Benfica Roger Schmidt FM23 Tactical recreation

This Benfica Roger Schmidt FM23 Tactical recreation post has been written by @Aeuc46

The RogerBall  – An Incredible Season

After 2 consecutive seasons finishing third in the league, the newly appointed Chairman of SL Benfica decided to hire the PSV’s manager Roger Schmidt.  The supporters doubted at first, but after seeing the spirit that Mister Roger brought back to the team, and the spectacular “RogerBall”, all doubts started to disappear. 

 I, as a fan of Benfica and an FM lover, felt challenged to try to recreate Roger Schmidt’s tactics in FM. So I did, and it went incredibly well. 

As you can see, we managed to win the league unbeaten. Best attack and defence of competition (98 goals for, only 15 against), 29 wins and 5 draws, and record of points in the league (previous was 92pts for Porto in 2021/2022) 

Here is the tactic: 

The pivotal idea of Roger Schmidt’s playing style is to put as many bodies in interior areas as possible, allowing space for the wing-backs to try to cross the ball. With this in mind, you will need wingers who can cross, who are creative and with good stamina, because they will be running up and down the pitch during the matches. Your striker is going to be a pressing forward. A workhorse. Need good stamina and work rate to allow your team to gegenpress during the different stages of the game. Most of his goals will be “tap-ins” from good crosses coming from your wing-backs!

Goalkeeper needs good technique. It is extremely important because he will help your team find a way to play out from defence, beating the pressure from the opposition.  Although Benfica doesn’t have that Sweeper Keeper (Odysseas has no technique and can not play with foot), the way Roger Schmidt found to solve this issue is to use a 2+1 structure to play out from defence: the first pass goes to one of the centre backs, and then the left-sided Defensive Midfield drops to collect the ball and tries to progress the pitch or by passing it long for the wing-back already up the pitch; or simply by running with the ball – depending on the pressure from opponents 

My Season in Numbers: 

I have shown you how you will play; now, I want to let you see a little bit of how good this tactic was for me, showing you the numbers we achieved.
We managed to put 6 players in the top10 for open play key passes per 90 min, and 4 for open play key passes:

Neres was really good at the right winger position, as I was able to bring up the best from him with the attacking duty. We also have put 3 players in the top10 for chances created and open play expected assists per 90min: 

And 3 players too in the top 10 for non-penalty xG/90 min:  

Tiago Tomás played fewer minutes than Gonçalo Ramos who was my first option for the striker role. 

I think this is enough to show you how good was the football we played.
I hope you enjoy trying the tactic the link is below

Download link