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Playing like Eintracht Frankfurt 2012/13 In this guide, I will be showing you how to play like Eintracht Frankfurt on the iOS/Android version of FMH2013. The German Bundesliga has always been an enjoying competition to watch due to the swift, efficient, and attacking style of most German teams and the fact that there’s always one or two surprise packages means that the Bundesliga is always a very unpredictable league. As Frankfurt have just been promoted into 1. Bundesliga, you’d expect them to be either struggling to stay up or be in the middle of the table at most, right? If the answer is yes, then I’m sorry to tell you that you’re terribly wrong. For this season, Eintracht Frankfurt is definitely the team to look out for. Currently sitting at fourth place, it’s hard to believe that they’ve just been promoted this season. This is much due to their very attacking style of play. Armin Veh, once coach of the 2007 Bundesliga-winning side VfB Stuttgart, and now coach of Frankfurt, once stated that he’s a big fan of reigning Bundesliga champions, Borussia Dortmund’s style of play, and it’s obvious that he’s trying to replicate something similar at Eintracht Frankfurt. However, Veh’s Frankfurt has adopted an all-or-nothing style in the league, and this is proved in their league results. Currently, they have won 11 out of 22 league games, but have also lost 7 of them. While they have scored a total of 38 league goals, they’ve also conceded 34 goals as well. Frankfurt managed to beat 3rd place Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 at home, but have also lost to also newly promoted side Fortuna Düsseldorf by 4-0. This brings us to Veh’s 4-2-3-1. Obviously, they have the same possession based, swift, attacking football as Klopp’s Dortmund, but they do have some rather obvious differences in the player roles. Firstly, Veh plays a very high defensive line and very, very attacking full-backs. It’s not uncommon to see these two players running with the ball and actually shooting just outside the box. Oczipka and Jung, Frankfurt’s first-choice full-backs, made a total of 11 and 16 attempts at goal respectively this season. In comparison, Philipp Lahm of Bayern Munich has only made a total of 5 goal attempts this season. They’re also the team’s main creators, with a total of 65 key passes this season from Oczipka and Jung. Also, only one central defender is encouraged to launch defense-splitting long balls as opposed to two at Dortmund, and in this case, it’s Zambrano, who has attempted a total of 175 long passes this season. Further up, we have two central midfielders that are responsible for winning back the ball (a total of 143 tackles and 107 interceptions this season) and passing it. They are also encouraged to attempt long shots as well. As their role is mainly to win back the ball, it’s not surprising that Pirmin Schwegler and Sebastian Rode, Frankfurt’s two holders, have passed more than their teammates, with 55.3 passes per game for Schwegler and 54.2 passes per game for Rode. Up front, we don’t have the fluid front four like Dortmund. Alexander Meier, Frankfurt’s top scorer this season (23 appearances, 12 goals, 2 assists), acts like a second striker lying just behind under-fire Canadian target man Olivier Occéan (17 appearances, 1 goal, 1 assist). On the left wing we have the talented Japanese magician Takashi Inui (22 appearances, 5 goals, 4 assists), and on the right wing we have Stefan Aigner (23 appearances, 7 goals, 7 assists), who is more of a traditional winger as opposed to Inui, who prefers to cut inside, as you can observe from the diagram below, where we have Inui's runs above and Aigner's runs below. The Setup Player Tactical Roles: GK – Kevin Trapp (23 games started) Young Kevin joined Frankfurt from Kaiserlautern and has proved to be one of the best young goalkeepers in the Bundesliga, beating veteran Oka Nikolov to the first-team place. Player Tactical Role: Goalkeeper DL – Bastian Oczipka (23 games started) Though he is a left-back, Oczipka’s ambitious style means that he plays more like a winger. With an average of 2.4 successful dribbles per game, Oczipka is has won Veh’s heart, starting in all 23 league games Frankfurt have played up until now. Player Tactical Role: Wing Back DC - Carlos Zambrano (20 games started)/Anderson (17 games started)/Vadim Demidov (4 games started)/Heiko Butscher (2 games started)/Marco Russ (1 game started) A common combo here, we have Anderson who's more of the average DC, and Zambrano who likes to play more long balls and start counter attacks. With a total of 175 long balls attempted, Zambrano is 2nd in the team in terms of total long balls, just behind first-team goalkeeper Kevin Trapp. Player Tactical Roles: Central Defender x1 + Ball Playing Defender x1 DR – Sebastian Jung (22 games started)/Stefano Celozzi (1 game started) Basically like Oczipka on the left, Jung has been dominating Frankfurt’s right wing this season along with Aigner further up front. It’s not a rare sight to see Jung attempting long shots at goal, and he’s got a strong left foot as well. Player Tactical Role: Wing Back MCs – Sebastian Rode (23 games started)/Pirmin Schwegler (20 games started)/Martin Lanig (3 games started) Frankfurt’s central midfielders not only have to win back the ball, they’re also the heartbeat of the team, with Rode and Schwegler making a total of 2407 passes in the league up until now. Player Tactical Role: Ball Winning Midfielder AML – Takashi Inui (22 games started) Inui has put on a sensational performance this season, often dazzling defenders with fancy footwork and outrunning them with pace. A key player of Frankfurt’s first-team squad, no one has yet been able to challenge his place on the wing. Though he’s only scored 5 goals this season, his goals and assists can’t really show you how good this youngster really is. Player Tactical Role: Inside Forward AMC – Alexander Meier (23 games started) Frankfurt’s top scorer until now this season, Meier has also cemented his place in the first-team squad, and along with Inui, the stunning pair have attempted a total of 126 shots, which 17 have resulted in goals. Player Tactical Role: Inside Forward AMR – Stefan Aigner (23 games started) With 7 goals and 7 assists this season, Aigner is another key player in Frankfurt’s first-team. He’s different from Meier and Inui in the way that he makes more runs down the wing rather than running towards the goal, which actually helps open up space in the middle by maintaining width. Player Tactical Role: Winger FC - Olivier Occéan (10 games started)/Karim Matmour (8 games started)/ Srđan Lakić (3 games started) While Veh hasn’t seem to have found a reliable striker in this position yet, he does seem to prefer big, strong strikers up front, rather than strikers that like to move around like Lewandowski at Dortmund. On loan from Wolfsburg, Lakić has been quite impressive lately, scoring 2 goals in 3 appearances, and he’s likely to kick Occéan out of the first team. Player Tactical Role: Target Man I’ve tested the tactic for a while with Eintracht Frankfurt, and I must say, results have been quite realistic. Only made 2 necessary free transfers to increase squad depth. Credits to WhoScored.com for player and team statistics, Bundesliga.de for diagrams. Thanks for reading