Good day everyone, it's SoE x here, and welcome back to another video on this channel. Today, I want to talk about a formation.
The 4-1-4-1 Formation: A Tactical Breakdown
Basically, the 4-1-4-1 is similar to the 4-5-1 flat, but instead of three central midfielders, you have one CDM and two CMs. It's slightly more defensive, but that CDM can play a very pivotal role in this formation.
- Build Up Play: Balanced
- Defensive Approach: Aggressive
- Line Height: 91
- Line Width: 91
- This setup gives you offside traps and midfield congestion, which is very powerful and important this year. If you're not comfortable with this line height, you can lower it to 70 or 50.
Player Roles and Instructions
Let's break down the player roles:
- Striker: Advanced Forward, Focus on Attack. This player is your primary central attacker, so they should be good with both feet, great at finishing, pace, and dribbling. I definitely suggest playing an all-rounder attacker here.
- Left Midfielder & Right Midfielder: Inside Forward, Focus on Attack. These two will act like a left and right forward when attacking, making this formation similar to the 4-3-2-1. We don't want them staying wide; this isn't the 4-4-2. We want them more involved in the center, making diagonal runs. This is what this formation is all about: having just one striker in the center is never enough to break down your opponents. For your wingers, you want fast players who are good at finishing and dribbling.
- Center Midfielders (CMs): Playmaker, Roam. Roaming makes these two players sometimes play a little bit wider, going a bit to the wings. If you don't have players who can hit a through ball or send a fantastic long ball, then have these two players, or at least one of them, on Playmaker and Attack.
- CDM: Holding, Focus on Defend. If you want to play the 4-5-1 flat instead of the 4-1-4-1, make this a holding CM. The central player here is like the pivotal role of the midfield. You can have this player be out of position when you're getting countered, or running up too much in the field. Whether it's the 4-5-1 or the 4-1-4-1, having this player on holding is very important to me.
- Fullbacks: Both on Fullback, Balanced. This way, we can guarantee to always have a neat back four with a CDM playing right in front of them, so counterattacks shouldn't be much of a problem. Again, if you want to make this formation a slightly more attacking formation, you can have one of the fullbacks playing as a wing back role. Even though we have the wingers already providing us with some width and the two CMs really helping us in attack, I really don't think it's necessary.
- Center Backs: Defender, Defend. No matter what roll plus and roll plus plus your center backs have, always keep your two center backs on Defender and Defend. It's going to help a lot with keeping a very solid offside line. If you have the roll on anything else, one of them is going to move forward a little bit, creating a gap behind them. You really don't want that.
- Goalkeeper: Whatever role Plus or all Plus+ they have.
I'm going to leave the code on the screen so you can copy it for your game, and I'm also putting the code down in the description. Whenever you're trying to use a code on your game to load up a formation, make sure to check every single player role before you actually go and play a game. Sometimes when you enter a code, the player roles just go back to default, so just keep that in mind.
Gameplay Analysis
This is probably the best formation I've played with this year, and it's not even close. You have three central players in your midfield, and you have the left and right midfielders who go forward and play more like a left forward and right forward role. So you have the attacking width, you have the central players, you have the wing players, and when you're defending, you got five midfielders dominating the midfield at all times. When you're trying to apply some pressure, you got players scattered all around the pitch, making it so easy to switch and just keep the pressure on your opponent. When you are getting pressed, again, you got options all around the pitch: left mid, right mid, three central players to dictate the tempo. Seriously, I love this formation. I played 15 games of my FUT Champs with this and I barely missed out on rank two. I want to say still the five at the back meta is going to dominate the game this year, but when it comes to four at the backs, these sort of formations I think are the best to go for.