How tactics got even less modern (and what to do about it)

I was really excited when i booted it up to get that intro about the tactics, i thought finally they've modernised the game so we can actually play 2020s football. They make it sound like they had accommodated two different phases of play, in possession and out of possession, sure there are more than that irl but it'd be a really good start. But no. That's not really what's happening. Nominally there are two phases, but you can't have a different shape for different phases, and having a different formation in different phases is the most distinctive characteristic of modern football! It's very strange to separate these phases and then not give you the most relevant parameter. Strange that is unless you've played football manager in recent years, which has the exact same issue, so no prizes for guessing how they came up with this system. For decades FM has been seen as ahead of the curve on tactical simulation, but EA waited until it is at its most behind the times it's ever been to copy it.

And without this basic ability you end up with really bad compromises.

Take Arsenal who yes move between a large number of shapes but if we were going to simplify things they would be 442 out of possession and a 3-box-3 in possession. Being stuck in either for both phases would wreck the other phase, so the games default tactic for them is just a 433, all the variety that is in there to keep opponents guessing and optimise each phase, and changes made week to week to counter specific opponents - there isn't space for any of that in this system.

It gets worse, so much worse. They have taken away the ability to move players around or otherwise build custom formations. So let's say you want to do the workarounds that I could do on FC24, where you use the 5 different tactics to change shape throughout the game (sure you have to do it every time there is a change over in possession and it doesn't respond quickly enough but at least you can change formation according to game state)... well now, since you can't make your own shapes, the best you can do is cycle between their extremely limited set of default shapes (we'll get onto this!), anything remotely innovative or even formations that have been in use for years you just can't get.

So take some modern formations:

The 3-box-3 aka 325: this is literally the most common formation in all of top level football and it is not in the game. This is a bizarre oversight that would've been caught if they'd given a football analyst a cursory glance at their mechanic design. At least it has some distant similarity to the 3421, so one work around would be to choose that and try to fix it with the player roles. You're probably not going to do that though because remember the out of possession phase will also be stuck in this formation, and absolutely no one is defending with a 3-box-3.

But now take the 3133 aka 3-diamond-3 aka 316: the shape used in possession by Michel at Girona and as of this season, Guardiola (who ironically shows up in the intro video doing a tactical talk to his team), there is no shape here with even a passing resemblance to the 3133, 3-diamond-3, or 316. And what's worse? Even on older games, where you could make your own formations however you like, they had an available premade formation of 3313, close enough, which has been around for decades but would have been relevant at the time to Bielsa's Bilbao or Guardiola's Bayern.

If you go on the official websites announcement/guide to this FCIQ thing, they list all of the formations they've removed, and oh boy is it an embarrassing read for a system they pretend is putting tactics first. Meanwhile if you want to play a plain old 4231, you can choose 4213, 433 attack, 4231 wide or 4231 narrow, all variations on the exact same shape that could be easily done with a single shape with the differences absorbed into the new player roles system, instead of having 4 versions of one formation while removing any trace of other important ones.

You might think these things can be done with player roles, like for the 3-box-3 you set a 433 and then tell a fullback to invert or a centre half to step up, but the player roles are not diverse, flexible, or reliable enough to allow for these work-arounds. If you want a man city 3-box-3, with Stones to step up into midfield or Lewis to invert, they will sometimes move towards those positions but they won't reliably be there in the in-possession phase, nor reliably get back into defensive shape.

For the future, these games need to start treating tactics as a sandbox. Every time, and now more than ever, it's a case of tinkering with a really narrow space of possibilities and barely feeling the difference in the game, you have to set everything to the most extreme setting to get it to respond at all. Instead, the outer bounds should be more extreme, even if they feel less realistic at those extremes, if a tactic seems too out there to accomodate in the game let the player try and fail on the pitch, let me have wild cases like 0 midfielders or the goalkeeper stepping up into an outfield position, because those are things that might sound wild but actually happen in modern football and if you make a sandbox we can keep up with tactics ourselves rather than waiting for you to give us permission to do something a decade after it happens irl.

I hope in future you fix it properly, but let's talk about what would be a possible patch for this season to make this system functional to a bare minimum. I don't expect the ability to move players around/customise formations can be patched in, that might be too fundamental a change even though it was only just removed. But there are two smaller things that can be done:

#1 and the most important ... we need to be able to change the formation separately for in possession and out of possession. I couldn't believe when I changed my in possession formation and it automatically changed my out of possession formation to the same thing but just a bit deeper, it's so close to being smart and then just shoots itself in the foot.

#2... Add in more formations. This can't be difficult, actually speak to some football analysts, and let them tell you what you're missing. But here's a start, 3-box-3, 3-diamond-3, 334 and 235, are common in possession, but also think about extreme shapes out of possession, like the other day Arsenal were parking the bus playing 6 at the back against Man City. If this was a wide range then it wouldn't matter so much that you'd removed the ability to make your own formations, but there are even less than previous years when they were just templates to build on yourself.

For now, it seems I can't get a refund through the playstation store, but I would like one from EA because this is not the game you advertised, and I guess for the first time ever, I will just be playing last year's game instead, its system was bad but this is much worse. The take away is there is more control over the minute of individual players but the big picture is far more restrictive than before.