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Imo, LI continues to be the strongest offense. 3-2 zone is likely stronger than M2M at this point. You can't analyze matches unless you're taking into both though, and a manager can't reasonably build a team with both.
I've decided to build a team to use 3-2 zone and to create a less-than-perfect but versatile offense because I want to make it more difficult for my opponent to correctly use GDP, I guess similar to Capali. Maybe having a GDP for defense could help encourage more versatility in defensive options as well? Coaches game planning for an opponent who always uses zone/m2m makes sense to me.

As much as I'd like to agree with you and the "3 offensive players is a huge downside", "you have to build a different team" argument, I really can't.

It is probably valid in the B3 scene, where you'll play against crazy players with crazy salaries and to beat them you'll have to go with a crazy roster too. But is it valid in the rest of the game? I really don't think so. Look at U21 games and the defesnive choices of the top teams (Israel, Italy for example), more often than not it's 3-2. Do they have defensive C's? Nope, just the regular "150k salary sell for 50k" type of U21 players, but they still enable 3-2 with great success and no real downside, even on offense.

And I agree that it's not too overpowered performance wise, but it's too overpowered in terms of tactics. It's not good, when a defensive tactic that kills outside is also the best option to kill inside aswell. Especially when there exists a counterpart of the 3-2, that's supposed to do things aswell.

U21 is kind of a specialty in this game where you are forced to build as good players as possible as fast as possible. This often doesn't allow you to make optimal builds to counter some strategies, i.e. the fact that guards have very little IS. I think the shift towards 3-2 zone is more of a result that it's very difficult to build good SF by the age of 21. That forces teams to play 3-2 since they don't have good enough player for SF position to play M2M.

If you go to NT level, you can see that 3-2 zone is much less used and useful in there. B3 obviously prefers M2M besides few exceptions. I'm not sure but I haven't seen BBM tier winner with 3-2 team yet, though I might be wrong with this one. National leagues also are still mostly won with more traditional approach. Even in the lower levels M2M still continues to dominate, i.e. my 2nd division has multiple teams that focus on 3-2 zone. All of them do pretty well but the ones promoting have been M2M teams for as long as I've been in this league. So answer to your question "is it valid in the rest of the game?" - I think it's much more difficult to execute than people think when you have to deal with salaries, potential caps, tactical versatility etc.

Personally I see 3-2 zone as a counterpart to M2M, not to 2-3 zone. In my mind 1-3-1 zone and 2-3 zone are the real counterparts. I agree that those 2 and box defenses need a fix so we would see more differently built teams and argue more which tactic is overpowered rather than just arguing between M2M and 3-2.

Well, open up chinese II divisions and you'll see that almost everyone that's competing for a title is playing 3-2 extensively.

In terms of U21, you seem out of touch. Most top U21 teams have plenty of IS on guards . Plenty being even up to 16 this season. A single case tho.

Personally I see 3-2 zone as a counterpart to M2M, not to 2-3 zone. In my mind 1-3-1 zone and 2-3 zone are the real counterparts. I agree that those 2 and box defenses need a fix so we would see more differently built teams and argue more which tactic is overpowered rather than just arguing between M2M and 3-2.

Well, as it is now, yes, 3-2 is a counterpart of m2m, but looking at the rule page and the intentions of it, we can can clearly see what are the counterparts and what drawbacks should it propose to games. Clearly it wasnt made to be used against inside.

Last edited by Kritulys at 1/7/2022 6:14:28 AM

I didn't say there isn't any IS, but to my knowledge the squads aren't filled with 16 IS players. Last seasons European champion Italy had around 10 IS on their best guards so I base my assumptions on that. I wouldn't think that the situation in larger scale hasn't changed much. But I know for example Poland likes to train much more IS to their players.

And this seasons WC finalists have collectively used 3-2 zone once this season. So I'm not really sure where you see the problem here but I agree to you that 3-2 zone has much more usefulness in U21 matches than in other aspects of the game.

Also looked at the Chinese II division and I could find that 2 of the 8 teams in the finals are regularly playing 3-2 zone. 1 win, 1 loss. In addition 2 other teams played 3-2 zone in the first final but in other playoff matches they played M2M. 1 win, 1 loss. So I think 'almost' everyone is bit overexaggerating.

Well of course I don't know all the details, but few of the players were on transfer list and they had 8 and 10 IS if I remember correct. From the other 4 guards who played in the final only 1 had been ever trained as a C and only for around 5 weeks. And they played LI in the final too. So unless they trained IS off position, I can't find any reason to believe your claim that they had a lot higher IS than 10.

But I think this is getting bit off topic so feel free to message me privately if you want to discuss further.

Yeah I'm also calling BS on the claim that U21 guards are reaching 16 IS. You'd lose too many skills in the primaries doing that within 4 seasons.

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 1/7/2022 5:33:58 AM