The Basque Way
Athletic Bilbao have a place in every FM24 player’s heart. They are a signal for purity in their football and the players in their history. Time to take the league!
Welcome back to another guide in the La Liga series on FM24. In this series we manage each Spanish league club and create a guide to help you get started. This is not a comprehensive guide, but it will be enough to get you going. The problem most managers have when managing a new team is they don’t know who their first eleven are.
This time around we are using Athletic Bilbao on FM24. This guide is one that I have been looking forward to because they are a unique club. The only players that can play for them are players of Basque descent. This in itself brings a whole new angle to the game. How successful can we make them?
In our guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with Athletic Bilbao, including:
- What objectives Athletic Bilbao have and why they are important.
- The different types of players and how they work in the squad.
- Tips, tactics, and best practices to succeed with Athletic Bilbao.
Let’s take Athletic Bilbao to the top!
Athletic Bilbao objectives
Our step on our journey to create Athletic Bilbao into a champ on FM24 is to review the board and supporter objectives. This is where we will get our direction as to the football style and recruitment. You can look at this in two ways, either as a limitation or guidance to supporting you.
Looking at the board objectives we can see that there isn’t too much to go on. The main thing that they want us to do is to grow the club’s reputation. As we cannot sign anyone other than Basque players, then we are going to have to achieve this through success in competitions.
Other than that we are looking at keeping the club sustainable and locking down our players contracts over 4 years. I think that with a team like this we need to be looking at developing the youth system and the staff involved to give us the best chance. This way we can supply a first team and push the standards up and sell anyone who does not make the cut.
The supporters I feel have a better idea of how the club should be run. They want to develop the youth as I have agreed above. This is because we have limited opportunities when it comes to signing players and developing the squad. If we create a centre of excellence with the best youth coaches, scouts and head of youth development then we can push this club forward.
Another thing that we can control is the way we play and the supporters have some great ideas surrounding this. Attacking football and high tempo pressing go hand in hand in a gegenpress system. The direct passing doesn’t quite fit the plan and I may introduce this further down the line. Set pieces are just a try hard feature at this point, while not a focus it is always there.
Athletic Bilbao First 11
Our next step to greatness is to figure out who is in our plans, especially in our first team. We do this by deciding who the right people are and who the wrong people are. Using the assistant reports we will sort the player in three categories – key, squad and unwanted players.
Players over 3 stars are key players in the squad, 3 sat players are the squad players and anyone under 3 stars in ready to leave. The only exception to this rule is when we have players under 3 stars current ability but higher potential.
Let’s have a look at our key players. These guys are more important than at any other team just because we can not easily recruit to replace them. We have a really strong core to this team, and two very lively wingers. Our main attack here is going down the wings and crossing it into a forward.
The Williams brothers are going to key to our success when going forward. On first inspection we can see a 433 starting to form, with out a striker we can’t be sure yet.
Looking at the squad we can see that they can work around a 433 DM. This is a solid assumption, defensively sound and could work around a target man. The main thing here is that we have a flexible squad to work with any formations we choose. This is a good depth and a fairly good skill level.
Athletic Bilbao Tactics
We now need to put it all together, all the assumptions we have made above and see how it works out.
So as always I will start with how we are going to score goals. With the talent we have on the wings it would be mad to ignore it. Luckily we have target forward, which against we can go either way with.
If we play attacking target forward you are playing the equivalent to Teddy Sheringham or Les Ferdinand. If you play with the supporting role he is playing a Kevin Davies position, knocking down the ball and playing in other players to score goals. I’ve gone with the support role to start to play the wingers in as they are our best players.
The main thing here is that we want to get down the byline and cross the ball into the waiting striker who will knock it down to our oncoming midfielders and opposite winger. The full backs will push up, but their role in this is to defend against the counter. The doubt in my mind is that we are not committing enough players to the attack.
The defence is as tight as we can probably make it. We have an anchorman to protect the back line, and a cover and stopper central defender to complement each other. With this we are protecting the space behind the back line and stopping teams dribbling through us.
Get started with Brighton today
Athletic Bilbao on FM24 presents a very unique challenge. With the caveat that you can only sign basque players it makes you think outside the box in being competitive. I’m not going to lie, it’s not an easy challenge, but with the right planning you can do it.
The strength of this team is without doubt the wide men, the wingers are fast and skillful. We need to focus the attack through them as they are going to be the link between the midfield and attack. The weakness in this team is the forward situation, there is depth and versatility but there is very little quality.
The opportunity in the team is the youth system that we could create and have conveyor belt of top Basque talent coming through. This would help us reinforce the club and then create revenue stream with those that won’t make it.
The threat is that we waste our resources and as a result do not get a payoff. So this would mean that the long term future would be bleak. We need to make sure that every decision is efficient and geared towards our goals.
Start a game with Athletic Bilbao today! Comment below on the guide or how you get on, drop us a like if you want.
