Bruno Lage Benfica Tactic

Bruno Lage is a Portuguese manager, currently managing Benfica, this being his second spell at the club.

As a player, he played for only two clubs, but as a coach and manager, his experience is vaster.

Lage started his coaching career in the youth ranks of hometown club Vitória de Setúbal in 1997. He was appointed as a physical/fitness coach by former Vitória and Famalicão manager José Rocha.

In 2004, Lage joined Benfica as a youth coach and he coached every youth team from 2004 to 2012.

Interestingly, João Cancelo has praised the role of Lage in his development and credited him as a father figure.

Bruno Lage later worked as an assistant manager to Carlos Carvalhal at Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea City from 2015 to 2018.

He returned to Benfica as manager of their reserve team in July 2018 to replace Hélder Cristóvão.

He managed his first Portuguese First Division game in a 4–2 home win over Rio Ave and was appointed permanent head coach eight days later.

One of Lage's first decisions was to regularly start the teenage playmaker João Félix, who had scored twice in the triumph over Rio Ave.

At the beginning, he deployed a new 4–4–1–1 formation in order to play to the strengths of Felix as a shadow striker behind Haris Seferovic, giving him freedom to roam while encouraging his full-backs to attack and using technically-gifted midfielders in order to both defend and create.

In 2019, Bruno Lage started the second season as Benfica manager. However, at the end of the season, he failed to manage the loss of Joao Felix to another team, and the players being largely disengaged, this led to his dismissal and replacement with his assistant coach Nélson Veríssimo.

He moved on to Wolverhampton in the 2021-2022 season and his reign was described as "attacking football, fluid formations and developing youth", in addition to challenging for European football.

During pre-season, Lage had initially attempted to move Wolves away from the 3–4–3 system favoured by his predessor, and deployed a 4–4–2 or 4–2–3–1; however, he reverted to the five-man defence once the season started, due to issues with the defence.

Wolverhampton finished the season in tenth place in the Premier League, which led to a squad overhaul, but which failed at the beginning of the following season.

On 2 October, after a defeat to West Ham United, Lage and his coaching staff were sacked, with the club 18th in the league. This prompted The Athletic to dub the team as a failure in terms of transitioning to a new playing system.

In July 2023, the Portuguese manager moved to Botafogo, in Brazil. But in September 2024, he returned to Benfica, overseeing a team transformation after Roger Schmidt’s departure. Bruno Lage and Benfica continue their quest to overthrow Sporting at the top of the league table.

As a tactic, Bruno Lage implemented his 4-2-3-1 formation at the beginning, but in recent games, a change to a 4-3-3 formation was noted, with 3-4-2-1 occurrences also.

We will focus on the 4-2-3-1 formation, which in game can become a 4-3-3. We have a sweeper keeper in goal, on defend duty.

The back four is made of two wing backs, one on support and one on attack duty and two central defenders on defend duty.

The right sided wing back is asked to tackle harder, two ask the player to be a bit more aggressive when is challenging for the ball.

This setup was preferred for the wing backs, as the team seems to be playing with an overlap intent on the right side. Provided by the right winger and wing back role pairing. But if the setup is too aggressive for your team, you can change this role’s duty to a support one.

The two central midfielders are an anchor and a deep lying playmaker on support duty. Any role combination can be used here, if it serves your team’s purposes. In my save, I used this setup as it balanced the team and helped with the possession game.

The deep lying playmaker is asked to tackle harder and mark tighter. This should push him to try to disrupt the opposition’s build-up play as much as possible.

And the front four are an advanced playmaker on the right side, a shadow striker, an inverted winger on attack on the left side and an advanced forward as the striker.

The advanced playmaker role is a role that I used rarely on the flank in the game, but it seemed to me like the best option to emulate the real-life game play.

This player is to sit narrower, to be closer to his teammates to receive the pass, but to also make space on the flank for the wing back to overlap.

The shadow striker is used to provide more attacking options for the team. The role was preferred, as it provided an interchange scenario with the advance playmaker on the right side.

As other player instructions, the striker is asked to dribble more. He should do this, as he has the cover of the shadow striker if needed.

As mentality, I suggest starting from positive and going to either attacking or balanced, depending on the opposition you face.

In my save, I frequently used the attacking mentality, but that is due to the opposition we played against.

In possession, fairly wide attacking width and pass into space. If the opposition sits deep, turn off pass into space, as there wouldn’t be any space to pass into.

Overlap on the right side and play out of defence. Shorter passing directness and a slightly higher tempo. Work the ball into the box, to overwhelm the opposition as much as possible and play for set pieces if it helps your team.

In transition, counter-press, counter and distribute the ball to the central defenders by rolling it out.

And out of possession, a high press and a standard defensive line. Trigger press more often and step up more.

I preferred this setup as I don’t want my team to be overrun by the opposition. But if you are the dominant team, you might also change to a higher defensive line and tick off the step up more option.

In my building a nation save in Malta, with FC Valletta, we absolutely dominated domestically. We even finished the league season unbeaten.

But the true test was in European competitions and this time around, we reached as far as the league phase of the UEFA Champions League.

For a team such as ours, this was a feat, especially since we also managed to win against Ajax Amsterdam.

But look at the other teams we had to play against. Brutal.

Bruno Lage might have had his struggles so far, mainly when he managed outside of the Portuguese league.

However, I think that we are still to witness his best results moving forward.