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This week, Darren Cross looks at how mimicking Barça’s style of play can really pay off in FIFA 11...

The three players shortlisted for the recent 2010 FIFA Ballon D’or – an award given to the best player on the planet according to managers, national team captains and journalists – all play for Barcelona. Impressive eh?

What’s even more remarkable is that Xavi, Andres Iniesta and the winner Lionel Messi are all graduates of Barça’s famous youth system where, from the word go, the emphasis is on skill and technique over pace and power, and young players are taught the importance of keeping the ball at all costs.

This idea of keeping the ball has been Barcelona’s trademark for many years, and it’s one that’s certainly paid off, particularly recently; boss Pep Guardiola has won eight major trophies since 2009 and it’s not uncommon to see his team record possession stats in excess of 70% in La Liga and Champions League matches.

Their players will do anything to retain possession, even if that means playing the ball sideways or backwards to a team-mate in space, and it’s incredibly effective for many different reasons. For starters, dictating the play by moving the ball forces their opponents to move and press as they try to win it back, and there’s nothing more tiring than chasing shadows for a couple of minutes at a time. This also creates space for Barcelona, because the opposition eventually over commit somewhere and a gap opens up that can be exploited with a well-timed pass or run.

So what’s all this got to do with FIFA 11 I hear you ask?

Because FIFA 11 so cleverly represents the real thing – the development team even have a positional expert who indicates where AI-controlled players should be and when, depending on where the ball is – the same principles of real football apply in the game.

Keeping the ball in FIFA 11 and moving it around the pitch to unsettle your opponent’s shape really does open up spaces that previously weren’t there, especially if the other guy likes the ‘press’ feature a bit too much. So many players press the ball wildly in FIFA 11. In some cases they even double press; holding ‘a’ and ‘x’ or ‘x’ and ‘square’ – depending on the console – to encourage an AI team-mate to chase the ball down in tandem with the player they’re directly controlling. This plays right into the hands of the team who are keeping the ball and passing intelligently, as there simply has to be space created by the pressing players leaving their positions.

Many times I have witnessed online players simply holding the left stick towards my goal while pressing the pass button, desperate to get forward as quickly as they can and hoping the ball goes to a team-mate. Of course, there are times when a quick counter is called for, like when the other team has over committed, lost the ball and are sitting out of position, but even then the player who’s just won the ball back should keep a close eye on the radar to make sure their players are actually where they think they should be.

In the main, I find the best approach is always to control possession and move the ball. If I can’t go forward then I’ll go sideways, and if that’s not an option I’ll go backwards and look to move the ball across the pitch in the areas where the opposition have the fewest players. While the ball is moving to one player I’m looking at where my other players are positioned and I’m trying to build up a picture of where I want my second, third or even fourth pass to be. This is exactly what players like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi do; they think ahead.

So the next time you head into an online match, spend the first few minutes working on keeping the ball, thinking a pass or two ahead and making the opposition tire by chasing you.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Darren

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