Klopp’s learning ground
Mainz are a great team to manage. They are a middle of the road team that needs a new manager on FM24 to take them to greatness! Join the revolution today.
So here we are, Klopp’s old stomping ground, Mainz 05 on FM24. This is the club he played for and then went on to manage for another 8 years. He put the foundations in place to play the style of football you see today, gegenpressing.
He achieved midtable finishes in the Bundesliga with Mainz 05 and even Europe at one point, even though they had the smallest stadium and smallest budgets in the league. They eventually were relegated and after failing to be promoted he resigned.
Since then they were promoted back to the Bundesliga and they have averaged a finishing position of 13th in the league over the last 13 years. It’s time to shake this club up and move them to greatness!
In our FM24 guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with Mainz 05, including:
- What objectives Mainz 05 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 Mainz 05.
Let’s push on and see how we can make Mainz 05 even better!
Mainz Objectives
The first step of this journey to understand what the board are aiming to achieve. As well as that we need to understand the Mainz 05 supporter base on FM24.
Straight away I am picking up on two themes that complement each other:
- Youth development
- Buying German players in Germany
The first part is easy, we need to focus on the facilities when we can to develop the club. We also need to make sure the staff are on the same page. So we will be searching for staff with high working with youngsters and motivation. Anyone in the club without these attributes will be leaving.
We need to assess and recruit for every staff position in the youth development process. The coaches, the head of youth development, the under managers and the scouts. The scouts will be different as they need to have high judging potential to recruit.
Our next objective is to scour Germany for the best talent and snap them up. This is one of the steps that PSG took to bolster their youth after ignoring local talents for decades.
The supporters are more interested in the style of the Mainz team. They want high tempo pressing and attacking football, this automatically leads to playing gegenpress football on FM24.
They also want to see youth player developed and brought through to the first team. We have discussed how to achieve this above.
Mainz First 11
Let’s meet the team next, we will split the team into three groups, the 3 star rated, the over three and under three star current rated players. The over three star rated we will call the key players and create the formation around. The 3 star players are the squad players and will flesh out the formation around the key players.
Players under 3 star ratings are likely to leave, unless they have high potential which will be common with youth players.
We have a lot of key players in the Mainz 05 team on FM24. Most of these players are in their prime of over 27 so we have a couple of good years in them.
The main plan here is that when they hit 30 they will be pushed towards the door. We do however have two players who are 23 and have a long career ahead of them.
We have a large squad at Mainz 05 on FM24 so we will need to trim the fat a bit. Our first objective is to get rid of the under 3 star players, Linsmayer has no future here unfortunately. Wieper and Papela both have high potential and will be used to rotate in to get game time.
The next step over the season is start moving on players that are over 30, this gets their high wages off the board and gives us an opportunity to build for the future. Each season we will look to move 2-5 youth players up for their debut season.
Mainz Tactics
We now understand more about Mainz 05 on FM24. The Bundesliga can be a difficult place to navigate as the football is very attacking and there are some very big teams. Let’s put all the information together from above, I think this is going to be an easy one!
Let’s start with the way in which we will score goals. The majority of our goals are going to come through our two man strike force, both of which complement each other.
Currently we have Ajorque who is playing the deep lying forward role and wins everything in the air. The advanced role is played by Onisiwo who’s pace is stretching defences and collecting balls played through. The third outlet is the AMC who will jump in on the action with assists and goals.
The midfield is there to crowd out the centre and force the opposition to the wide positions. This seems to be working as our fullbacks are the ones with the highest average tackles per game. With the crowded out centre we are stopping two man midfields and making it impossible for passing play through the middle.
Defensively we still have some work to do. Due to the high defensive line from playing gegenpress football it’s a lot of pressure put on the defenders. They need to have a high pace and also be good in the air due to pushing teams out wide.
There are a few ways to break this, we change to a mid block which Klopp used to use in Germany, we play with a 5 man defence and crowd out the opposition in the air or we recruit better defenders.
Results
So to give you an idea of how things are going I have started giving an example of the results from ten games in. While this is not definitive it is a quarter of a season and will gauge how things could go.
As you can see it is a good start, but I still can’t help feeling annoyed at the results. We are surpassing expectations massively, but we drew with bottom of the league and lost to Gladbach when they we bottom. Both games were unlucky, we had a lot of shots and not enough class.
Overall, we are doing really well, averaging a 2-1 win with a goal difference of +10. We are averaging 2 points a game and will see us end up in the top four or five if it carries on.
Get started with Mainz today
As I said in the beginning Mainz 05 look set to be a great team to manage on FM24. There is an opportunity here to take them from being good to great. The excellent youth set up, if harnessed correctly, will provide a revenue stream and great players.
I think the strength of the team is that there is a fantastic youth set up and players like Weiper coming through. We could see some amazing talent coming through and they could take us further.
So the weakness of the team, or the immediate weakness of the team is the amount of bad injuries. Thankfully there is a big squad to get us through the short term, but when we start shifting players on this could be a problem. Additionally after studies, younger players with a high injury rate will never fulfil their potential.
The opportunity of the team is to rebuild this team into the wonderkid capital of Europe. Once everyone is on board and focussed on youth development then there is nothing stopping this team.
The threat of Mainz 05 is any disruption to the youth development. Also this means that we need to protect our staff and youth players. Additionally we can use this to steal top talent at other clubs.
Start a game with Mainz 05 today! Comment below on the guide or how you get on, drop us a like if you want.
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