Last week, Istanbul hosted the finals of the eChampions League, where the best players around the world had to have a final clash to be the champion, and then Emre Yilmaz won it. Even though he had to battle all the way through the lower bracket, he was able to beat his talented opponents one by one. 

So, today, we are going to give you three dominant aspects that he used to become the best in the eChampions League. 

1. Manual Pressing

Let’s start with Emre’s signature aspect.

All around the platforms, I see a lot of players who are complaining about their Defenders not pressing and just chilling around. But Emre has a unique Manual Pressing method that allows him to press up high and incredibly covered multiple opportunities while also making the available area very limited to play to. But how?

To bring up multiple players up high towards a Dribbler, you need to control those players. But how would you control multiple players at the same time? The answer is simple. You don’t.

But if you switch between them fast enough consistently, then you can give momentary moments to them and then cover a huge area. There are two mechanics that you will need for this:

First off, the Right Stick Switching. Because you need to zap between multiple players and the Right Stick Switching is going to help you switch to the exact player you want.

Secondly, you will need the Second Man Pressure. Let’s say you are pressing with two players towards one Attacker. One is covering the right side, the other is the left. 

You manually control one of them. And by pressing the Second Man Pressure, you make sure that the other player stays in the position and gets close to the Attacker to reduce the gap in case you need to switch to him.

Emre uses those mechanics really efficient. After seeing a potential passing opportunity, Emre selects the closest player available and gets him on the passing lane. 

This is the moment where he lets go of that player and selects another Defender to cover the space he created for the opponent.

But while doing that, he presses the Second Man Pressure so that the initial player used to cover the first opportunity remains on the same line to block the same pass and gets a bit closer to the Dribbler.

Emre switches rapidly to Genola again to see if he can make a defensive move. But then he sees the passing Lane to pull it so he instantly switches back to 2-ray to cover the passing lane. 

Suddenly, the area that the Dribbler has became really tight just because Emre used this method to close the gap. And there’s manages to get the ball forward. But by doing the same method, Emre traps him in the side and eventually manages to get the ball back from him with this pressure.

Here is another. Up high with Ronaldo, he presses at the defense offender to force a mistake. 

When he sees that the game direction is going upwards, he instantly switches to Genola and pushes him a couple steps forward to give him a momentum towards that side. Because if you do that, he will continue going forward once you switch away from him. 

In the meanwhile, he switches to Turi in case the ball gets played to the center. But as soon as he sees the movement towards the upper side, he switches to Genola, gives him again a movement towards the passing lane and rapidly switches to Ronaldo to cover the potential passing lane towards the other Central back. 

You see, he is also using the Second Man Pressure here and consistently switches between those players to give the pressure of hell and force a mistake.

Umut is forced to play the ball towards his side. But again, Emre recovers all the angles with quick switching and pushing forward. This kind of a defense is really exhausting for the Attackers. And finally, Umut makes a mistake and Emre wins the ball. Emre thinks always one step ahead of his opponent and makes his decisions accordingly. Knowing the best mechanics in the game helps this thinking quite a lot. 

2. Incredible Passing Flow

Emre shows quick thinking also on the other side of the pitch, which brings the huge decisiveness to his Passing Flow, which leads to the goal very easily.

Especially when it gets the ball back from the opponent, he looks for the opportunity up front and makes a hard pass look so simple and gets to the Box directly. He sees the defense symbol beforehand and gets the pass of the most optimal side away from the pressure.

In the meanwhile, using fake movements, such as turning towards one side, forces the opponent to take the Defender towards that direction and this allows him to play the ball exactly where he wants to bring tempo to his build up. He knows exactly how to control the tempo and dodge the most obvious chances to get the best Passing Flow.

Here, most of the players with pastable to Genola. But since he doesn’t want to trap himself under pressure in the center against the selected Defender, he passes the ball to Ronaldo patiently waiting for his Winger to run forward since the other players offside and lifts the ball towards him inside the Box.

Again, most of the players would try to go for the past year and he knows that Umut is going to defend the pass. He turns himself towards the goal, green times it, and scores it. 

He shows this Incredible Passing Flow against a settled defense as well. Starting with a slow tempo, he analyzes the situation and draws a picture in its head. Remember, the perfect Passing Flow is about picturizing the steps in your head before they even happen. 

So while the ball is traveling, you need to see the steps as he does. As the ball is arriving, take a look at the selected Defender and the Attacker he covers and go for the other opportunity. Plan your next step. Your Striker is walking free in the backyard and one other Defender is denying the offside. So, the only thing that you need to do is to dodge the Defender who is coming at you. Taking a step towards the side where the ball is coming from gives you a wider angle and you can assist it to the Striker. 

What’s a passing flow? It all happened so fast. But under every step, there is a reasoning, and that is why it is perfect.

3. First Timed Lifted Through Balls

During his attacks, Emre used vary techniques to beat his opponent. But the one that caught my attention was actually the First Timed Lifted Through Balls.

He consistently made his players run in behind a defensive line. These runs may not be rewarded all the time. But if he can manage to use them in this specific way, it can create deadly opportunities.

Let’s take a look at how Emre executed such a setup. The first step for this is to trigger a run for a player you can trigger a run for the initial Dribbler with a one, two pass by holding on to the L1 & LB button and going for a short pass or trigger a run for another player by pointing him out with the left analog stick and briefly tapping the L1 & LB button.

We have seen throughout the tournament that Emre used a second variation. So, he makes a player run and then chooses a second player that has a good angle to get the ball to the runner with a first time pass.

The timing is crucial here. You have to time the second pass exactly at the point where your runner is about to get a Defender. Not earlier so that you can run off with it and not later so that you don’t get into outside.

Once the ball is on its way to the second player, point out your target’s running direction and power it up with a lifted three ball before the ball arrives so that you can send it first time. If the Defender doesn’t select his defendant beforehand and moving backwards, this becomes deadly.

Here is however executed this mode not once but twice in a single position. First, he makes Genola run on the wing. The pass towards him is being covered by Gullit, a player you can buy by using your FUT 23 Coins. 

However, Emre has some other intention. He searches for a player who can make the first time lifted past the Genola. So, he goes for a pass towards Ronaldinho who has an angle, powers lifted through the ball once the ball is underway and with a good timing, he sends the ball over the Defender.

However, Anders was able to get the Defender in time, so he caught him. But the position is not over yet. Emre triggers another run, this time for Ronaldo by pointing him out with the left analog stick and tapping the L1 & LB button.

Just for a short moment, he waits for Ronaldo to get himself into the position and then passable Ronaldinho, who can execute the First Timed Lifted Through Ball. And just because Anders was too late to switch to his Defender, he gets through and scores the wally. What a magic work!