Dealing With Advanced Pressing

Pressing is very dominant in FC 24 and the better your opponents get, the more problematic it can become. In this lesson we give an overview about all important techniques and concepts that can help you to break the opponent's press.

Key takeaways for this lesson:

• A mix of dribbling, passing and other techniques are helpful to deal with pressing. Here is a quick write up for every technique or concept. For most of the points, there is another in-depth lesson about this topic linked.
• Safe Dribbling: paying attention from which side the opponent wants to win the ball and dribbling a safe manner so the opponent can't get to it. Very important technique, when the opponent is applying direct pressure to you in 1vs1.
• Safe Ball Control: when receiving a ball, it is important to control the ball in a direction away from the opponent, similar to Safe Dribbling.
• Breaking Game Direction: a concept for changing the flow and direction in your attack to ruin the anticipation of the opponent for your next pass. Very helpful to get more space with the player on the ball and distribute the ball safely afterwards.
• Switching Sides: pressing is most often enabled by overloading the ball side from the defending team, making the space very dense and leaving no room. Hence, switching the side with a long ball is very helpful to get more space.
• Calling A Teammate Short: by pressing R1/RB and aiming towards a player, you call a player short. Very helpful to create safe passing options, especially for wingers or central midfielders.
• Bounce Back Passes: when you play the ball to a player that faces immediate pressure, you can just play a one-touch pass back. This can also be a part of Breaking Game Direction.
• 1-2 Passes: by pressing L1/LB + X/A you initiate 1-2 passes. This can help to create attacking movement and is especially useful, when your opponent pulls out players to apply pressure, but leaving some space behind them.
• Watching Selected Player: paying attention to the selected player of the opponent is crucial to understand what they defend and plan your next move.
• Spotting The Press & Gaps: in the moment when you win ball possession, you should pay attention to the opponent's players and how they press. In these situations it's vital to spot the gaps and punish it right away to get out of the pressing early on.
• Get A Feel For The Pitch: when you play the ball in your own half, you should get a feel on how the opponent's players are distributed on the pitch. You face a lot of resistance on one side, having no real options to pass to? It's very likely you have a lot of space on the other side. Take actions to play a safe pass to the other side.
• Radar Usage: the radar can helpful to confirm open players outside of the camera perspective and also identify targets for calling a player short.
• Not Playing Slow: sometimes it can be really hurtful to play too slow in your attack, allowing more and more players of the opponent's team to get involved in the team pressing. So when you see a good chance to play forward before every defensive player is in position, make sure to make use of it.

About the author: Benjamin "TaZz" Drexler is creating tutorial videos since 2011 and started to compete in tournaments at the same time. Among several weekly and monthly Top100 finishes in FUT Champions, he reached the Top8 at the Virtual Bundesliga in 2013/14 and finished in the Top8 in 2017 at the first European Regional Qualifier Event in Paris.

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