The BEST Tactic At The EUROS

In your opinion, which is the best tactic ever used at a Euros competition?

Is it Czechoslovakia in 1976? Michel Platini’s France? Spain 2008 – 2012?

The European Championship or the Euros as it is known, started as an annual competition between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, back in 1883 and it was called the British Home Championship.

Similarly, from 1927 until 1960, the Central European International Cup was held six times. It was contested by the national teams of Austria, Hungary, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.

The idea of a pan-European tournament was introduced following the proposal of Henri Delaunay, the French Football Federation's secretary-general.

The tournament was named after him, in his honour, upon the tournament’s commencement, 3 years after he passed away, in 1958.

In September 2008, the tournament was expanded to 24 teams following a voting session for the Irish and the Scottish FA’s proposal.

The tournament was won by the Soviet Union, Spain 3 times, Italy twice, Germany 3 times, Czechoslovakia, France twice, Netherlands, Denmark, Greece and Portugal.

Out of the national teams mentioned previously, one had its tactic recreated for this video.

And that national team is one that blended in at the competition. No one even thought they would make it out of the group stage. And to be fair, they almost didn’t.

A nation which had its football team in chaos a few years prior to the tournament.

But a national team that once it got united, it did not stop amazing people until the trophy was won.

In 2004, Luis Figo’s Portugal were the hosts and one of the favourites for winning the tournament. The started the competition against Greece and were stunned – 2-1 loss.

Everyone thought it was a fluke and Portugal showed that it was. Qualifying first in their group stage and reaching the final. Their goalkeeper, Ricardo, goalkeeping without gloves in the penalty shoot-out against England.

In the final, Portugal met Greece. A full circle. The nation was buzzing, Luis Figo’s and up and rising star Cristiano Ronaldo’s national team had the chance to win the tournament on home soil.

But a header by Angelos Charisteas, in the 57th minute, silenced everyone. For more than a half an hour the Portuguese tried to break the Greek defence, but it was to no avail.

Cristiano Ronaldo was left in tears, while the Greek were celebrating what seemed like an out of nowhere feat at the time. Maybe still does to this day.

The Greek national team, led by Otto Rehhagel, a man no stranger to surprises as he won the league title with Kaiserslautern a few years back, at the time, stunned not only Portugal, but the whole footballing world.

They played a simple looking tactic throughout the competition, in 2004, but nothing was simple about their approach.

A 4-3-3 was employed, but what makes this tactic hard to be recreated, especially in Football Manager 2024, is the smart man marking the Greek team applied and tailored for each game.

They were adapting very well to their opposition, shutting down any player, irrespective of their star status.

Their tactical setup was a rigid one, but flexible in molding according to the opposition. The team did not have any special ability to pass the ball out of the back, so they masterfully employed the arts of long ball and counterattacking.

The goalkeeper position is just that, a goalkeeper on defend. We don’t need him to do anything else than keep the balls out of the net.

The back line is made of two full backs on support duty, one central defender on cover and one on defend duty.

Besides the central defender on cover, the other defenders are told to mark tighter.

In front of them a defensive midfielder on defend duty and a ball winning midfielder on support.

These two roles were chosen as we need a holding midfielder and one that would be the link between the defence and the attack.

In front of them, a roaming playmaker on support duty. This player is the creative one out of the midfield ones. A central midfielder could also work, but we need a role that would require the player to move around more, not just up and down.

As the trio defends in a narrow shape, the defensive midfielder also marking tighter his man, when the ball is recovered, the roaming playmaker is expected to be the one spraying a through ball or dribbling up the field.

He also has close down more as player instruction, as he is the next shield when the opposition breaks the front men’s pressing game.

Two wingers employed, one classic on the right side and one inverted on the left side. Out of the two, the left one seemed to cut inside quite often, picking up his striker’s flick on.

The left sided winger also has cross more often and roam from position as player instructions.

And the striker is a pressing forward in this setup. It has to be, since someone must push the defensive line as closer to their box as possible. This player also needs to be physical, to win the headers often and flick the ball on for the midfielders or the wingers.

This setup is not a flashy one. Do not expect this tactic to bring you 100+ goals a season or to have a possession rate of 75%+.

This setup was created specifically to hold on for dear life. And it worked as intended when needed to.

But make no mistake – what Greece accomplished using this setup was due to the induvial players and their motivations more than the tactic itself.

As mentality I chose and used cautious. As this one is best employed when your team is expected to be the weaker one in the match.

In possession fairly wide or standard as it’s represented with a cautious mentality, attacking width. Standard passing directness and a slightly higher tempo. And play for set pieces.

In transition, regroup, counter and nothing else selected. We let the goalkeeper decide what to do when he is in possession of the ball. Maybe, just aim to position and striker. But that is optional in my opinion.

Out of possession mid block and a standard defensive line. Greece were not defending passively in their box, they were in the face of the opponents most of the times. Thus, this setup.

Trigger press is turn up to the middle and trap outside. As a shape, they did seem to defend narrowly and tended to be compact.

This tactical setup was not the only used by the national team at the 2004 tournament. The switched to a 4-4-2 when the opposition had 2 strikers. This was better for man marking more players in that setup.

But mainly, the 4-3-3 was used.

This tactical setup is not one that fits all teams, though. If you are managing a team that is dominating their league, don’t expect this tactic to work. For me it didn’t.

In my building a nation save in Romania, we became dominant domestically. We have won the league title 14 times in a row and the domestic treble multiple times.

Trust me when I tell you that this tactic almost destroyed us. We had the worst start in the league in 14 years and were trailing teams that we shouldn’t have had.

To be honest, I don’t put this n the tactic, I put it on the players more. As they are too good to be used in a setup that is supposed to defend well and pump the ball in the attack almost every time.

However, we had quite a few narrow results, which shows that we closed off our opposition.

As a recent movie says – You need to have the right time, the right place and the right circumstances.

And Greece had all three of them in 2004.