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The last page here shows 4v4+3 (commonly used by Pep) but with 2 halves and goals. The building team has to complete 5 passes in their half before progressing, while the team defending in that half can go straight to goal if they win the ball.
http://excitingfootball.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ft13_10_barca-seminar-scl.pdf
I use futsal during the winter for development. A lot of the high schools here host weekend tournaments as fundraisers, most only 3+GK, which isn’t really futsal. Most of my practice sessions include:
1) Footskills and 1v1 – I use stuff from Beast Mode Soccer and a few basic 1v1 exercises
2) Rondos – often 4v1 a la 3four3
3) Rotation and passing patterns. Add finishing, shadow defending and transition to live play. I start with a 2-2 butterfly rotation: http://youtu.be/d-my0J1e8F http://youtu.be/ieHT-NHJEoc and I’ve developed a couple other passing patterns that use the same rotational movement. My boys don’t use the rotation very often during games, but do on occasion.
4) Basic zonal defensive patterns/choreography: http://youtu.be/7HI39PHKxM4
5) Play. I’ll often use restarts to rehearse rotation patterns, i.e. the defending team may only shadow defend until a signal and then back to live play.
I don’t get much time, but I may briefly introduce a couple of options on GK starts, corners, kick-ins…
Most coaches around here either just let kids free play, use it to emphasize footskills (1 coach required a footskill before passing even in games and his team was really good), and at most teach them to stay in a diamond. I think there is an incredible opportunity to learn about creating and occupying space through rotation patterns.
Bielsa’s Bilbao doing wall passes: http://youtu.be/p14vxo9Fwqs
It was experimental leading to a post-season tournament, but…
One of the smaller activities I tried was 4v0 in a square. On signal, the 4 had to keep passing as they moved to another square that was 10 yards away.
I tried a positional rondo similar to slide 38 here: http://www.slideshare.net/PedMenCoach/fc-barcelona-grassroots-ftbol-base?related=1 but I had another half of the field. The object was to start in one half from the CBs, progress the entire team to the other half and achieve # passes. Then add a goal. I had to make up some conditions as I went…experimenting.
Something similar I tried with a girls team was a setup to play through zones. Players were restricted to their zones except for wide neutrals. Their was an extra zone at the top, ahead of the striker. When the ball arrived in the Striker’s zone, the possessing team all moved ahead 1 zone.
In game situations I tried to encourage more possession in the attacking half and center backs involved in possession near the half. Against a weaker team I asked for a certain number of passes in the opponent’s half before going to goal.
I don’t know if those were good ways to teach it, but they were what I came up with, besides patterns that involve finding the front 3 feet and paying attention to all players’ positions at the end of the patterns.
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</table>I think it depends on the angles. In situations where you are coming back to the ball and playing it 1st touch at an accute angle, the near foot may be best. For examples:
A winger drifts high and wide of the opposition fullback, but then cuts back down and inside to receive the ball. The winger isn’t opening his body and the near foot is also farther from the defender.
An attacker’s near post run curving along the 6-yard box. The near foot might be the best way to finish as the attacker is running to the ball.
If you watch rondos from Barca, Bayern, etc, the players use near and far feet, inside and out. I used to obsess about the far foot since that is most often the preferred way to receive – and I still do! – but I also occasionally include some exercises that specify the near foot.
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.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
Jason Finley.
I read the purpose of Pep’s 15 passes was to maintain shape while “upsetting the opposition’s organisation” and in order to “prevent your rival from making any kind of co-ordinated transition.” Its almost avoiding counterattacking in order to not be counterattacked; the faster you take the ball down the pitch, the faster it will come back.
I connected this with a few things from Barca:
1) I can’t remember if it was Xavi or who, but he talked about how (even if it wasn’t penetrating) a pass could be useful if it helped progress the team up the pitch.
2) I noticed that except for occasional threats over the top, the Barca defenders and mids don’t often seem interested in passes through the opposition back four until Barca’s center backs are at least near the circle. The mids often drop in and 1-touch it back even when they could turn instead.
3) Looking at the sessions that are supposedly from Guardiola’s Barca B team, basically all the patterns involve finding the feet of the front three between the opposition defense and mids before the penetrating pass.
I’ve used some of those patterns often, and I worked on the concept of progressing as a unit for a few practices with a team, primarily by using positional rondos that require the entire unit to move from one zone or half to the other while keeping possession. Once achieved, they could try to score. We tried to implement the concept in a tournament, which in reality basically meant trying to keep more possession in the opponents half.
I think it is a difficult concept for players in youth soccer, but it could be another helpful concept in progressing past the constant transitions of “jungle ball.”
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This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by
