This topic contains 3 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
Over the past weekend I dragged a friend out to a local girl’s “College Showcase” tournament to do a little research. For a long time I have been complaining about the lack of possession soccer in Washington and was challenged by a skeptic to “prove it.”
My methodology was as follows: It may not be terribly scientific, but I was looking for something to use as a starting point that could be both quantitative and simple enough for both soccer and non soccer people to understand and repeat themselves.
Assuming that the good folks at the UEFA coaching schools have described a counterattack as “an attack that leads to a scoring chance in three passes or less, I decided that 4 passes would be my bare minimum for describing a sequence as “possession soccer” for any age/gender/skill level. Inspired by the early 3four3 videos that ignored goals and scoring chances in order to focus on both team’s sequences of 5 passes or more, I decided to also use 5 passes as my benchmark for defining sequences of “possession soccer” for elite players such as one would hope to see at a college showcase.
No attempt was made to qualify the possession sequences. The 5+ passes could lead to a scoring chance , or those passes could be played purposelessly across the back line until an impatient defender decides to give the ball a smack up the field (something we saw several times). No effort was made to determine if a team could not or would not possess the ball. We just counted. Our definition of a pass was “a ball deliberately played to and received and controlled by the team mate it was intentionally played to” : deflections were allowed if the intended target was reached. Long balls that found a target were also counted. If the player receiveing the ball did not take the ball under full control (ie: it was tackled away as it was received or misplayed out of bounds) we did not count it. The Divisional Level of each team was noted, but I decided not to factor that into the equation. The majority of these U16 and U17 teams were from the top 3 divisions of the RCL and the top division of the PSPL, four of the top four leagues in the state. The weather was cold, very rainy. and very windy as is possible for this time of year. The teams had also only been together for a few weeks since the end of the girl’s high school season. Some teams used guest players and may have been missing players. Games were 60 minutes in length. None of these factors could, in my opinion, count for anything other than excuses for what I recorded.
We watched 9 games featuring 18 teams. To the surprise of nobody on this blog, the number of teams that actually gave us something to count were extremely small.
2 teams could not string 5 passes together a single time.
4 teams managed 5 passes a grand total of once over the course of 60 minutes.
6 teams managed 5 passes twice over 60 minutes
5 teams managed 5 passes from 4 to 8 times
1 team managed 5 or more passes 13 times. This was the only team I would categorize as playing “possession soccer”. For the record, unlike the other 17 teams there were also many occasions where they completed 4 passes but the fifth did not come off. This team was from CANADA, not Washington. Props to you, Coastal FC of Surrey BC
Qualitatively, it should come as no surprise the Coastal FC was b yfar the most entertaining to watch, though they lacked firepower and struggled to turn their superior play into goals. Three of the teams that put together 5 or more 5+ pass sequences were clearly a cut above the others. The rest of the teams were not pleasant to watch at all. Of the teams who could not manage five passes more than once over 60 minutes (and typically were lucky to get to two) one was from a top level club with an A licensed Coach. The other was coached by another club’s D.O.C.
As I said, this should come as no surprise to anyone on this blog, but I am wondering how the game looks in other parts of the country.
On occasion I’ve counted consecutive passes as a makeshift possession statistic.
I tried to paste some data in here, but it doesn’t like tables. Try this: http://goo.gl/1IZlvr
From Spring 2013 Tennessee U14 girls D1 State League games (see the last row). My team (MSC) failed to qualify 🙂 The top 2 teams in the state were FCA Black and TSC 2017.
-
This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
Jason Finley.
Why focus on the amount of passes, when we should be counting the amount of penetrations
Then there are the heartburn games: dominate time of possession, 51mins to 9min and finished tied 2-2
-
This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.