How to analyse your own game

Being able to analyse your own game is very important when it comes to improving. If you don’t know what you’re struggling with, then you also don’t know what to work on. If you don’t know your strengths, then you also don’t know how to build a playstyle around them. So let’s figure out how to analyse yourself.

Ask yourself questions It all starts with taking a step back and asking yourself a couple of questions:

• How do I score goals?
• How do I concede goals?
• How do I lose possession?
• Which opponent’s defending style is uncomfortable for me?
• Which opponent’s attacking style is uncomfortable for me?
• Which opponent’s do I match up well against?

The list goes on but you get the point. Reflect on what seems to go well for you and what doesn’t. This will lead to you having a general idea about what to improve on:

• I often concede to counter attacks
• I struggle in 1vs1 situations
• I can’t deal with pressing
• I can’t score against opponents who defend deep

Especially in the beginning of your improvement journey, these broad areas of the game can really help you to get better quickly. The more advanced you get, the more you need to figure out concrete mistakes though, because it’s getting harder to understand what exactly your mistakes are in these areas.

Analyze your gameplay At this point it is vital that you start taking a look at your gameplay. During a match, everything is happening fast and your brain is occupied with playing. You may concede a goal and have no idea what you could have done better to defend there. But when you then rewatch the clip after the game it will be crystal clear to you right away. Because you are laid back. And you can watch the clip multiple times and in slow motion.

The broad problems described above will now become more concrete:

• I don’t defend through ball properly
• I anticipate too much in 1vs1 situations
• I don’t play bad passes but I lose the ball when dribbling
• My attacks are very slow and I can’t find gaps since the opponent is able to cover everything

There are two main ways to analyze: The quick and easy option is to take a look at the match highlights after the game. There you can find all the goals and some chances, so you’re able to rewatch the most important moments of a match.

However of course there is much more to a game than the goals that happened. And so in order to really dive deep, you have to record your matches. Down at the bottom of this lesson you can find an instruction on how to record your own gameplay.

What’s important when analyzing full matches is that you need to start asking “Why?” questions. Why did I lose the ball there? Why is my opponent able to defend my skill moves so easily? Why can I never get pressure on the ball in defense? If you just take a look at what happens, then you are not going to get behind the reasons for it happening. And even when asking the right questions, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out your own mistakes. Because after all you are missing some portion of knowledge about the game.

Compare your game with others That’s where taking a look at other players and/or getting feedback from others comes in. It is ALWAYS helpful to get a different perspective on the game. Let’s say you struggle with pressuring the opponent. Take a look at a pro player who is known for his pressure play and compare to yourself:

• Which players does he select?
• When does he cover passing lanes and when does he attack the ball?
• When does he use second man press?
• When and how does he tackle?

You can do the same by asking a friend or someone from the THE GUIDE+ discord server. Just have a look at each other's game and you will both notice things you would do differently. Talk about it and discuss together what the advantage/disadvantage of each approach is and what the ideal solution will probably look like.

If you analyze your game like this at least once a week, then you are going to make major steps forward. Especially if you then watch the content from THE GUIDE+ that is tailored to your problems. This is what we’re going to cover in the next article on improvement, as soon as it’s released, it will be linked here!

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About the author Georg "CruZzAve" Raffelt is creating tutorials since 2013 around which time he also started his competitive journey in the game. He was able to qualify for the Grand Final of the German National Championship "Virtuelle Bundesliga" twice in 2014 and 2015. Online he managed to reach the weekly and monthly Top100 in the Weekend League numerous times.

In case you didn't know: You can also access THE GUIDE+ on your PC with our Web Version and watch the lessons on a bigger screen. Here is the link: www.theguide.gg

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Future Logo Intro" by WinnieTheMoog (https://taigasoundprod.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)