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Review (EN): Conte's Kite 4-3-3

10-07 10:32, door Guido

The team

I’ve chosen to manage Vicenza in this test. I’m intending to do more of these reviews, all of those with Vicenza, so tactics can be compared with each other. Vicenza are a mid-table side, predicted to end 12th in the Italian Serie B. Now seeing as this is a tactics set, I’ll have to follow Conte’s instructions. These are the main instructions he gave people.

The tactic sets:

Attack - use this when fairly confident of a win at home. Also for use when you need a goal, but unless you need an equaliser avoid using away or when the underdog.

Balanced - I usually switch to this at home after I've taken the lead. It's basically the same just a little more cautious with the full-backs.

Cautious - I start with this away from home. Usually our sheer firepower up front will see us through when teams are coming at us more, so this just solidifies the defence.

Defensive - to kill a game off. Use for the last 20 minutes or so.

This is the team I will be using for the opening fixture.

The results

Vicenza 1 – 0 AlbinoLeffe
Modena 0 – 4 Vicenza
Vicenza 4 – 0 Rimini
Vicenza 3 – 0 Grosseto
Treviso 1 – 1 Vicenza

Benefits

+ The results.

Taking into account I had three injured first-team players after the first two matches, and five players injured after the first three games, things look pretty good. A nice goal-scoring record and the defensive record was very impressive. Unfortunately we had no strikers to field for the game against Vicenza, which was lost due to a lack of fire-power upfront and no-one to hold up the ball properly. Still, very, very good results. Five played, four wins and one draw, an average of 2,6 goals scored and 0,2 conceded. A very impressive set of results.

+ Curbed arrows on the wingers.

Ever since Haz (credit where it’s due…) came up with this idea to overload a defence, we’ve been seeing it more and more in the newer tactics. In effect, in attack, using these curbed arrows creates a 4-3-3. Similar to my own arrowhead-trident formation, the wingers look to get involved in the middle as well as out wide. However, because they’re making runs to join the lone striker, they’re effectively second and third forwards as opposed to roaming wingers. Conte has basically utilised said idea in his own tactic and it’s basically just working extremely well.

+ There’s a tactic for every situation.

No matter what the AI throws at you, Conte has prepared a tactic for it. Good show and a tremendous effort by Conte, who makes sure that you have a weapon against pretty much anything the AI can use against you. I’ve used this set with great effectiveness. All you have to do is make the right choice at the right time. The defensive version deserves a special mention, as it’s a great way to keep your opponent away, by simply keeping possession and not allowing them the ball.

+ Plenty of space for your wingbacks.

Now the whole idea, according to Conte, of the tactic is that the wingers overload the defence and pressurize them into making mistakes or that the wingbacks exploit the space given to them and cross the ball in for any of the waiting three forwards. This works like a charm, because the wingers are drawing the defenders neatly into the heart of their own defence, pretty much like this:

As you can see, this space generally gets pretty well exploited by wingbacks making runs forward and crossing the ball in. This automatically leads me to my next point.

+ Plenty of chances.

I really can’t complain about the amount of chances this tactic has given my boys. Generally, fifteen chances was a minimum. That’s a pretty decent number by any means.

+ It’s not all about the wings.

Looking at this tactic, you’d think it’d be all about crosses towards a big donkey upfront who can head the ball home. If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re wrong. Sure, you score some goals when a forward heads in a cross, but the way the curbed arrows work, it means there’s plenty of space for penetrating through-balls and intelligent runs into space. Allow me to illustrate my point.

Just to clarify, red means a player making an offensive run, blue means a player is making a defensive run and yellow is the movement of the ball. Now as we can see the ball is played into feet for the main striker, Zampagna (#17). He holds up the ball, as instructed, and continues by passing it wide towards Matteini (#19). Matteini needs some time to control and is by that time harassed by two defenders. He sees the space Zampagna has and feeds the striker a brilliant pass. Zampagna continues dribbling towards the goalie and scores.

I’ve seen goals like these being scored several times, which means the tactic doesn’t just rely on a big bloke upfront and two fast wingers feeding him crosses, there’s actually some pretty decent football going on at times and as you can see in the screen, we have some intricate passing at times.

+ Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

So yeah, maybe beautiful football won’t win you any prizes, but it’s still fun to watch a team play a superb passing game with fluid movement down the wings and through the middle. Maybe you prefer to just win, I like beautiful football as well. So yeah, a definite benefit in my eyes.

Downsides

- Switching makes it complicated.

One of the strong points of this set is that it’s prepared for just about any situation you may encounter. In this point also lies an inherent weakness of this tactics set and pretty much any tactics set anyone ever makes. Basically it means the more choices you have, the harder it becomes to make the right choice. When are you “fairly confident of a win”? Which circumstances, which situation? If you pick the wrong tactic for the wrong situation, things could become pretty messed up.

Now in my test, this didn’t happen, but then again I’m a pretty experienced gamer, but I could imagine younger or newer managers encountering some difficulties when it comes to making choices which version to use.

- Players are getting tired fast.

With your wingbacks and wingers running all over the place, they do tend to get tired faster, which means you either have to substitute them or switch to a more conservative version of the Kite 4-3-3. If you don’t, your wingers and wingbacks are being overrun by their conditionally stronger opponents.

- You really do need a proper targetman.

Not just for the heading aspect, but also for holding up the ball. As I said, this tactic thrives on free-flowing passes and fluid movements, but it also relies on the target-man holding up the ball, so the midfielders can take up their positions when they’re moving forward.

In the last test match, I had no real target-man to field upfront. I guess the result speaks for itself. Capone, an AMLC, just wasn’t able to hold up the ball as well as Schwoch or Zampagna and he sure as hell wasn’t able to convert the chances he got. He did dive and get us a penalty, but still… no target-man is equal to no success with this tactic, so be warned.

- Hardly any goals from Set Pieces.

I played five matches and we only scored two goals from Set Pieces? Maybe this set was created prior to the release of the 8.0.2 patch, but it’s still pretty weak. With the 8.0.2 patch, you should just be able to score more goals from Set Pieces. Then again, that problem is easily fixed by tinkering with the individual instructions. Maybe an idea to incorporate into a new version, Conte?

Conclusion

So yeah, all in all a very decent set of tactics. You get some intricate passing, good movement and decent results, provided you have a good target-man. The defensive record is excellent, you don’t give away many chances, as long as the offensive line can keep a hold of the ball. The Set Piece instructions need a bit of tinkering, two goals in five matches is just not good enough, especially compared to how many I got with the Permite Giocare tactic in the same test with similar players.

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