Attacking teams that use a Sweeper/Stopper system.

[Justin BoatmanParticipant]

My team plays a 4-3-3 and does a lot of attacking by getting the Wingers VERY wide, stretching the defense out, and then playing through balls between their Center Backs and Outside Backs with the Wingers making diagonal runs to get in behind the defense.

Where we’ve run into problems is when we play teams the use a Sweeper/Stopper system. Because the Sweeper is so deep, the Sweeper is able to get to the through balls before the Wingers can.

Here’s my question…..should I change our system to a 4-4-1-1 and have our highest Forward essentially “mark” their Sweeper and have the other Forward play underneath her? Should I keep the 4-3-3 and just tell the Wingers to play further up the field because their Sweeper will keep them “on”? Where should my Center Forward be if we stay with the 4-3-3?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great….thanks!

[Eric StrubleParticipant]

What I’ve always focused on when facing a stopper/sweeper system is pulling the sweeper out of place. In my experience (Not sure what level you’re seeing), sweepers tend to be fairly athletic players but not supremely technical or great at reading the play. As such, if the ball goes wide they’ll step over very quickly to help deal with the pressure, which leaves a massive hole in the middle of the field where players can make runs into and still be onside.

 

My suggestion is not to change your formation. Instead of looking for through balls, have the ball played into your wingers’ feet. As soon as they beat the outside back down the line, the sweeper will usually step hard over to that side, leaving the gap I talked about earlier. As soon as the winger beats their man and recognizes the sweeper coming over to them, they need to get their head up and look to play a ball into the space the sweeper just vacated (obviously with someone making a run into it). The danger of playing a sweeper is that if you can pull them to one side and then switch the field quickly, they leave everyone onside.

 

This is just one suggestion on how you might deal with this.

[Justin BoatmanParticipant]

Eric, thanks for your input.

This is what we ran into this past weekend(GU13 Flight 2)…..the opposing team had 2 extremely aggressive outside backs that were all over my Wingers backs. We did play into the Winger’s feet many times, but there was really nowhere to go but back to an Attacking Mid. If they tried to do a quick 1-2(Winger laying ball off to Attacking Mid and then making run forward for return pass from Attacking Mid, the Sweeper would slide over and get to the ball before my Winger could get to it).

Also, my Center Forward was being marked by their Stopper. She was an animal and just mauled my Center Forward and made her pretty useless. Any balls played into her, the Stopper just manhandled her and won the ball. On the rare occassion she did actually win a ball the Sweeper was right there to take over.

So I was kinda of stuck in that if we went to our Wingers we still had to go backwards because of the tight marking of their Outside Backs and if we went to our Center Striker we couldn’t get anything going there either.

That’s why I thought about changing up the system(4-4-1-1) to essentially mark their Sweeper to keep her occupied and not just roaming free. That way we could maybe bypass their super agressive Stopper and Outside Backs……just thinking of a way to get some production up top because we weren’t having much success doing what we were doing.

[Taqee KhaledParticipant]

Justin,

Using 4 in the back, do you use the outsiders as wingbacks? Or do you have at least one talent who can run up the side and have the defense click over one position into a functional 3-back line?

If you can use that person as an additional individual to overload the attack and serve as the winger, you can free up the numbers game in the box for criss-crossing on far and near post, maybe.

Just a thought! Let us know what you end up doing.

-Taqee

• This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by  Taqee Khaled.

[David TkachParticipant]

Hi Justin,

I run into a similar situation with the adult team I coach as most teams have a sweeper/stopper system.  I agree with a lot of what Eric said.  Our ultimate goal is to drag the sweeper out wide, creating space in the middle of the field.

We tried man marking the sweeper on occasion, but had less success with that.  Partly because it’s something we never really practiced so to put players in situations they’re not used to can be asking a lot.  The times we would mark the sweeper, the instruction to the forward would be to make diagonal runs to the wings with the goal being to drag the sweeper out of position with her.  Ultimately we had better luck with keeping our normal formation but just trying to change up the way we attack .

I think you can still play through balls into space with sweeper, but they have to directed to the flanks where it forces the sweeper to cover more distance to get to.  If anything, finding the pass lanes with a sweeper is easier because you only have 3 defenders covering the width of the field as opposed to four.  The challenge is obviously the execution of the pass into space.

Something like the Lose Your Man pattern might be good for this.  If their outside backs are overly aggressive, having the wingers make a short dummy run towards the ball, followed by a real run away into space could cause them to free up space along the flank.  Once they receive the ball, the sweeper is either forced to make the decision to come out wide to mark the player with the ball or stay centrally, allowing the person time and space along the side.

[Justin BoatmanParticipant]

Thanks for the advice guys!

What I’m planning on doing is setting up a scrimmage against another team in our club and have the other team in the first half run a Sweeper/Stopper system so we can try a few of these ideas out. And then in the 2nd half my team will run a system that the other team struggles against so they can try things out.

I’m going to try to stick with the 4-3-3 and implement some of the ideas you guys suggested and then maybe try out the 4-4-1-1 just to see what happens. I’m not a big fan of changing formations because it’s hard enough trying to get the girls to know their roles/responsibilities in ONE formation, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try it out in a scrimmage setting.

Thanks again!

[Eric StrubleParticipant]

One final suggestion I have is to slightly alter the positioning of your center striker. I assume that you’re having him/her play as high as possible which should do one of two things:

1) The sweeper continues to drop because they don’t want to man mark, creating more depth and space for you to play underneath or..

2) The sweeper marks and follows which means you an use the forward to drag them out of position even without the ball.

 

If the first situation happens, then you can play like everyone has suggested above. Agree with David, the lose your man drill would be an excellent warm up exercise leading up to the game here. However, if the sweeper begins marking the center forward, have the forward play a little off center to one side. If the sweeper continues to follow, then you’ve opened up a game in the middle of the field. If the sweeper doesn’t follow, then you have the opportunity to play into your forward’s feet and play off them quickly since the other three backs aren’t going to mark up on him when he’s behind them.

Again, these are just little suggestions and things I try to look for during matches. At the high school level, and even the college level, you still see a lot of stopper/sweeper systems so you get to try different things.

[John PranjicParticipant]

I’ve had similar problems. Sweepers that just chill 10-15 yards back and just run and kick the fuck out of the ball or go foul. True destroyers. It’s kind of annoying to play against and really annoying to lose to.

I actually did the unthinkable and switched the a 3-5-2 a few times and found a little bit of success.

My team was VERY, VERY comfortable having our holding mid drop in and become part of our back line and we were already good at releasing our outside backs to storm forward, so it wasn’t too different in that sense. What was really different was having two forwards side by side, but again, not foreign because we’ve always tried to play combos in the attacking 3rd and it actually just gave us more opportunities to do so in some cases.

Here is the kicker though… we changed our formation… but not the philosophy. We still wanted to dominate the game the same way we would in our regular 4-3-3. A lot of the movements were still the same. A lot of the ideas were identical.

If you go look in the thread I started called “US to Brazil” you’ll see someone made a comment about training the 4-4-2 diamond a year in advance, not 3 weeks from the first game of World Cup. There is some truth to that… and here is what it is… If you’re going to completely OVERHAUL a system and change EVERYTHING… yeah, that takes time. But if you’re simply moving a few players around, but not reinventing the wheel… it’s doable. The problem the US is having is that there has NEVER been a clear style of play under Jurgen. It’s been a mixed bag and he basically sticks his hand in and pulls something out the day of and goes with it.

 

[Justin BoatmanParticipant]

John,

I HATE losing to a team that plays with a Sweeper! It feels like such garbage soccer….that’s why I want to figure out a better way to handle it. I feel like I want to just put my Center Striker on the Sweeper just to take her out of the game. So in doing that, if I play our normal 4-3-3, that pretty much leaves their stopper to roam free. That’s why I thought of trying out a 4-4-1-1. That way the Sweeper and Stopper aren’t able to just run around freely, they always have someone to mark.

As you said, our philosophy of dominating possession would not change, just the formation.

[John PranjicParticipant]

If you put your striker on their sweeper… you’re essentially taking your own striker out of the game.

I like someone else’s idea about dragging that sweeper out into uncharted waters… either by pushing another player higher and giving them a strike partner or by pushing outside backs higher and pinching your ‘wingers’ inside a bit more.

You can stick with the 4-3-3 and make it super dynamic having it become a 3-4-3 when in possession.

Here is the thing, Justin. In order to set up the movements and positions necessary to execute an in game change from 4-3-3 to 3-4-3… you HAVE to dominate with long spells of possession to allow your players to get in those spots and 1) create the numbers advantages and 2) to discover when the advantage is set up and 3) to get the ball over there and TAKE ADVANTAGE.

To often we hear people talk about ‘we dominate possession’ but really… :-/ When you’re talking about TRUE domination you’re talking about a team that can hold ball long to manipulate their opponents 2, 3, or maybe even 4 times within the same sequence. There are very few teams able to do that……….

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