The motivation behind Tactics Obsession

We, as Talking Tactics, started off back in 2018 as a small Facebook page with the goal of delivering quality football analysis content to Vietnamese football fans. As we entered 2020, we wanted to push our ability to another level by creating this Wix website that you are reading this article on and publish Vietnamese football articles. But due to time commitment and personal reasons, most of our team members left not long after and our activity on this website and our Facebook page started to decrease. And during the first week of March 2021, I decided to archive the page in order to focus on my work and study.

Still, it is a small, but ambitious dream for me to create a similar page on Twitter to continue delivering football analysis articles to the Twitter football community. But, once again, time is not always on my side and back that dream of mine. Recently, I have heard two Vietnamese that I knew from Facebook and Twitter said that they were dismissed from their freelance writing role at a well-known football page on Twitter, and that made me a bit gutted since it was the page that helped me developed to where I am now. Now, seeing that dream of becoming a football analyst or a football writer being taken away just because the owner does not want to use freelance writers anymore, I feel bad for the people who have been involved in such a project.

So, in mid-March 2021, I have decided to bring Talking Tactics to Twitter and operate as a platform where football writers can showcase their best analysis skills to the community while delivering to you, the readers, the best piece of content that we can. Under the name Tactics Obsession, we will look to do our best we can and promise you that our content will be available at no cost for the foreseeable future. We will also look to improve based on your suggestions, opinions in order to deliver the best articles we possibly can. At the end of the day, we are still a group of football fans who have a slightly different view on football compared to normal fans, and we are eager to learn and dive deeper into tactics and analytics with the hope of one day being able to work at a football club (fingers crossed for that!).

Why Tactics Obsession and why are you here?

As much as we would love to use the name Talking Tactics, we do respect the work that journalist Carl Anka and his team have put in their podcast. We do recognise their effort, and under no circumstances, do we want to disrupt the work that they have done for their podcast.

Another reason for Tactics Obsession is because we are a group of football fans who are, literally, obsessed with football tactics, and we felt the name will reflect who we are. We also want to create a clear identity for the page through the reflection of who we are, which is why Tactics Obsession is the perfect name for us!

We are here just to showcase our ability in analysing football matches, teams and players through the knowledge that we have gained. We have been writing articles on Facebook for a while now and we thought we would want to try ourselves on Twitter and improving our ability and knowledge at the same time. We do not have the intention of competing with any football pages out there, such as Between the Posts, Between the Lines or Outside of the Boot, since we recognise their effort and time that they have put into their respective project for the last few years. We are just here to have fun and show our passion for football through written articles.

Are you looking for new writers/editors?

For writers, not for now, unfortunately. Since, technically, our team only have 3 people, including myself, we can only manage each other's articles once we are done with one. In the near future, though, we will assess our situation then and will look to open the door for new writers to come in and work with us. We do not look to generate any revenue from our work (we might assess our situation again in the future and then make any further decisions), which is why our work is just voluntary work and we do it because of our passion. We do not put any pressure on our writers, since we do understand that everyone has their own personal matters and needed to be taken care of. Also, since all of us are still students, we also have homework and study time at school, which is why we understand and will not put any pressure on writers.

We are always welcome new editors, especially people who are fluent in English, since we are all Vietnamese and our English is not always good and consistent. We absolutely appreciate your help, and we advise that you only contact us about joining our team when you are sure that you have free time to do the job. As mentioned, we do not want to put pressure on anyone in the team and they have the right to take their time off or even leave at any time.

What are you doing here, Daryl, and what is your role on this page?

In honesty, I will not be doing much work here besides holding the board that says I am the owner of Tactics Obsession (hahaha). As I have mentioned on several occasions, I am not looking to come back into writing any time soon since most of my time now is dedicated to university and my work at Brisbane Olympic. I might sometimes drop by to write a short article about my Football Manager save, but I am trying to not get addicted to the game, so it is a 50/50 from me. Most of my work, including short videos and presentations, will still be posted on my personal Twitter account (@dgouilard, if you haven't known about it).

Still, I will be responsible for any complains, suggestions and opinions being made by you, the readers, and advise our writers to improve based on that. I will also be responsible for any changes to the website, design-wise and making graphics as well. And I am responsible for more stuff that I can't remember, but basically, I would be taking up things behind the background.

The goal, for me, when I opened this page is to create a platform for football writers to showcase their ability through their work, while I am happily providing support and feedback for them. Does not matter if you are Vietnamese or you come from anywhere else in the world, I will always be happy to support you whenever I can. But, in fairness, my knowledge of writing and tactics are still somewhat at a minimal level, so I cannot offer much support, I am truly sorry for that.

I will keep updating this article with general questions during this week, any specific question will be answered by me on our Twitter page - @TacticsObsessed.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you will enjoy the articles that we will be releasing soon.

Kind regards,

Daryl Dao.