Sporting CP – Unlocking the Libero

In todays post I want to talk about the Libero role and why I’ve chose to use it and the player in the role. Below is my tactic. Its a 343 and because of the new Positional play feature on FM24 its very attacking. Being one of the top 3 sides in the league I wanted to dominate high up the pitch, getting bodies forward and create overloads. But that leaves us at risk to the counter.

When we attack we have 7 bodies forward. The 3 attackers and the 3 midfielders all get forward to this leaves a big gap between the attack and defence and also leaves space for our opponent to exploit for a counter. Whilst every tactic has weaknesses I wanted to see if it was one I could “fix”

I looked at my three main centre backs and someone stood out

Coates lacks mobility, His acceleration and pace are low. So ideally I’d not want him being one of the two deepest defenders incase we do get countered he’d probably be beaten easily in a race by their attackers. But it was all the attributes highlighted in the green box that made me realise he would be perfect. He’s composed, Anticipates well, He makes good decisions with a range of passing and high technique.

This mixture of attributes helped me decide he would be our single pivot.

From this role I mainly wanted two things

Passing option

I want Coates to be a passing relief option. So when my attackers have nowhere to turn they can pass it back to him and then he can recycle the play elsewhere and we start again.

As you can see here Hjulmund is under pressure and can play a relief ball back to Coates who can see the field ahead of him to then restart the attack and this allows other players to move into space.

As you can see above Goncalves has the ball and no real options so he passes to Coates who then turns and switches the play with a short forward pass getting us on the attack.

Single pivot

The second role I want him to perform is to be the single pivot. When we lose the ball he is covering the gap that would be behind our midfield so that the opposition doesn’t have space. As you can see below (yellow circles) the Wingbacks are really high and we have 5 other attacking players crowding the box. If he wasn’t there and we lost the ball they could quickly counter. He’s now marking their attacker and our two centre backs have no one to mark.

Another situation below where we are attacking and Coates has picked up their attacking midfielder leaving one attacker for our two centre backs to mark. Depending on which way he runs if they counter one of the two will pick him up.

Again you can see he’s forming a “wall” across the middle so if they break with a counter he has that space covered.

You might be thinking “Why not just play a Defensive midfielder Dan?”
And I understand that but when they do attack I want him to drop into the back 3 in the defensive phase which he does but with the two covering defenders and his lack of pace there’s not an urgency for him too. Luckily I’ve found it to be effective and it has worked well. We’re dominating teams and it’s creating a really controlled tactic where we dominate in their half recycling possession and controlling games. With all tactics there will be weaknesses and it is just about understanding them and doing what you can to nullify them.

If anyone wants to download the tactic here is the LINK