Closing Down and Creative Freedom


These two tactical instructions have always left me pulling out my hair and swearing at the computer. But lately, I have found a new way to handle these instructions which seem to be doing pretty damn good in my Liverpool game.

Okay, bare with me experienced football managers, a quick explanation on closing down, creative freedom and their relationship with each other.

Closing Down – Forget all this own area/own half/whole pitch bullshit, that’s just an expression. Imagine a circle around your player, as you increase the closing down slider, the circle gets bigger. If an oppositional player dare enter that circle then he will be closed down. Not tackled, closed down, whether he is tackled or not is more down to his tackling intensity, read about that here.

Creative Freedom – Possibly the hardest thing to explain in football manager, but I have come up with a pretty good idea what it is about. Creatively free players are more likely to do things that you haven’t instructed them to do. These things mainly consist of moving into channels and exploiting gaps in the oppositions’ defence, attempting tricks, attempting long shots and lobs and finally attempting a long range passes.

Relationship  

If these two tactical instructions were or if they could be in a relationship, they wouldn’t be quite married yet, but certainly in some kind of delusional long-term partnership.

Okay enough of the metaphors, what I’m basically saying is that the relationship betweens these two aren’t written in stone and there are a lot of ifs and buts.

But there is some kind of relationship. I believe in general, that closing down is used in more defensive tactics and creative freedom is used in more attacking tactics. Obviously a mix of both would be used in a more controversial tactic. When you are playing defensive, you normally want players to close down a lot, and after winning possession from that closing down, you will want your players to keep it simple, hence low creative freedom. In an attacking tactic you may want less closing down, so when you players receive the ball, they have lots of space around them to be creative, hence the high creative freedom.

So, as general guideline, low creative freedom goes well with high closing down. And obviously, high creative freedom goes well with low closing down. Some people believe this so much, they mirror creative freedom with closing down like this.

Creative freedom 5  =  Closing down 15 or Creative freedom 15  =  Closing down 5.

Although this can work well under the circumstances, especially down the lower leagues where creative freedom can swept under the table, I believe it to be flawed. Some positions require both high creative freedom and closing down. In my Liverpool side, I had Torres on high creative freedom and closing down to ensure he closed down defenders and had the freedom to move into channels. Also, I had my defenders on both low creative freedom and low closing down to ensure they held their position at the back and kept it simple.

In my opinion, closing down should work in a co-ordinated rhythm. In a basic 4-4-2, I would do this:

Strikers:15 - 20
Offensive Midfielder: 14 – 19
Left/Right Midfielder: 13 – 18
Defensive Midfielder: 12 -17
Full Backs:  11 – 16
Centre Backs: 10 -15

The closing down descends from the highest placed player on the pitch, to the lowest placed player on the pitch. I believe it should be set out like this so closing down goes in logical order. The strikers will close down until the opposition moves into the next zone, the offensive midfielder’s area, if he fails in winning the ball as well, the defensive midfielder or wide players will close down next and so on and so on.

Okay, so where does creative freedom come into this? Well I also have a co-ordinated rhythm for this as well, but I believe there must be a core of the team on the same creative freedom wave length to achieve this.

Those players, I call the attacking five, the two strikers, the twos wingers and the offensive midfielder. In an attacking approach, they should all be from 15 to 20 notches on the creative freedom slider. Giving the attacking five high creative freedom will ensure they can break down oppositions defence with clever runs, shots, passes or even tricks.

The rest of the team should be as follows:

Full Backs: 10 -14
Defensive Midfielder: 8 - 12
Centre Backs: 6 -10

In my opinion the mirroring of closing down and creative freedom should be used a general guideline and I think these ‘co-ordinated rhythms’ are much more important for your team to succeed.


Good luck with the closing down and creative freedom aspects of football manager, hope this helps you on your way.