The standard system for National Teams

The following article has been written for the Slovenian community and published as an HT press in Slovenia (16168). It is now translated (by Antoine_de_le_Tellec (3308938) and artod (11112383)) and republished in the hope that it could be interesting for global readers.

The basic premise for this piece is that National Teams use multiskilled players who can optimise total team ratings (without being bound by training constraints as we experience at club level). I am going to explain how such players are combined to fully exploit their contribution, to help understand how multiskilled players support each other. I will also explain variations experienced when National teams switch coach between attack and defence minded, to illustrate tactical variations. The theory suggested is supported by the evidence provided from the National Team matches: the teams playing in the later stages of the World Cup usually follow the main principles described here.

I refer to a Standard System and its variations (which is intentionally related to the Standard Model in physics). This is also known as ercanto, Jestar and many other names. It’s a well known module,discussed at length by the worldwide tactical experts. This article is intended to benefit less experienced managers, to show how, without having amazing tactical genius, and just good planning, common sense and the basic principles described here, a medium-low level National Team like Slovenia (with less than 4000 active users) has been able to win the silver medal in the World Cup.

Disclaimer: the article talks about National Teams, but the vast majority of its concepts is true also for U20 Teams.

How to play a game? How to tactically challenge the best players in the world? It’s easier than you think – most of the time, small details make the difference.

For several years Hattrick has embraced multiskilling as a philosophy. Evolution of the game mechanics (training speeds, skill drops, etc) implemented by the devs has incorporated a core target for reducing the relative importance of players’ primary skills, and conversely increasing the benefit and impact of their secondary skills. As a consequence of National Teams utilising the 'best players', it doesn't come as a huge surprise to discover that NT teams are full of multiskilled players, in other words players trained in 2 main skills, sometimes even 3 or 4 (some wingers are trained in Winger, Playmaking, Passing and Defending).

What happens when playing with more multiskilled players?

Every players set of skills contribute to the respective team ratings, as influenced by their selected position and individual order, simultaneously, with the multi-skilled team as a whole off-setting any deficit due to individual players being trained to a lower level of primary skills (i.e. any loss caused by a lower winger skill from a player on the wing is compensated by the wing skill of his supporting wing back, the passing skill of his nearest inner midfielder and the range of skills of all the forwards).

As a consequence, this means that, in many situations, highly optimized teams like the National Teams will prefer to utilise players who can provide a higher total contribution, rather than the ones with just the highest primary skill. For example, if we play with a playmaker that has not been trained in Winger as a winger towards middle, our side attack will be significantly lower. If we use a player with with magical (18) Playmaking instead of a winger with titanic (15) Playmaking, we will gain one or two % points of ball possession, but we’ll now expect to lose almost every chance created to score on that side. In the vast majority of the cases, choosing more primary like this just simply isn’t worth it (as our chances for winning the game wouldn’t be improved, nor the potential goal difference gains from any games we'd expect to win). If we take into consideration that many national teams have players with dual high skills in both Playmaking and Winger, it becomes clear that in most cases it’s worth playing with multiskilled players in the winger spot (although there are always exceptions to the rule, but I'm not going to discuss these here).

What about midfield?

In Hattrick, midfield is king, and if we look at the teams that consistently reach the later stages of the World Cup, we can see that all the top teams incorporate this philosophy. This doesn't mean that you can’t win playing Counter Attack (as Slovenia demonstrated against Italy in the World Cup semifinal), but this tactic is arguably less effective than for club teams, partly because it is possible to change the coach just before the game (making opponents less predictable) and it’s very difficult to achieve good enough defence and good enough attack ratings at the same time.

The game engine is based on ratios and the higher the skills are, the more the ratio will tend to 50%, so it is seriously tricky to create high enough defensive ratings without using a defensive coach, but this necessitates lowering our CA scoring chances due to our attack ratings being too low. As a result we’re always going to play with 3 inner midfielders and 2 wingers, unless we are planning to use a CA tactic with no possession (5-2-3 with two wingers, 5-3-2 with one or two wingers).

How does a multiskilled team help defence?

Since we’re almost always playing with wingers, we will rarely want to sacrifice side attack. Wing-backs have the highest contribution if they play normal, so using 2 normal wing-backs would be our logical choice. This could be a worry for leaving a gaping hole in central defence, but if we have the right players (midfielders trained in defending, for example), it shouldn't be a worry, and in most cases we don’t have to worry too much about opposition central attacks even when using just one central defender.

And attack?

Multiskilled attack is reliant upon TDFs, (technical defensive forwards - non-technical DFs are possible as well, but I’ll focus on TDFs only here). These are players that have been trained in playmaking, passing and scoring. Most national teams have TDFs with a sum of passing and playmaking around 30 (mythical playmaking and world class passing, world class playmaking and mythical passing, and all combinations in between) or a little more, up to 32-33. Often, scoring is trained up to world class as a maximum. TDF's are important because we don’t usually play with counterattack (as mentioned above), and every player that can contribute to the midfield rating is a must. Playing forwards with a 'normal' orientation unfortunately provides no midfield contribution. On top of this, a correctly trained TDF's high passing skill provides a substantial contribution to our side attacks, which means that we’re killing two birds with one stone. Even if we do decide to use a normal forward, most of these guys have been trained in wing as well (because their total contribution is higher compared to half a skill more in scoring), so the usual strategy for our multi-skilled team is to attack on wings (but not necessarily utilising the "Attack On Wings" tactic).

What's the optimum formation?

Our standard 3-5-2 formation involves 3 'normal' midfielders (it's the order with the highest midfield contribution), 2 highly (playmaking) skilled wingers (played normal or offensive), 2 TDFs , two normal wing-backs and a normal central defender. This line-up produces dominant midfield ratings, useful side attacks and a balanced defence. By changing coach this line-up can be very defensive (mythical-magical defence with a defensive coach) or extremely offensive (creating mythical-ET side attacks with an offensive coach). We have some flexibility (we can field a winger with higher playmaking and lower winger/passing or the vice versa, or our TDF could have more playmaking or more passing, whilst our wing-back may have more wing or more defending...). The choice of coach 'attack/defence preference' is generally the main tactical move in the national team, because no other single move has such a significant effect on the ratings. The standard line-up is the basic starting point for preparing any game (but with some exceptions, whenever the relative strength of our opposition varies significantly, so we use other formations especially when we are either big outsiders or big favourites).

Any system provides variations and the standard system of national teams is no exception. The standard 3-5-2 is quite balanced , but if we want to play more defensively or offensively, we have a few options.

More defensive line-ups

Defensive variations within the system require a defensive or neutral coach. The first option is 3-5-2 with two wingers toward middle (real wingers, not midfielders) - with two medium-low side attacks we can still score and we've maximized midfield. Another option is a 4-5-1. This almost always requires both central defenders played towards the wing (because the opponent so rarely plays with a significant central attack). It is possible to CA, using 2 offensive wingers (or positioned 'normal' on the odd occasion). In attack this formation requires a single TDF or a single FTW (a normal striker with high wing skill, played 'towards wing'). Sometimes we also like to play one midfielder towards wing (IMTW), any such midfielder should have some useful winger skill and/or some passing.

More attacking line-ups:

This is used when we must attack at all costs, or if we are in a situation where we can afford to reduce midfield or defence in order to boost attack ratings. It might be because we are able to play Normal against an opposition PIC, or because we have higher TS , or simply because our expected standard match ratings are so much stronger than the opponent (if we have a very large advantage over the opponent, as mentioned, the standard 3-5-2 is less likely to be utilised, and the optimal line-up may be out of the standard system altogether).

Such a scenario usually requires an attack minded coach, but neutral can sometimes do the trick.

We'll opt for player orientation so that wingers are 'offensive' (or normal, if we can boost side attacks using a TDF), wing-backs normal, and in a 2-5-3 this means we usually play without a central defender (because the wing-backs useful boost to side attack ratings is not easy to replace if we don't).
If we expect the opponent not to go defensive (say as light as a 3-5-2 with a defensive coach), an interesting possible attack solution is to go 3-5-2 with one normal forward and a TDF. A normal attacker, trained in winger as well, will bolster side attacks more than a second TDF and, unlike a FTW, increases both side attacks. It helps that our central attack also benefits to a level that allows some 'real' probability of goal in the middle (up to 15 %, for example). We don't really want to rely on all scoring chances allocated to side attacks. In a 3-5-2 we can afford offensive midfielders as well to help central attack, as our central defence has cover with a central defender.

Even more offensive is the 2-5-3 and its permutations. Let's start with midfielders: it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that any 2-5-3 will use offensive midfielders, but this isn't always the case. As we’ve left a gaping hole in central defence, if we use 'normal' midfielders who have been trained in defence, we can close the hole with their defending contribution, so this becomes a more attractive order. Of course, any midfielders trained heavily in passing, will be 'offensive', provided we can afford a (small) midfield loss. In attack we'll choose whether to play with one, two or three TDFs, the others will be normal forwards. Playing with three normal forwards is only practical against very weak teams. Choosing the number of TDFs to play with depends to a large extent on how the desired midfield (and, of course, on the availability of high-quality TDFs). The trade off for normal forwards? More central attack, more opportunities to score in the middle, but with a lower midfield, creating less chances. This is self-evident. The optimal choice depends on number crunching.

In addition, more offensive line-ups can play with midfielders set toward wing (IMTW), especially if we expect a very strong defence and we want to boost our side attacks as much as possible. The midfield loss is relatively small, and the boost to side attack depends on the player type. With the right players (eg - mythical/magical playmaking, titanic / mythical winger, outstanding+ passing) using a midfielder towards wing (the same player who would play as a normal winger or winger towards middle in a defensive 3-5-2) could be a decisive tactical move.

To conclude

I've described the standard system that is used by almost all middle- to top level national teams, including Slovenia. These NTs almost exclusively use one of these formations against equivalent teams and the only main alternative is an extreme CA. NT managers also face other formations, mostly played by worse teams with underdeveloped multiskilled players such as a 5-5-0 aiming for a draw, or a one-sided 4-5-1,or a one-sided 5-4-1 CA... but I’ll talk about these another time.

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