Over on Twitter, there has been several Football Manager based competitions running over this lockdown period, and the FM Lockdown Tournament has now reached it’s 4th season (yes, that’s how long we’ve been in lockdown). It’s a great tournament which I was delighted to have been selected for last time, and enjoyed this time around even more.

In this tournament, 128 people were allocated an international side and face off in Football Manager 2021 matches with 1 eventual winner, with this seasons tournament starting off in the group stage format. The team draws are completely random, meaning it comes down to a bit of luck and your tactical know-how. Obviously, getting a good team drawn makes things a bit easier, but it’s all in the name of fun and entertainment. Personally, I have never really played the online mode of FM, meaning this is the first opportunity I’ve had to challenge other players, and it’s interesting to see how others’ chose to set their sides up with different tactical styles. Just from being in the discord, I saw a few formations and ideas that I will be trying out in the near future on some saves.

I believe they are planning on keeping this running a little longer and adding even more tweaks and developments to the tournaments, so I would highly recommend getting involved in the next season if you can. It’s tremendous fun and great to have chats and matches against actual other Football Manager addicts such as myself, and it’s a great setup in the discord chats.

Head over to @TheFMLT on Twitter to get involved and check out the work they are doing, and possibly get yourselves involved.

Without further ado, let’s go over my experience in the tournament…

Previously…

If you are looking for a full round-down of the group stages and how we’ve ended up here, I’d recommend checking out my ‘part 1’ post that went out earlier in the week, however if you don’t have time for that, allow me to give you a quick summary.

In the group stages, I was allocated Albania as my team in the tournament, and being in the lower half of the rankings, was placed in a fairly favourable group. In these 7 group games, we picked up 5 wins from 7 and suffered 2 defeats. We were quite prolific in the wins, scoring plenty of goals and playing a lot of attacking football (sometimes leading to bad consequences). As a result of our group performance, Albania finished second in the group, securing qualification with relative ease and now move onto the knockout rounds, and due to finishing 2nd, we were matched up against… Chile.

Round of 64: Albania 2-1 Chile (AET)

In our first knockout round of the tournament, my hopes were fairly low, as we came up against a strong Chile side with the likes of Sanchez, Vidal and Bravo all in the squad. On paper, we were up against a much tougher opposition, meaning I was cautious in my approach.

Going into the game, I kept the same tactics that had gotten me this far, meaning I wanted to start with an attacking style of play because I knew my side could often grab a goal early. This worked just as planned as we scored first on the 10 minute mark. From here until half-time, I kept with the attacking mentality and thought we could grab another. However at half-time things needed to change, and we needed game management.

In the second-half, I’d changed to a more balanced and later cautious style of play, in the hopes of nullifying the oppositions attack and getting the slender win. This went to plan until the 69th minute when Chile equalised and we needed to again rethink. Clearly, the attacking playing style was needed and so we reverted back, which created a real back and forth game. It was in the last minute of the game however when things changed. On the 90th minute, and with possibly the last kick of the game, Chile were awarded a penalty (I knew my side were a bit too feisty), however it was missed, and I knew from there we were destined to get the win.

Into extra-time, we maintained the attacking mentality, and in the first few moments of extra-time, Chile, who had been fairly reckless with challenges themselves, had a man sent-off. With this advantage, I figured it was now or never, and went ultra-attacking with my formation and instructions, and was rewarded moments later when we received a penalty and Memushaj tucked it away to secure the win and send us through. It was a really memorable match which once again felt like it had everything. Luck was certainly on our side, but like most wining sides, you need that bit of luck.

Unfortunately, our luck didn’t transfer over to Kuwait, who were beaten by Serbia, to set up and even more challenging round of 32 match-up that I was quite apprehensive of.

Round of 32: Albania 0-4 Serbia

Okay, the less I say about this the better I suppose, however we’ve come this far so let’s discuss. This round of 32 match was the toughest opponent we’d faced so far, with some absolute superstars in the Serbian side. Therefore, it was a debate of how to approach the game, however I decided that sticking with my guns was the most honest way to do this, and went attacking. It’s knockout football so if we didn’t attack we wouldn’t progress. This tactic once again almost worked, with Albania receiving a penalty in the first moments of the game. However, despite his clinical form previously, Roshi missed the penalty, and from here things just seemed to be destined for failure.

Just before the half-time break, Serbia thought they’d opened the scoring, however it was disallowed for an offside call. At half-time, going in 0-0 with either side having chances to score, I made the call to change things more defensively and try to counter instead.

Into the second-half, this call was the downfall of Albania, as they were pressed and faced an onslaught of Serbian attackers, who didn’t take long to score with Tadic breaking the deadlock. From here, well as you can see, things went from bad to worse as they scored again minutes later, meaning my attempts to return to the attacking play-style were redundant at this point. In the end, rather than conserving the loss for a reasonable score line, I decided to go down swinging and went all-out attack as we were eventually punished for this decision and faced the 4-0 humiliation.

And, that was that. The end of the road for my Albanian side in the final 32. After a successful group stage, and quite surprising victory in the first knockout round, I was satisfied if not a little disappointed to have pushed even further, however it was a great journey and great to be involved in the tournament… onto the next one.

Once again I’d like to say a big thankyou to those who put the tournament together, it’s been a great time-killer over these last few lockdown weeks and it’s been great fun taking part. I think I am right in saying there are some changes occurring following this seasons tournament, with changes to the whole setup being suggested, however if you are able to, I would highly recommend getting involved in future editions, we might just see you there.