Team Instructions

Your team instructions will set out a tactical style that determines how your players should operate together as a unit. They are grouped into mentality, fluidity and a large selection of more specific team instructions, and can be viewed and edited on the Team section of your squad's Tactics screen.

Mentality and fluidity form the basis of your tactical system. Along with your formation they will give you a starting structure and general approach which you can then fine tune using specific team instructions to define more precisely how you want your team to play.

Mentality determines how defensive or attacking the tactic is, while fluidity concerns the extent to which your players will share defensive and attacking responsibilities and express themselves beyond your basic tactical instructions.

This section of the guide will explain the effects of every available setting in each of the three groups of team instructions, and take you through the process of using these instructions to create a suitable tactic for the players in your squad. The final part of the section will then look briefly at how team instructions can be applied to a variety of general tactical styles, both defensive and attacking.

Of course, there is more to the tactical side of football management than just creating a single tactic for general use. Creating tactics is the main focus of the Tactics section of the guide, but tactical flexibility can be crucial to your success as a manager, and so it would be beneficial to create two or three different tactics for use at different times. In the Match Day section the Tactical Planning guide will discuss suitable tactical approaches for use against different types of opposition team while the During the Match guide will look at how tactical changes can be made in reaction to different scenarios that you are likely to encounter during matches.