The Strategy Fundamentals
The fundamental behind the Cuervo is mainly to hold the ball, and concentrate plays along the wings, forcing the opponents to spread. If the opponents are well organized and managed to back up the
Wingbacks, most of the game should be concentrated with the three men in the middle. The AMC will provide a great amount of killing passes, to the
Advanced Forward or Poacher (depends on your opponent). At the time I made the Cuervo, there were no default roles for
Engache, Complete Wingbacks or Registas. I really want to see how this works out now, and one of the main reasons for me to be starting this post. Behind the AMC, we need quite a lot of versatility. A
Deep Playmaker and a
Box-to-Box Midfielder are what we should expect. Depending on the game phase, the BBM will vary to a
Ball Winning Midfielder or
Central Midfield with defensive duty. Depending on the game phase, I drop the AMC to an
Advanced Playmaker, playing in between the two Central Midfielders. The third shape, we bring the BBM to an
Anchor Man, and drop the AMC to central midfield as an
Advanced Playmaker.
The attacking duo varies on roles depending on what you have available. I tend to have an attacking and a supportive duty. However, the best duo I had where both attacking duties, with a
Trequartista with
Advanced Forward (respectively, Messi and Aguaro). A
Poacher and Deep Lying Forward (respectively, Vagner Love and Neymar) was also deadly. I had a harder time to figure out Germany, but the best I could get with them was a duo of a
Poacher and a Target Man (respectively, Klose and Thomas Muller, yes he did well as a supporting target man.) With the possibility of now playing a
False 9 with a
Shadow Striker coming from behind, I’m pretty exited on testing the Cuervo!
Defensively the advances of the wingbacks will be covered by the two sidewise
Ball Playing Central defenders, while the one in the middle is a more physical defender, acting as a
Limited Defender. At some point, I remember that I had this tweaked and it worked quite well, especially with fast defenders. The sidewise defenders were set to stoppers, and the central defender was a covering defender. This worked well with the Italian Squad, where I had an amazing defense, and hardly any player would go through the defensive line. With Brazil, Spain and Argentina, there were quite a few mistakes, and I decided to maintain a more conservative line, that would only give combat to the man immediately in front of them.
So, we now understand that we will be working with three different shapes, all with 3 central defenders, 2 wingbacks and an attacking duo. The shifting of positions will happen in central midfield. There will be a few tweaks to the strategy, using the
Sideline Instructions. I have a “little Arsenal” of them to shift the game play and frequently use them during the 90 minutes.
As this strategy is oriented to World Class teams, it will mostly be offensive minded, thus we start every match looking for a win. It is not a massive goal scoring strategy, but it can be fabulous. Especially if you like to see the ball moving around, penetrating passes, wingback support and especially varied type of goals scored.
This last option is the most important for me. I usually get bored when the team doesn’t surprise me with various styles of goals.
So, any feelings on how this Strategy might roll-out?
Excited for posting - Mr.W.Gump
