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Gary, Brian and all,
Interested to know how you prepare your groups to deal with high pressure.
What kind of alternative plans you prepare, triggers to activate that and how much ‘risk’ you are willing to take.
My view is that you need to be prepared to go more direct when needed but I struggle at times with the short/long term benefit question. Specially with the younger age groups. Again a lot comes down to context but still interested in hearing what others have to say.
A good inspiration clip of the “problem”:
This may just be my experience, but most teams who I’ve come across trying to press high up the field don’t do so in an organized manner. By this, I mean that most teams consider high pressure to be trying to win the ball with one or two players applying quick pressure and the rest of the team not doing much else. As a result, if your team is composed enough on the ball and organized enough, they should be able to break most high pressure without resorting to long balls.
That said, I would point out that long balls might not even be the best method of breaking the high pressure against some of these teams given how disorganized some of them are. For example, some teams will try to press high up the field with their forwards and midfield, but not have their backline get high up the field along with the rest of the team in order to keep the field compact and stay connected as a defensive unit. This means that the backline will be hanging back waiting for long balls (whether or not this is intentional is another matter) and means that the space is now the gaps between the midfield and backline where shorter balls are much more effective.
Again, this has just been my experience, but my thought is that you’re better teaching the kids to always try and play short out of high pressure, especially at a younger age. Of course, the best way to train your backs and midfield to deal with high pressure, is to have them train in practice against the high pressure that you’re trying to instill in your own midfield and front line. This makes your backs better at dealing with the pressure and your forwards better at pressing as the backs get better.
The following blog sort of covers the topic in question, read it all and you will see it mentioned. I will see him at work on 27th Jan so will ask him more about this. By the way John Cartwright has been a very successful youth coach, winning 2 FA Youth cups, U18 European cup and has brought on countless professionals.
http://keeptheball.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-three-day-make-over/
The three main options my teams have historically used to break good organized pressing are (from least to most risk) playing longer, switching the ball along the back, and individual action (dribbling). All three demand a lot of technical ability and composure (I don’t consider panicked hoofing of the ball as “playing long”) so like most soccer problems the remedy starts with being good on the ball. To deliver an accurate long pass under pressure takes a lot of skill, and even as an advocate of the short passing game I see nothing wrong with taking the opportunity to eliminate 5-6 opponents with one pass if they will let you, especially if those opponents are all high up the pitch. I’ve also found that if you prove you can find your players with long passes and you hit the opponent on the break a few times, their back line is forced to start backing up, leaving gaps for you to play short through. in other words, you can often play long in order to win your short game back.
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