These are mainly VERY LITTLE tweaks to gain BIG advantages, so they are important to focus and improve upon. We want players and coaches to know what they did well; and we want players and coaches to know what didn’t go quite so well and how to fix them. This is designed to help this understanding. Many are on spacing around the field, organizational so to speak. Some are purely Generic that happen a lot (in other games for example too; not just this weekend); others are individually based per team. Basing it on 11 v 11 but it can be and is applied to 9 v 9 and 7 v 7 in many examples. Same principles just fewer players; that’s all. There is nothing too difficult to fix here much just common sense play that is simple to teach. If coaches can fix all these Basic and simple problems in team play, they will have much more success with their teams.

Contents

Attacking situational problems and potential corrections to fix them

• Often, we position wrong from our goal kick. Here is how to position and regain possession from the long kick by our keeper.

• Building out the back but giving the ball away too much and conceding goals? What could we do instead?

• We don’t use Spatial Awareness correctly “off the ball”

• Crossing early from wide positions behind the recovering defense. We can sometimes dwell too long and miss this opportunity; or instead, run it to the by-line to cross the ball

• Do we just move to help ourselves or to help our teammates? Players need to move BOTH for themselves and for teammates also, too often they dont.

• We do not push up from the back leaving big gaps between the back three or four and our midfield for our opponents to acck in-between.

• Transition Moments in the game, THE most important point to highlight and where we most often go wrong.

Defending third situational problems and potential corrections to fix them: Individual and Team Situations

• Allowing the opponent’s striker to drop receive and turn

• Not closing the wide player down allowing forward momentum for the opponents

• We lose the ball with a bad pass where we get countered quickly and caught flat. How do we guard against this?

• Anticipation in Defending, we defend too FLAT to allow opponents to successfully get in behind us

• We defend far too wide as a back four: Defensive positioning to fix in defensive team shape

• They move the ball forward and keep possession; we allow a fast attack to build up and expose us, How do we stop this?

• Not pressing the ball when it is cleared out of the penalty box

• Poor positioning in and around the 6-yard box from Crosses

• Poor positioning at the back when losing the ball

• We defend too deep from free kicks

• Do we drop deeper or press up from the back? Two ways we could do it.

• Dropping then Pressing. Should we just keep dropping?

Defending in the middle third situational problems and potential corrections to fix them

• Condensing and recovery runs by the defending team on losing possession; our midfield often get caught going forward and not recovering quickly enough

• We are outnumbered in central midfield, what do we do? Changing shape to counter the opponents who are playing a 1-4-3-3

• NOT Sliding across and changing who you mark leaves an opponent with no pressure on them in space

• We Allow opponent midfield players to receive and turn

• Opponent’s midfield players coming short to receive and turn, we allow them to drop off and find space

• Pressure in the center of midfield when they have the ball facing forward; we allow them too much time and space

• Wide players do not recover leaving a 2 v 1 against our wing fullbacks

Attacking third defensive situational problems and potential corrections to fix them

• We don’t press together as a “unit” in the Attacking Third

• Attacking Play and rotations and movements of players; are there better ways to attack?

• We run offside too often like THIS; How do we fix it?