Quicksand: P2P Snacks #19

It's time for a New Year's resolution.

Hello my friends! We’re now a full 11 days into the New Year and I’ve already been doing some reflecting. I’m not really one for resolutions so to speak, but I’ve been thinking about some FIFA resolutions that I really should make to improve my game, so straight off the top, I’ve got a confession to make…

I’m kinda bad at finishing. I just finished a match where I outshot my opponent 14-6. The final score? 5-4 in my favor. I wish this was an outlier, but it’s really the norm. To blame it all on my finishing is a bit unfair and requires a deeper look into chance creation as a whole. As a quick aside, it’s a major pet peeve of mine when people say, “look at this 14-6 shots in my favor…this game is rigged!” etc., etc. 

To uncover the issue, it has to start with my play style. I’m a hyper-aggressive defender to a fault. I spoke about it briefly on the most recent FUT Weekly Podcast, but the TLDR is I often times play with the mentality of trying to bait my opponent into trying to dribble past one of my defenders in transition. I’m a gambling man and usually, I get to play the casino. It works in my favor more often than it doesn’t as most players (bar the truly elite) rely on muscle memory without thought to play fast-paced titles. It looks like I’m going left but as soon as I’ve told my defender to go left, I’m already pulling him back to the right in anticipation of the attacker’s change in direction. When I guess wrong, I give up a lot of clean breaks on goal. The point of this? My opponents’ 6 shots are oftentimes high-quality 1-on-1 opportunities with the keeper.

Often, I don’t have the same quality of chances even in the 14 attempts. I’m living in a world where I have to select the right finishing option and I’m not always great at it. One of the easiest changes I could make to my game is to incorporate timed finishing. I don’t use it. I couldn’t get comfortable with it and found it didn’t help me that much in previous FIFAs. This year, I could do with the help. I’ll caveat this by saying the majority of the goals I score are clear-cut chances generated by a good bit of passing play. Timed finishing might not be very important in converting those opportunities. However, there’s no doubt it matters in the close matches.

This leads to the core issue: I’m prone to panicky play when I’m down a goal. I rush my chances, and if I get a chance to shoot, I hit and hope when I could look for the extra pass like I normally would. It’s a core aspect of my FIFA game and it’s what I dislike most about myself as a FIFA player. Summed up…I’m prone to quicksand.

What’s quicksand? I’ve never found a better description than this Keanu classic from the movie, The Replacements…have a watch:

It’s wildly apparent how this applies to FIFA.

1. Catch a bad break and concede a silly goal. (0-1)

2. Rush in transition and give up a silly counter. (0-2)

3. Rush even more and miss an easy opportunity.

4. Desperately try to win the ball back to rectify the miss and get countered. (0-3)

5. In over your head at 3-0 down vs. a good opponent.

Quicksand.

My FIFA resolution for 2023? Avoid the quicksand. Improving my finishing will help, but the mindset matters more.

As we come to a close here…just a quick reminder that the newsletter has moved to p2psnacks.substack.com. If you would do me a favor and just make sure this didn’t end up in your spam, that would be great! Also, please join us on Discord! I ended up getting talked into doing the 88+ Icon SBC because of the pulls I was seeing…shout out to 88 Desailly who is above average. 

Talk soon,

Japes

P.s. Squad update below :)