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Most of my players are familiar and understanding of the give-and-go.
They execute it a lot which is good. What I noticed about this is that the “give” was always a good pass but the “go” pass was always done with far less precision and care. Sometimes just a weak flick in the general direciton, sometimes a pass to the opponent, sometimes it would get picked off, etc.
Last week I urged the team to slow down and make that second pass precise. Stop 1-touching the ball and instead, 2-touch that second pass.
After all, they have been working for 6 months now on receiving the ball across their bodies, and passing the ball to their teammate.
I think what the kids found was that even inside the opponents 18-box they had more than enough time to execute a simple 2-touch pass with precision and the passes were really beautiful and still done with speed of play. The improvement was immediate. I don’t recall anyone losing the ball to an opponent because they took the extra 3-tenths of a second to make a precise pass.
I think these are just bad habits that the kids get in. They see the pros doing 1-touch passing and so they naturally try it, often times with cute little heel flicks, outside of the foot spinning flicks, lazy kicks, no-look passes, etc…. (the cool stuff) but almost always ending up in a turnover.
I’m expecting good things this week.
Frank – have you thought about trying to nail down what specifically the players are doing wrong – technically – when they try to play 1-touch and do “the cool stuff”.
From what you wrote it sounds like their brains are moving fast but their technical ability can’t keep up. Maybe take a step back and review some things like proper body position of the receiving player (relative to the defender and angle of hips), accuracy of the incoming pass (correct foot).
Specifically what they are doing wrong is being much too causal with the follow-up pass and they need to break that habit.
They all have the skills to make the proper pass but instead of a poised precise pass made with timing and pace, they flick at the ball or make some fancy one-touch pass that usually fails.
As soon as I brought up this the error was corrected almost immediately.
However, that concept needed to be drilled in repeatedly for most of the players as the majority of them do not learn to adjust/break bad habits right away. It requires constant badgering to get them to “stop being cute” with the ball, and get it properly into space. Not just once. Not just twice. But constantly at every practice.
There are a few players that not only understood but never need to be reminded. Unfortunately that is not/was not the norm on my team.
My son came to my soccer game this weekend and noticed the same thing in our adult game that I noticed in his games.
Players execute give-and-go without emphasis on the “go” pass and the pass results in a turn-over as often as it is received by a teammate.
My theory here is that the second pass can be executed by receiving the ball across the body and 2-touching it to the teammate in a much more precise manner.
I think “we” have developed the notion that if the second pass doesn’t make it…. “well, that was a difficult play anyway. nice try. unlucky!!”
as opposed to… “don’t rush the second pass. make it perfect. make it beautiful.”
Nice observation about the inaccuracy of “1-2″s. This could be another simple reason for the failure of the second pass in a “1-2”: the first pass often is made to a player that is standing still, whereas the second pass usually is made to a player who is running, at various speeds and directions. So, the second pass is more difficult to make accurately, with the right weight and direction. There are some good passing drills that will give players many repetitions of passing on the ground to running teammates- such as from the DVD series The Art of Attacking Soccer- you can google for some youtube videos if you don’t own the DVD. You can set up the drill in two groups, side by side, and have them race- which will help inspire them to play quickly and approach game speed.
I realize this site is great on teaching tactics, but if you are working with players who can’t pass accurately with both feet to teammates who are moving, at some point the players will need repetition of basic skills to build the necessary technique.
I really agree with your idea that you have to instill the expectation that passes will be completed, and that every loss of possession is a big deal and must be avoided.
…. every loss of posession is a big deal and must be avoided”
is EXACTLY what is not the focus of a 1-2, but needs to be. I remember telling one player, “stop one-touching the ball. control it and pass it. make it precise” and it worked from that day on. Obviously there are times when the pressure or timing requires a quick 1-2 but usually……..not.
Frank, in the past I have kept track of 1 touch turnovers for a half/game, which was a good way for me to evaluate how well the team, or even certain players were taking care of the ball. I simply had a chart with all the players that was divided into two columns – one for each half, and they got a hash for each 1 touch turnover.
There is an art to this because you don’t want to squash some of the necessary risk taking and creativity that is required to unlock certain situations, but as a baseline I found it was a good tool.
Bielsa’s Bilbao doing wall passes: http://youtu.be/p14vxo9Fwqs
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