was famous as defensive-catenaccio football, thanks to Sacchi's efforts became capable to play a very offensive and pleasing to the eye football and to win everything possible.

In Italy there have always been many debates between two factions, one called "risultatisti" (results) which prefers winning over playing well and the other called giochisti (from "gioco" that means "game") which advocates that if you play well success will come for sure.

Arrigo Sacchi was clearly a "giochista" and he was supported by AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi who bought Milan on February 1986.

Berlusconi always said that AC Milan must be world's best club and play world's best football, his revolutionary ideas matched with Sacchi, who, before becoming AC Milan's coach, had trained Parma in Serie B and defeated Milan twice in Coppa Italia (Italian Cup), shocking Milan's president who wanted him to become new Milan's coach in 1987.

Sacchi's training methods caused many players to rebel against him when Milan at the beginning struggled to win even against weaker opponents, but Berlusconi said to all the players that Sacchi was meant to be Milan's coach also in the following seasons while he was not sure about AC Milan's players, from that day, Milan started playing better and winning more and more.

Let's analyze Sacchi's tactic main features.

First of all, high pressing and a great teamworking, every players must be able to do everything, they must play close to each other so that they will not have to run much when pressing the opponent and will not miss simple passing.

Sacchi played a 4-1-2-1-2 with wide wingers (Evani and Rjikard), a deep lying playmaker (Ancelotti) and an advanced midfielder (Donadoni).

The defensive line was made by two fullbacks (Tassotti and Maldini who exploited the flanks) and two great center backs (Costacurta and Baresi).

Actually, Sacchi wanted Rijkard to play as center back near Baresi while Colombo and Evani played as wingers and Ancelotti always as playmaker. But during a training session, Evani was injured by a young player Albertini, so Sacchi decided to put Rjikard as midfielder replacing him with Costacurta.

So let's analyze how to create this tactic in Football Manager 2023.

As I said, it's a positive mentality 4-1-2-1-2 with a DLP (defense) and a Trq (I chose trequartista role for Donadoni instead of advanced midfielder because it works more offensive and it suits better to Charles De Ketelaere who scored 17 goals in one season and made many assists).

The other two midfielders are two wingers on support because I wanted to create a more balanced tactic, to avoid conceding too many goals.

The defenders are two wing-backs, the right one (Tassotti) on support (I could have set him on attack too to stick more to Tassotti's role but it would have been too dangerous) and the left one (Maldini) on attack, one center back on defend (Costacurta) and one BPD on defend (Baresi).

The front-two are a complete forward on support (Gullit) and an advanced forward on attack (Marco Van Basten).

Team instructions are as follows:

In possession: fairly wide, shorter passing, higher tempo play out of defense, mixed crosses, work ball into box. No need to select overlapping because with two wing backs one on attack and the other on support they already overlap a lot. you can see how Theo Hernandez and Calabria overlap in the highlights.

In Transition: counter-press and counter, I asked the GK to throw it long and distribute directly to full backs because Sacchi wanted Milan to launch fast counterattacks.

Out of possession: higher defensive line and high press, prevent GK short distribution, trigger press much more often, step up more (for offside).

This is my tactic, I won the double with Milan at first season even if I sold Leao and Saelemakers in January 2023, and I managed to buy some wonderkids and put them in the starting XI.

After January bargain window I had to use some players from Milan U20 squad too but still managed great victories both in Serie A (5-0 against Juventus) and Champions League (4-1 against Real Madrid and Inter, 6-1 against Manchester City, 3-1 against Barcelona) with 0 losses in Serie A and only 2 losses in Champions.

I did not do well in the other two trophies, lost the Italian SuperCup against Inter and Italian Cup quarter finals against Napoli.

I hope this tactic works for you too, if you like it please smash the like button and subscribe to my channel. You will find also a 4-4-2 version of the tactic but I mainly used the 1st one.

Analysis: https://sempremilan.com/the-genius-of-ariggo-sacchi