Let the Man Marking game begin!

It’s been a season now with the Man Marking feature on Tournament matches! Will not hide it, but a change we had to do on the last minute due to a bug on the formulas, altered the desired effects. However, we had a season to think about it again and tweak it based on your own feedback. Next Monday, 11th December 2017, new Man Marking will be out on Tournament matches. So, let’s focus on the numbers 🙂

What is the million-dollar question? Well, should I use Man Marking? A well-played Man Marking tactic starts by increasing your winning chances by 1.5-2 p.p. If you analyse your opponent more and try to take advantage of all the aspects of the tactic, you can increase that number even more.

But, what do you mean “well played Man Marking”?… The short answer, you need to fulfill the following:

  1. The Man Marked player should be on the field
  2. He doesn’t have any boosts from specialties
  3. He is on the right sector
  4. Man Marker has same or higher defending skill from the highest skill of the Man Marked

If you follow all the above, then you can be sure that your winning chances will be higher than without the Man Marking.

The long answer (with a small taste of numbers)

Your Man Marker’s penalty. If the opponent’s player is not on the field, then your player will lose 10% of his contribution. Why? You spent the whole week to prepare him for a certain tactic and in the end he will not act based on that. He looks both unprepared and sad for it 🙂

If the Man Marked is on the “opposite” sector, then your player will lose 50% of his contribution. What is “an opposite sector”?

  • Any defender vs Any forward
  • Any wingback vs Any winger
  • Any midfielder vs Any midfielder

In any other case, your player will suffer of 65% loss of his performance.

The Man Marked’s penalty. This is where the wilder and stronger player will take the upper hand. The defending skill of your player will be against the highest skill of the opponent player. Plus a few bonuses and penalties based on their specialties.

We use a Logistic function to compare their skills. The actual formula is:

penalty = defending ^ 3.5 / (defending ^ 3.5 + highest_skill ^ 3.5)

What this means in simple words? The closer the skills are, the bigger the effect will be if you increase or decrease those skills.

In addition to that, your Man Marker will have an extra 10% boost on his defending skill if he is Powerful and 5% if he is specless. This boost will take place only on the Man Marking fight between the players. It isn’t there for the whole match.

Finally, the Man Marked’s specialty is important too. If he is a technical guy, he will suffer 8% on his highest skill only during the man marking calculations, since your player will be with him all the time and he will not have the space to do his magic dribbles. But if he is an unpredictable, he will gain 8% on the highest skill, since your player will not be able to predict his movements.

Are the above details enough to build your future tactics? One could say that those are more than what we used to share in the past. But, since the contributions are not the same for every skill and losing 50% of a playmaking skill compare with a 50% loss on scoring could lead to different results, it’s up to you how you will use it.