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Every once in a while you stumble upon the most amazing player you've ever seen, or after several seasons you realize that that sixteen year old belgian kid with crappy stats actually turned out to be World Player of the Year. Why keep them to yourself? You are a member of the Vibe Community so, chances are, you probably aren't selfish and like to share what you found. So why not make an iScout? The purpose of this guide is to show you how you can share that information with the rest of the community. You can do an iScout with just text, but be warned, people are lazy and a picture is worth a thousand words. If you type the player stats instead of adding a screenshot of the player, chances are your player won't get much notice. Having a picture with those green attributes catches our attention. AnfieldSquirrel already created a guide on how to upload pictures to a Image Hosting service and how to share them in the forum. Follow this link to see it. Be sure to give him a reputation point if you like his guide. Just click on the green up arrow and that's it. I'm also assuming that you know how to take a screenshot with your Android/iOS device. If you don't, let me know and I'll add that info to this guide. So, now that you know how to take a screenshot of your player, how to upload it and how to use it in a post, lets get on with the show. An iScout could have some basic information: Real life picture of the player (optional) Screenshot of his in-game stats Screenshot of his in-game history (optional) Basic personal info (optional-ish) Above I say could and not should because it all comes down to personal preference. I like to include all this, others include more info than myself. In the spoilers below are some examples of different ways to do an iScout. Milton Caraglio, an Argentinian striker, done by myself: As you can see, I post a real life picture of the player, some basic info like his name, age at the start of the 2012/2013 season, nationality and where you can find him. I add the screenshot of his stats and history and a small text talking about the player. Danny Welbeck, English striker, done by MerlionMaple96: As you can see, MerlionMaple96 adds a lot more information! Like I said, it all comes down to personal preference. Still, if you can't find a way to take a screenshot on your device or if you have a PSP but you can't get your hands on a digital camera or phone with the capability of taking a picture you can still use the tools provided to you in this forum to embellish your post by the use of colour, bold, italic, different font sizes, etc. See the example below and compare it to the iScout above of Milton Caraglio. Remember: you can always use a real life picture of the player since you're already using the internet to check on Vibe. Google is your friend, use it. Milton Caraglio, done without screenshots: So has you can see, you can do a good looking guide with text and colours. Colours are very important in this case because we know immediately what his best stats are. Now that the iScout is covered, let keep our information organized. The rules to create an iScout are simple: The name of the topic must have the name of the player Only one player per topic That simple. But how can we find a good wingback or a good striker if we don't know his name? We can open every single topic in the iScout section, which is very monotonous...or we can do another thing. If you're posting the iScout on a computer, when you create a new topic (or if you're editing one of your iScouts) you are allowed to assign tags to it. By using tags with the players positions and which game version you're playing will allow to quick access to that info in the future. If everyone who does iScouts uses the same tags you can quickly see all the wingbacks or strikers (or whatever) that have been iScouted! Now that's organization don't you agree? Above is an example of Adryan, who plays for Flamengo. He's a natural AMC and competent MC. And the iScout was done in FMH13 so you have that info as well in the tags. And when browsing through a iScout, if you press one of the tags like those in the above image you'll get all the topics tagged with the same tag you have just clicked. This will only work if everyone uses the same tags. Some examples below: goalkeeper defender wingback full back center back midfielder defensive midfielder winger attacking midfielder striker fmh13 fmh12 fmh14 poacher advanced forward target man advanced playmaker etc... The rule is...keep it simple. Use the names like they are in the game. Everyone knows them. Also, this topic is the perfect example of the use of tags. If you scroll down you'll see that there's another topic tagged as a guide called "Bath City - A Guide to Managing the Romans in FMH" by QPR100. iScout Team of the Month We have a monthly/bi-monthly award called iScout Team of the Month, hosted by Ashez, where we all vote on who the best iScouted players were for each month or a couple of months. Everyone who posts an iScout can have his player in the Team of the Month if he gets enough votes. This is also a good way to check who the best players are because you can always check each months teams and get an idea of the best players. To make Ashez' job easier there's something we all can easily do. Each month Ashez will say when the iScout submissions for the team of the month will end (although you're free to submit more, they'll just enter the next month). Before the deadline, if you don't have any more iScouts to post you should compile your own iScouts into a list, like the one in the spoiler, in that exact same format: So, for the short version: Separate each player according to each of these positions: goalkeeper, wingback/fullback, central defender, midfielder (regardless of being a DM or M), attacking midfielder and striker Type the name of the player with the link to his iScout Follow it by ", by <your nickname>" And that's it! To add the link to the text you just need to right click on the iScout post of the player and select "Copy URL" or, if you already have the topic open, just copy its url from the search bar. Then, to add the link to the player name, highlight the player name then press the link button in the top editing bar, paste the link et voilá, you're done! When you have all your links compiled, send that info to Ashez in a personal message or post it in the iScout Team of the Month topic. Now you can feel happy with yourself knowing that Ashez will look at that info and think "Now that's a straight up guy!" Hope you've found this mini-guide useful. Feel free to add your suggestions or constructive criticism.

Greetings ! I am here today, to show you all how it’s done. Can I get a round of applause? *awkward silence* Thank you very much! You’re too kind! Is Brendan Rogers in the house? Is José Mourinho near? Alexio Fergo, you there? Let’s get down tonight. ^Epic intro or what? Today, I am going to, briefly, discuss a piece of mostly overrated tactics with you, my fellow Vibers. It is important to know that when I say overrated, I mean over credited. And when I say over credited, I mean to say that Rinus Michels was not as much the inventor as he was the enforcer. Yes, I’m talking about 70’s Ajax Totaalvoetbal! (Total Football) Keep your speaking holes shut, class is in session. Now, I don’t mean to discredit Michels; he was a brilliant coach with some very good ideas. He made Ajax (and later Barcelona) swing like never before and is often, rightfully, named as the inventor of ‘Tiki-Taka’ (the ‘evolved’ form of Total Football, cue Pokémon). But the fact of the matter is that he is simply not the inventor. A piece of history: “The foundations for Total Football were laid by Hungary which revolutionized the sport in the 1950s, laying the tactical fundamentals of Total Football and dominating international football with the remarkable Golden Team. Jack Reynolds, who was the manager of Ajax from 1915–1925, 1928–1940, and 1945–1947 first witnessed this system and refined the tactical procedures and first wrote of the fluidity of this style. Rinus Michels, who played under Reynolds, later went on to become manager of Ajax himself and refined the concept into what is known today as "Total Football" (Totaalvoetbal in Dutch), using it in his training for the Ajax squad and the Netherlands national team in the 1970s. It was further refined by Stefan Kovacs after Michels left for Barcelona. Dutch forward Johan Cruyff was the system's most famous exponent.” (Wikipedia) And not only was the idea borrowed from the Hungarian national team, at the same time that Michels was implementing a Spartan way of living, Valeriy Lobanovskji (famous Ukranian coach) was crushing his opponents way a radically new way of playing football. Both took the Hungarian ‘Passovotchka’ as their basis to build upon. (Wilson 2008, 99) Another argument for my ‘enforcer-rather-than-inventor’ theory is that, when you read enough articles (there also a very good one on HoldingMidfield, source bellow), you get the feeling that, especially at Ajax, the tactic almost invented itself. It’s like it came naturally under the guidance of Johan Cruijff, Neeskens and Velibor Vasovic. Because I don’t want to bore you all with a rather academic-like history of the style, I ask you to read ‘Inverting the Pyramid’ (from now on: ItP) yourself if you want to know more about the history of Total Football. Instead, let’s look at how we can implement this into our beloved FMH. On FMH First and foremost; what does it look like? I discussed this with a number of people, mostly with Declan and Graveluth. As it tends to be, we all have our ideas of what something should look like. On the left, below, you will find how Graveluth envisioned it to be. On the right, you will find what I made of it. I chose my variant because it seems to do more of what Wilson describes 'squeezing' the opponent while in possession, effectively making the pitch look smaller and making the pitch wider when in possession yourself. The left variant may overwhelm your opponent in midfield but will possibly leave you vulnerable against teams that us a wider play. Team Instructions The mentality is almost self-explanatory, though I must say the following: "The term Total Football is often misused to describe any attacking football. In its purest form, Total Football is proactive, not counter-attacking, based on positional interchange and hard pressing." (Wikipedia) This means that while the Attacking mentality is used, one does not necessarily mean the other. The passing style is the proof of this. I know that many of you who play attacking and want to go for possession-based football will prefer a short type of passing play, while most go for mixed passing. Especially those with an obsession for Barcelona (Not looking at anybody. Keraviln.), who play the evolved form (a derivative almost), will rarely use direct passing. Many of the Ajax players of that time described their passing as 'if there was a player running at goal, we'd give him the ball and run after him in support'. It sounds a lot like the English 'kick and rush', doesn't it? Committed tackling because of the evolution started by Vasovic's hard-sweeping skills and Neeskens' pure agressive approach. These guys could be called the godfathers of the pressing game (they are said to have started this and the team followed enthusiastically). Which is why we always leave pressing on! And for those who didn't know: pressing is one of the keys to Total Football in it's true form. They also started playing the offside trap, which is a lot more difficult in FMH with a sweeper. I'd let it out, personally, if you intend to play the offside trap but unfortunately; it's how they used to play it. Which means: so do we. As stated above: proactive football, not counter-attacking, which means no counter attack. Men behind ball: no for obvious reasons. Player Positions This is the hard one. Total Football is called 'total' because the players used to interchange positions constantly. This means that the goalie was the only one with a fixed position. You can't fully make this work on FMH. But we can try to get close! The sweeper steps in to give an extra man in defence while the BpD moves forward to join the DLM. The BBM move to and fro the attack and defence, giving extra men in defence and attack. The InF drift in from the flanks to form a 3 man attack with a DLF which will drop back to give the ball to InFs and BBMs. (You have to try to imagine this at play; it's a very dynamic style which recreates the tactic for 50%. The other 50 can't be made because you'd have to be able to plays sideway arrows). It comes as close as 50% and that's what we'll have to do it with. Why the DLF? Cruijff was said to always be everywhere, except where he 'was told to be: at the front', and this is exactly what Total Football is all about. That's all theory, but what about practice? And what better team to use than modern day Ajax? (Didn't finish the season because I felt it sufficiently proved my point.) Decent league results, cup results were rather mixed. Does anyone recognise these? My biggest defeat, the rest were 'acceptable' defeats. Seems like very decent results, if you ask me Ruthless in every way. And last but not least: Totaalvoetbal is said to average 3 goals/game and I've made exactly that! Conclusion We can draw a very short conclusion from this case study: it's a hard one to recreate and we only try to get as near as possible to perfection. All in all, I think I've succeded pretty well. Keep in mind that I'm not a master tactician, especially not when it comes to recreation. I hope you enjoyed my, rather academically, written case study of 70's Ajax. Let me know what you think of it and where you agree/disagree. While it's probably not even near perfection, I think this gives a pretty good idea of the possibilities to translate this legendary 'Champions Maker'. (Pray excuse me for the fact that it's a bit messy at times, I conmfort myself with the knowledge that everything you NEED to know about it is in there. Somewhere.) Thank you for reading, Love and all that Jazz, Jens Sources: Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics: A History of Football Tactics, Jonathan Wilson. Orion Books Ltd, 2008. Wikipedia (22/04) http://www.holdingmidfield.com/?p=629 (Joshua Askew, 2012) For more sources: visit the Wikipedia page's references section for more books and websites on the subject matter. This post has been promoted to an article