Greatest Of All Legends

Chapter 335: Supa Eagles Tactical Dilemmas

After talking about their future prospects, the conversation shifted to more fun things and the night passed quickly and soon the players headed away from the table leaving nothing but empty plates behind.

From there they headed to their rooms and settled in for the night, wanting to have a good rest to prepare themselves for the coming day.

The next day at the training ground, the manager had the players have another internal scrimmage just like the previous day, but this time the two teams were using the 4-2-3-1 formation against each other.

The movements of the players on the field were a lot smoother compared to the previous day and it was very clear to see in the attacking, possession, and defensive efforts of the players as they went against each other.

After an hour of the simulated match training session, the manager had them stop the training, called for a tactical meeting, and started giving the players a detailed tactical setup of the tactics they would be using in the coming game.

It went without saying that they would be arranged across the field in the 4-2-3-1 formation since that was what they were training in, but the manager had made quite a few tweaks to the formation so it wasn’t the same as a conventional 4-2-3-1 formation.

The reason for the manager going out of his way to make such a change to the formation he had almost always used with the Supa Eagles was of course, Jason.

From Jason’s performance during training, it was clear that Jason would inevitably become a very important player on the team, but unfortunately, the position that the head manager wanted him to play was not the same one he played at his club.

The reason for Gernot Rohri not wanting him to play as a winger was because there was already an abundance of wingers on the team, not to mention that there were even some talented wingers that were not called up this time so putting Jason on the wings would make the competition for winger positions become problematic, hence why he was playing Jason in the Center Attacking Midfielder position which Jason could play reasonably well in.

Unfortunately, this brought out yet another problem.

Despite Jason being able to play well in the CAM position, the way he played in that position was far from conventional as he preferred to run around a lot more and also preferred attacking from the flanks than down the middle.

The problem was that despite it being far from conventional it worked exceptionally well and there weren’t any problems that had arisen from this style of play so far as he still managed to do his duties in the CAM position while adding his own personal flair…

Unfortunately, no one else on the team could play like that which meant that if Jason wasn’t on the field, they couldn’t play like that and would need to change tactics or risk a major problem with their performance.

Gernot Rohri’s solution to that was that whenever Jason was on the field, their 4-2-3-1 formation would become more of a 4-2-2-1-1 formation with Jason taking the role of a supporting striker instead of just a CAM, but his role as a supporting striker would be as a false 9, or a deep-lying forward who had been given a free role and could join any part of the attacking section of the team.

He could stay up front with the striker in attack, work the ball down the wings, or come into the midfield to help the midfielders hold off their opponents either with quick passes or by applying pressure on the players.

The other players on the team would then adjust themselves to fill in the space he left in the midfield whenever he wasn’t there.

And if Jason wasn’t on the field, then they’d stick with the normal 4-2-3-1 formation, or shift to a 4-3-3 formation depending on the players in the line-up.

After an extensive tactical meeting with the manager giving out very specific instructions, the manager had the players get back on the field and have another internal scrimmage match to test-run the edited formation and game plan.

The players arranged themselves on the field with Jason’s team using the modded 4-2-2-1-1 formation while the other team used a normal 4-2-3-1 formation and soon the match kicked off.

The training session yielded amazing results in the attacking department and despite it being their first time trying it out, it was clear to see that allowing the players to let their youthful passion play out without trying to constrain them to the norms of the football world allowed them to burst forth with creativity and let them find all sorts of way to break through their opponents.

However, it came at a cost… a horrible defense.

It wasn’t so bad as to say it was porous, but the Supa Eagles team was lacking in a major defensive talent who they could entrust their backs to and if they slipped up and allowed their opponents through, it was likely to result in them conceding a goal.

It didn’t help that their goalkeeper wasn’t top-level either.

However, to the head manager, these were all problems that could be solved over time, the formation still needed a bit of tweaking, and over time, the players would get more comfortable with their roles on the team which should make things become better.

For now, they would rely on outscoring their opponents to win games… anyway, football was a game that was won by scoring more goals than the opponents, not by defending more goals.

There was still work to do, but they were on the right path.

After another hour of testing the formation, the manager had the players stop and rest for a while before they went on to spend the rest of the day doing defensive drills to make up for the poor defense of the formation.

Slowly the day went by and the preparations for the upcoming match continued till the sun started dipping behind the horizon.

The players headed off the field exhausted, but excited for the coming day.

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Hey amigos, Author here… again.

I’m sure you might have noticed specific words that seem like mistakes in the chapter this time.

Well, they’re not mistakes and I’ve been advised to change up on the realistic names to avoid copyright issues in the future and I’ve taken that advice.

Don’t worry though, I’ll only change things up as little as possible so you guys can easily understand who or what I mean.