Valeriy Lobanovskyi INCREDIBLE Tactic

This tactic has been surprising, confusing for the opposition and attacking. To be honest, these are characteristics I did not expect to find when I started to use it.

Through its setup, it can attack on the counter when needed or to let the players setup in a positional play.

When defending, the setup is a rigid one, having the potential to cover the spaces in the middle and forcing the opposition to attack only in the wide areas. Which can be difficult if you have proper defenders.

Using this tactic, in my save with Olympique Lyon, we scored 95 goals in Ligue 1 and 66 goals in the UEFA Conference League. That’s 2.79 goals per game in Ligue 1 and 6.6 goals in the UEFA Conference League.

However, and here is where you really need to pay attention when employing this tactic – my team did not have the best defenders in any competition. Thus, we conceded 71 goals in Ligue 1 and 26 in the Conference League.

The tactic has the potential to help your team score lots of goals. But if you don’t have very good players in defence, you could concede a lot too.

Valeriy Lobanovskyi was а Soviet and Ukrainian football player and manager.

Lobanovskyi is most famous for managing FC Dynamo Kyiv and the USSR national football team. He established Dynamo as the most dominant club in Soviet football in the 1970s and 1980s, winning the Soviet Top League eight times and the Soviet Cup six times in 16 years.

In 1975 his Dynamo Kyiv team became the first side from the Soviet Union to win a major European trophy when they won against Hungarian side Ferencváros in the final of the Cup Winners' Cup.

During the tournament, Dynamo Kyiv won eight games out of nine, resulting in a winning percentage of 88.88% – a record that stood for 45 years for all the major European club football competitions.

Him and his team repeated their Cup Winners' Cup success in 1986, beating Atletico Madrid in the final. In both 1975 and 1986, two of Dynamo's players (Oleg Blokhin and Igor Belanov respectively) were also awarded the Ballon d'Or under his tutelage.

During Lobanovskyi's first two times managing Ukrainian team, they also reached the European Cup semi-finals in 1977 and 1987 and quarter-finals in 1976, 1982 and 1983. The equivalent of the UEFA Champions League.

Managing the Soviet Union national team, Lobanovskyi reached the finals of Euro 1988, losing to the Netherlands, and won the bronze medal at the 1976 Summer Olympic Games.

After returning to Dynamo Kyiv in 1997 for the third time, he led the team to another successful run in a European competition.

In the first full season of his third spell, Dynamo reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 1998, topping a group that included FC Barcelona, Newcastle United and PSV Eindhoven.

Famously winning both games against Barcelona, 3–0 in Kyiv and 4–0 at Camp Nou. FC Barcelona was managed by Louis van Gaal at the time.

The following season, Lobanovskyi and his team reached the semi-finals of the competition, where they were knocked out by Bayern Munich, with the star striker Andriy Shevchenko finishing third in the 1999 Ballon d'Or award poll.

Throughout his coaching career, Lobanovskyi won 33 official trophies, becoming the second most decorated manager of all time (behind Sir Alex Ferguson) and the most successful football manager of the 20th century.

He also holds several managerial records in Soviet football, including most Soviet Top League titles, most Soviet Cup wins (shared with Viktor Maslov) and most USSR Super Cup wins.

Valeriy Lobanovskyi is the only football manager to win a major European competition with an Eastern European club twice.

He is one of four managers to win the Cup Winners' Cup twice, and one of two (along with Nereo Rocco) to accomplish it with the same team.

He has also won the Ukrainian championship five times out of five – an accomplishment not matched by any other manager.

Valeriy Lobanovskyi placed emphasis on the collective or "the system". He said "A system does not guarantee success, but it gives a much better chance of success than making it up as you go along."

He was a fan of meticulously planning each game, tailoring the training sessions according to each opposition.

His playing style resembles the total football philosophy and is often regarded as this system’s proponent in Eastern Europe.

His players must learn to play each position. And tailoring the training sessions according to each opponent meant that the players learnt different roles, to counteract the opponent’s gameplay.

He kept the preferred playing area as large as possible while in possession, and as small as possible while the opponent had the ball.

Lobanovskyi's preferable formation was the 4–1–3–2. All his teams utilized the talents of two strikers, in 1975 Oleh Blokhin and Volodymyr Onyshchenko, in 1986 Blokhin or Oleh Protasov and Ihor Belanov, and in 1999 Andriy Shevchenko and Serhiy Rebrov.

Pressing was always a key element of Lobanovskyi's teams. The main goal of pressing was to create situations of numerical superiority for Dynamo players where the ball was, and deny opponents both space and time for the right decisions, thus forcing them to always play the game at Dynamo's pace.

I found that a very useful work and representation of Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s tactic in Football Manager is done by the user Enzo_Francescoli on the Sports interactive forum. The link is in the description of this video.

By the way – nice username 😉.

I went with a similar approach to the tactical setup, recreating the 4-1-3-2 formation through the roles used.

For the first time in a long time I used a goalkeeper on defend duty. I usually use a modern sweeper keeper version and adjust to the times of the tactic.

The back four is made of two full backs on support duty and two central defenders on defend. You can play around with the full backs and choose the roles that suit your team best. I used multiple setups with both full backs and wing backs and for me, this setup was the most balanced one.

Remember, having these players in the defence, we still conceded 71 goals in the league.

The full backs are asked to pass the ball shorter, cross more often and get further forward.

The two central midfielders are a central one and a box-to-box one. The central one is on attack duty and is told to roam from position and mark tighter. This is in a bid to emulate this player’s movement in this tactic.

I have seen this tactic being recreated using two central midfielder roles, one on support and one on attack. However, I chose a box-to-box midfielder role as I felt it balanced the setup more.

As we still need to defend, this player remained at the back and anticipated counterattacks and only went up in the attack when the team controlled the game moment.

As player instructions we have dribble less and tackle harder.

On the flanks we have a winger on support on the right side and an inverted one on support on the left one.

The winger is asked to cross from byline and roam from position. Usually, this player went up and down his flank in Valeriy Lobanovksiy’s tactic. And the roam from position instruction is used to make sure the player drifts inside if the striker comes to play the ball in the wide area.

The inverted winger is asked to mark tighter.

And the strikers are a complete forward on attack duty and an advanced forward. In the original tactical setup, they are asked to stay wider. Which I encourage you to do, to fully emulate the strikers’ movement in Lobanovskyi’s tactic.

However, if your strikers are not born goal scorers or world class players, I found it very difficult to have a goal threat in any of them when I asked them to stay wider.

Thus, in this version of the tactic the instruction is not ticked on. So you can do it on your own accord.

Also, using one trequartista role might also help with the players’ movement upfront.

As mentality I used positive and used attacking only when I felt we were dominating the game.

In possession, fairly wide attacking width and play out of defence. Play out of defence is used more to keep the ball, as in Football Manager it feels like losing the ball to easily when it is kicked long by the goalkeeper.

Standard or slightly shorter passing directness and slightly higher tempo.

Work the ball into the box and play for set-pieces. Work the ball into the box is used to focus the players to attack the goal. If you think is unnecessary, you can tick it off.

In transition counter-press, counter and distribute the ball to the defence through short kicks. Again, to maintain possession of the ball.

Out of possession a high press and a standard defensive line. Trigger press more often, trap outside and invite crosses.

Invite crosses was used to keep the defenders around our box when defending. With it ticked off, the wide players tend to break the shape of the formation and to close down the wide attacking players.

 Using this tactic, we finished 4th in Ligue 1 and as runners-up in the UEFA Conference League.

This tactic was a very fun one to research and to use. Thank you to the person who suggested this tactic to me.

There are countless recreations of it around and they all play differently. Just make sure you find and use the right one.

Valeriy Lobanovskyi was a visionary at the time and a man who shaped, at least Eastern Europe football, forever.

The awards and decorations he received are a small token of his influence on football as a whole. I am sorry I did not get to witness his teams playing football, but his legacy will forever inspire football managers around the world.