Sjor Bepo/Jim Beam vs. Don Alfredo
Sjor Bepo/Jim Beam
Formation: 4-4-2 Diamonds are Forever
Playing style: fluid front three in a counter-attacking side
You are as strong as your weakest link. Sir Jean Alain Boumsong or as friends call him - Boum Boum joined our team on a lovely sunny day in early december thanks to a feck of a certain poster called Jimbo.
Game changer from the very first second - the plan was to make him as comfortable as we can so the team will drop deep, stay very narrow and compact and let them attack. Team is full of hard working players and you would have to dig very deep to find better offensive defenders then Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez, partnership proven at highest level. Plan was always to play a very direct game as we picked Suarez first so we are very confident we can cause damage on the counter with Gray and Kaka as our focal points.
Three key concepts and ideas:
Utilization of space – make the pitch as big as you can while attacking and small as you can while defending. In defense press the opposition, at times fanatically, when they get the ball over the certain line and push them out wide if possible. In the attack stretch the opposition and counter on every possible opportunity.
The fluidity of front three - as we already mentioned, we have a proven partnership of Tevez and Rooney up front, both work harder then anyone on that pitch and are comfortable in every position of that front line. Kaka is the one that will have a bit of freedom defensive wise as we want him available to ran the counter ASAP when we win the ball. He will find pockets of space from where he can launch himself to the counter as effective as possible.
Diego Godin - comfortably the best modern day centerback post Ferdinand era. Not only his lives and thrives in this defensive setups but he also possesses one crucial quality because of which he was our number 1 priority - everyone he ever played at his peak he made better. From Miranda looking like a WC player to fecking Savic playing at highest level of football. We dont expect that he can turn Boumsong into Bobby Moore as we really dont want to downgrade but we feel he can do enough so this french international, former Juventus player, Ligue 1 and SPL Champion doesnt look like Lukaku on a football pitch.
In fullback position we have the german GOAT Andreas Brehme on the left and the best Ex Yu rightback of all time Fahrudin Jusufi - proud member of World Soccer XI in 1962, 1963 and 1968.
Shielding the back 4 is Nestor "Tito" Goncalves, player that made this sheep draft worth it as i fell in love. Very good defensive wise and classy as feck on the ball, reckon i will ruin his draft reputation further more as i plan to pick him on the regular basis.
On the right side we have the star of this team, spanish maestro Luis Suarez while on the other side we have a scottish magician in Eddie Gray. His former manager Don Revie described him the best: “when he plays on snow he doesn't leave any footprints”; immense dribbling capabilities and on the counter he could be unstoppable. He played this role before and we will provide footage of it.
As number 10, a player Team Beam is planning to build around since our first draft, forgotten man, forgotten great - Kaka. Force of nature that was unstoppable at his peak, pace, power, technique, vision...you name it, he mastered it.
Don Alfredo
I am very proud to have assembled this side because it is a remake of Klopp’s Dortmund, for many neutral observers the most exciting team of this decade.
They dominated German football for 2 years and just fell short in the CL final against Heynckes‘ Treble Bayern. Bayern (and other clubs) picked them off afterwards so they couldn’t possibly repeat their success. Still I loved to watch them play and I wanted to give it a go to build an even better version because they are one of the few teams in history who are both uber-defensive and uber-attacking.
The hardest part to get right was to find suitable upgrades for the playmakers, because if you don’t have those, you lose yourself in endless pressing battles like Klopp did at the end of his tenure. I like to think that I did really well in upgrading Götze and Gundogan, in fact the midfield combination of Iniesta and Modric is my favourite part of the team. Iniesta is a hard working needle player, specialist at passing, dribbling in tight spaces and through balls to set up the attackers. Modric is the perfect upgrade to Gundogan in my book, you can’t find another silky playmaker with the same work rate and defensive quality that he possesses.
Replicating Klopp’s Dortmund meant that I had to settle for a 4231 and look out for 2 hard-working and skillful wide players. I think I found 2 good ones, Bruno Conti is the perfect combination of grit and creativity from a wide midfield position and Marco Reus is proven to be one of the best attackers in Europe in this system.
All the other players should be shoe-ins for the roles which Klopp has assigned his players, I will just pay attention to two more players who may look odd at first.
Vincent Kompany is the first one, he is rarely used in these drafts and injuries pretty much robbed him from his prime years, but at his peak he was the best CB in the PL by far. I am very comfortable with putting him alongside Carvalho because he is exactly the kind of ultra-aggressive presence I want to have there. His physicality and strength in the air make him a very good upgrade on the rather limited Subotic and he functions as someone who can physically dominate any attacker put up against him. He also has experience in playing in a pressing system, which makes him a good fit here.
Arturo Vidal is the second one I want to talk about a bit more and he is actually the only slight deviation I made from the original ideas from Klopp. The formation graphic shows Sven Bender, but Sebastian Kehl was the captain and he played 34 matches in 2012/13 as well while being much more forward thinking than Bender. He loved to storm late into the box to finish off attacking moves and Arturo Vidal is a prime candidate for that kind of goal, to give me more goals from midfield. His tackling ability and his heading ability come in very handy to provide the steel in midfield like Bender and Kehl did and despite him not being a traditional DM, I believe he suits a Klopp side to a tee because of his warrior style and two-way-ferocity. Klopp’s sides usually defend on the front foot and that multiplies the effect Vidal will have on this team, he is not the one to wait in front of the defence all game until something happens.
Between Vidal, Modric and Iniesta I should have enough work rate to combat any midfield in the world and we also have to take into account that every single one of my players is defending and preventing attacks from the get-go, which means that the requirements regarding the midfield are much different compared to your usual draft side, who just chucks a Makelele behind 5 Galacticos to do all the dirty work.
Jorge Campos is in in goal, one of the best sweeper keepers ever and one of the greatest keepers of his generation. Genuinely outstanding on the line and very good nonetheless when coming out of his goal because of his athletic attributes and his experience of playing as a full-time striker. I will expand more on him during the match, he is worth checking out for sure.
