The three dials
Pressing sets how hard your team hunts the ball without it. Style sets how many players commit forward with it, from defensive to all-out attacking. Tempo sets how quickly the ball moves, from patient possession to one-touch football.
None of them is 'more is better'. Each has a band where it cooperates with your formation and play style, and a red zone where it works against them.
Safe bands by play style
As a rule of thumb from thousands of engine evaluations:
- Passing game: tempo 40-60. Quick-passing tempo defeats the point of patient circulation.
- Wing play: tempo 44-74 and moderate style; the wide runs need time to develop.
- Counter attack: lower style (30-45) with high tempo (65-85) so breaks are direct.
- Shoot on sight: higher style, any tempo, and accept more wasted shots.
- Long ball: low tempo dependence; midfield sliders matter less than the target man.
Combinations that break tactics
The engine flags these as coherence risks: very high tempo with wing play (crosses launched before wingers arrive), maximum pressing with an attacking style (nobody left behind the ball when it turns over), and a high defensive line without the pace or the trap to protect it.
If your Match Tester score dips below 60, the reason is almost always one slider sitting outside its band, not the formation itself.
Test before you trust
You do not have to guess. Build the tactic in the studio and run the Match Tester. The rating and the risk list come from the same deterministic engine, so a fix you make is a fix you can verify.