Playing with difficult teammates can be tough. They could be "toxic" and constantly berating with you with abuse in chat, they could be ball-chasing, they could be intentionally throwing the game, or, in some cases, they’re just not playing well. What is absolutely fundamental in trying to get through these games is not to forfeit, but to adapt your game to suit whatever your teammate is doing. If you do this, you can still turn it around and win. This will take you giant leaps towards becoming a better and more efficient player.

"Toxic" teammates are very difficult to deal with. They can tilt you very quickly and generally just ruin games. It’s not fun to play with one of these players, but you will encounter them a lot. If they are berating you with abuse, then the only thing you can do is ignore it. Do not respond to it, no matter how tempting it might be. They want a response from you and the moment you respond, they will not stop but if you ignore them, then they may think you have text-chat disabled and move on. Report them and ignore. They’ll potentially get banned and then you can go on to play your game. The reason most players get toxic is because they see you making a mistake that results in a concession of a goal. If you find that they’re abusing you through text-chat, it may be worth muting them or setting chat to “Quick-Chat Only” but if you’re able to just ignore it without doing that then it can be useful to have it enabled, particularly for kick-offs.

When a player gets angry and lets their emotions get the better of them (if they haven’t given up and started to play for the other team), they will typically try to carry the game themselves and won’t trust a single thing you do. When this happens, you need to be able to adapt your game to theirs. Usually they will start ball-chasing and you will have to play a much more passive game, only attacking the ball when you know that your teammate isn’t going to. It is essential that you pay attention to how much boost your teammate is using because if they’re ball-chasing the whole game, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will be running low on boost quite often. So if you go to challenge the ball, your teammate could very well be off to the big boost pads to replenish their boost tank.

Occasionally, you will find that a teammate gets so toxic that they decide to leave the game. This is not always a bad situation to be in. Sure it isn’t ideal, but at least you don’t have a bad teammate anymore so all you need to worry about is yourself. What generally happens when a teammate leaves is that your opponents start to believe they’ve already won so they’ll try more risky plays that they wouldn’t tend to do against a full team. This often exposes them and results in chances being created for you (and your remaining teammate if you still have one). Just a couple of weeks ago, I was in a game with a couple of friends in which we went a couple goals up and one of our opponents left the game, we ended up losing this game in Overtime because we took the remainder of the match easy, thinking it would be a free ride. We won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon. There is absolutely no reason why two players with solid rotations, good communication, and consistent play cannot beat a team of three people who make mistakes.

The above also applies to if you have a teammate that decides to join the other team. Because, when you have a teammate that joins the other team, it completely throws off your opponents. Their rotations are ruined, they double-commit, and your former teammate typically just gets in their way, often bumping them out the net etc. trying to save one of your shots. If you and your remaining teammate (again, if you still have one) can capitalise on the chaos that ensues from this happening, then it can again turn into a win for yourselves which unfortunately means that your defective teammate also gets the win but, in a bizarre way, they helped you get the win after all.

Of course, it’s not always an angry teammate that can upset your game. Sometimes your teammate is just not playing well, it may be that they are in the wrong rank after placements or it may be that they’ve been boosted to the rank that you are at but more than likely, probably 90% of the time, they are just having a bad day at the office in terms of their gameplay. We’ve all been there, when you have a game where absolutely nothing works out for you and instead of accepting defeat and saying, “I’m not playing well, I think I need a break” you try to grind through your slump and come out the other side victorious. I think I could count on one hand, maybe even one finger the amount of times that I’ve been successful in this endeavour.

When you have a teammate who isn’t playing well, it is vital that you don’t get frustrated with them. You know that you’ve been in a similar situation to them and all you can do is just try to adapt your game to them. If they are missing a lot of balls, you need to position yourself somewhere that you can recover the ball that they’ll miss either before your opponent does or be patient and wait for your opponent to play the ball and then go in for a safer challenge. It all comes down to the proper assessment of the play at hand. Some words of encouragement can go a long way to helping your teammate as well, particularly if they are apologising for missing the ball. Sometimes, if they say “Sorry!”, a little “Don’t worry about it, we’ve all been there” can be the exact thing that your teammate needed to hear and it gives them the confidence that they were lacking and quite often will play better as a result.

A teammate who doesn’t understand positioning is probably one of the worst scenarios to be in because it’s incredibly likely that they don’t realise that they’re in the wrong and will be blaming you for goals conceded, etc. For example, maybe you challenged a ball and the ball came out to a position that your teammate wasn’t ready for. These teammates are often slow to challenge, defend from the front-post instead of the back, don’t rotate around you and are overall a menace to play with. The good news is that the more you improve, the less you run into these players and the way you combat is to do everything that they aren’t doing.

If you are in a situation where it is your turn to challenge the ball, check your teammates’ positioning first. This is good practice for any game as when you move up the ranks, you need to be aware of your teammates’ positions on the pitch at all times. Be sure that they are in a position to recover the ball or make a secondary challenge should you fail with your attempt. It is then your duty to assess whether you are in a position to receive the ball or if you should rotate out to defence.

Likewise, if you are defending your goal, pay attention to where your teammates are, particularly the one who has been positioning badly all game as they could be coming in to make a save or clear that they shouldn’t be going for so you need to assess where the ball might go if they hit it all the while being able to attempt a save or clear if they aren’t going for it. It’s all just a case of reading the game.

Overall, having a bad teammate in any of the listed scenarios above is rotten luck and it’s almost always better to play with friends regularly who you get on with and are similarly minded with their desire to improve as this makes the game much more satisfying. However, for the solo-queueing introvert, the disadvantage of a bad teammate, doesn’t have to ruin your game, and you have the ability to turn the negative into a positive. You just need to learn how to adapt to your troublesome teammate.

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