Ultimate Guide to FIFA - Play like a Pro!

13 Aug, 2009

We’ve heard that you mostly play as France, Chris. That true?

CB SAYS: “I do like to play as France. A lot of people – especially the ones that play as Man. United – use a strategy where they kick it over the top of your defence for Ronaldo. If you’re playing as Man. United too, then Rio and Vidic have no chance of catching him. So I prefer to use France, because the whole back four or five are quick. Throughout the team, if you select the side intelligently, you’ve got ten players all above 80 speed.”

What formation do you play?

CB SAYS: “I like playing with a 4-3-3, because you have numbers in attack. This year it’s quite a narrow game, so I can protect the middle of the park, where the most danger is, then attack wide or through the centre with the three up front.”

Do you use Custom Tactics?

CB SAYS: “This year a lot of tournaments banned Custom Tactics, so I didn’t use them as much. I did use one recently, but I tried to keep it as close to the default as possible. I don’t agree with players putting seven or eight of their men at the back, because I don’t see how you can win a tournament playing like that. Eventually you play someone with that tactic and get beat, so I like to use a versatile tactic. I’ll pretty much use a 4-3-3 formation and just make little adjustments.”

What advice would you give someone that had never made a Custom Tactic, but wanted to give it a go?

CB SAYS: “The first time, they should really stick close to what they’re used to playing. So if they usually play a 4-4-2, they shouldn’t really change things too much. I guess the best thing to do is look at what causes you problems. If you have trouble with chipped through balls over the top, then the solution is to put a sweeper in place. If you have problems with people playing between your midfield and defence, then put a defensive midfielder there. It realty depends on what that player needs to improve.”

Do you use the D-pad to change your team’s mentality during the game?

CB SAYS: “It depends. I usually start a little more defensively then, if I go a goal down, I may change my mentality to make it more attacking.”

Is there a team you don’t really like playing against?

CB SAYS: “I don’t really enjoy playing against Man. United, even when I’m playing as France, because of the Ronaldo factor. Also, the French defence are all very small, so if you do play against someone who doesn’t use the Ronaldo tactic, but just puts Berbatov up there against Evra and gets crosses in, that normally doesn’t end well for France!”

What would you say is the most noticeable difference between a Pro player and a casual player?

CB SAYS: “A lot of it is mistakes. So on goal kicks, when you look to play a short pass out, casual players don’t normally look for an attacker running in – they’ll just pass the ball blindly. A lot of the time when I’m playing casual players, I score rubbish goals from intercepting a pass and tapping it in to the net. Casual players are prone to making passing errors and not really looking at what the opponent is doing.”

Lots of players seem to struggle to score from set pieces in FIFA 09. When you win a corner, what do you do?

CB SAYS: “In FIFA 09 there’s a bug where you can aim for the back post and normally get a clear header if you get the right side of the defender. That can either lead to a goal, a knockdown or a goalscoring chance. Even if it’s headed out then sometimes you’ll have a player at the edge of the box who can have a long-range shot.”

Do you ever go for short corners?

CB SAYS: “I don’t generally play short passes, I just try to get it in the mixer because a lot of the time, even when the defender heads the ball out, it lands at the attacker’s feet anyway. Recently I played a game and I was sitting there thinking ‘how am I going to win this?’. It was nil-nil and we weren’t really pushing each other. I won a corner in the 89th minute, so I stuck it in there to see what happened, went up for the header and it went over the keeper and bounced over the line!”

What about free-kicks? How many would you score out of ten in a row?

CB SAYS: “Out of ten I’d probably expect to only score one – I seem to be useless with free-kicks, but a lot of people are! When I’m close up I’ll normally shoot and go for a curl over the wall, but if I’m far away I’ll just pass it and try to create a goalscoring opportunity. I’d rather keep possession than risk getting beaten by a counter attack.”

Finally Chris, can you give us some tips to help us score more goals?

CB SAYS: “Definitely look out for keeper charges. Sometimes there’s an easy way to chip the ball over the keeper when he comes out, so always be aware of that. Also, attacking the keeper at a 45 degree angle works around 80 per cent of the time.”

There are some cracking tips from Chris there. If you follow them, they WILL make a huge difference to your game and, more importantly for some, your win ratio.

Before this interview with Chris I was struggling to clock up a good run of wins, so I took his advice, picked France as my team and selected a 4-3-3 formation. Then I picked the fastest eleven players I could and tweaked the tactics slightly so that I always had one defender dropping slightly deeper than the others. Sure enough, I picked up 18 wins from the next 20 games (I was robbed for the two defeats, honest!) and won most matches by a two or three goal margin.

Now, I don’t want to encourage an army of players to suddenly start picking France and playing 4-3-3, because I suspect that means my good run will quickly come to an end, but give it a go and see if it helps your game. It worked for me!

See you next week.

Darren

Darren is a football writer and Deputy Editor of MATCH magazine.