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Took me a second to find this one… but this is another good example of movement up the line… You can see a girl just take off down the line and then the RCB play it perfectly to her.
You can BARELY hear it, but our holding mid is telling the girl with the ball to “play GG”. That’s the nickname of the player running down the right sideline. “GG” recognized there was space, Taylor (holding mid) saw GG take off, and did what she’s supposed to do and told our defender, Hannah, to look for it.
There are a ton of talking points on this one clip. One to focus on is the verbal and visual communication from the holding mid. Watch it full screen and you’ll see that Taylor not only tells, but shows her teammate where to play next. Taylor is a bad ass holding mid that knew she was the controller of almost everything when it came to the tempo of the game. This example, she knows she wants the ball forward but she doesn’t have it. So what does she have to do? Tell and show the person with the ball where it needs to go. This took YEARS to instill in Taylor. I started working with Taylor when she was 13… she is 18 in this video. The communication type of stuff was part of the first layer and it started only with her talking to her center backs. It slowly turned into her being the coach of everyone on the field.
**Side note on this one- this was after a 5 hour bus ride and against a top ranked team in our division playoffs. Also happened in the very first minute of the game. Players have to be switched on from the get go!!! We were… they weren’t… they got punished for it.
Hey Ryan- I just wanted to piggy back on what Gary touched on.
It takes time to get everything looking the way you want it. Layering concepts is an extremely difficult way to coach but it is so worth it. You have to be patient.
I wrote about this EXACT stuff on my own blog a few days before Gary responded to you here. (http://theriotpig.com/2014/05/11/dont-just-stand-there-do-something/)
In my third season with my team I felt like they were finally ready to handle specific instruction on how I wanted to get my outside backs involved in the attack. Before then, we had just simply mentioned stuff, never spent hours meticulously training it, because we were meticulously training the many, many other layers that formed the foundation which we needed before we could move on.
To give you something specific that you can see and maybe use in the future, and what Frank is probably longing for, here is a video of my team in their third season with me. You can hear my coaching cues pretty clearly in this video. These cues are drilled into them at training. They know exactly what they mean.
“Haley, Hannah- GET TO WORK!” Those instructions are for my wingers. That’s telling them now is the time to lose their markers AND/OR create space for the outside backs to move forward. Without movement from the wingers, outside backs can’t go anywhere. Have your wingers dialed in their movement? If not, take a few steps back and work on that.
“NOW WE GO!!!!” The wingers made their move… the space is open for the outside backs to exploit… let’s fucking do it! You can hear me yell “FIND SARAH!” around the 1:25 mark. Sarah is the little blonde left back with acres of space ahead of her. We didn’t get her the ball, but it’s a good example for this thread.
You can hear me yell “GO SIERA! GO SIERA!” a couple of different times in this video. Siera was the right back, converted from a winger, just this season, who had maaaaybe 7-8 games under her belt at this point. She needed a lot of help on recognizing when it was on and when she needed to barrel down the line. But you can see the winger had done her job two times and dragged her marker 20 yards away from the line. Siera was supposed to be in that space 5 seconds before I started to tell her. Her fault? Not really, she was brand new there and doing the best she could. With time, she got better and better. It didn’t happen over night though.
If you’re serious about this, watch the video a couple of times, as well as the video I posted on my own blog. Sarah (the left back) did a great job of ‘messing with her marker’. She constantly changes her body position and makes/fakes runs up the line then expands out or drops back to get the ball. You can see her hips turn and movements change pretty frequently when you watch videos of my team. She was one of my most improved players over the course of the 3 years.
**Side note- This was also the first game we experimented with a “false 9” type role. I took one of my baller center mids who just couldn’t break into the starting line up and created a specific role for her as a CF. She started, played great for 60 minutes, and got her first goal of her high school career (seen in this video). But that was something we worked on at practices for a few weeks before we actually went and tried in the game. I had told her for weeks leading up to it that was my plan and I slowly started incorporating her in finishing drills as a CF and then in our patterns and so forth, until it was the week of the game and then we laid out the entire game plan with the team.
Hey Scott-
I do know John McGuigan and that is Arroyo Grande. John is a nice guy, we’ve talked quite a few times before and after games. I liked what he had going with his girls club team but apparently they folded.
You ever in the area?
Hell yeah, Scott! You’re going to look back on these videos in a couple of years and be stoked you started recording. Keep it up, man.
Not sure if you want to use a tactic like ‘outside in’ and set it in stone.
You can see a few examples in this video where Bayern players just run straight at the ball, not curving their runs or anything. It’s tricky. You’ll notice teams like Bayern, Barcelona, Dortmund, etc. just try to make the field smaller for the player with the ball. That could mean pushing them to the middle, sideline, backwards, or in some cases… forcing them to play forward! This shit is beyond dynamic.
Using the exercise in the 3four3 curriculum is a start, and the core, to pressing from the front. You can take that and run a million different directions with it. Adding in live players is great and necessary at some point. Determining when you’ve reached that point and what you do with it from there is why you make the big bucks! (Or in most of our cases… little to no bucks!!!!) haha
Caleb- don’t forget it’s not only WHAT foot you receive it, but how you receive it on that foot as well.
I went down to watch the US U18 camp last week in LA and you’d be shocked at how many of our countries ‘best’ players are airballing in this department. Clarence Goodson is a prime example at senior level. That fool loves the outsides of his feet. He consistently makes things more difficult for him and his teammates by not receiving ball properly. Keep an eye on it… I’m sure he’ll make his way onto the field leading up to WC2014.
Love that approach, Andrew! It’s weird how simple, yet not simple, shit like this really is.
The good thing about 3four3, and this member section specifically, is that we’re able to not only ask questions but also share information like this. No matter what level we are at, we can all take stuff away from it. Like your explanation for example. Bravo, dude.
Not sure how many people caught on to how I progressed this drill…
Some of you have mentioned having problems with getting players to the right spots, and getting them to those spots quickly. After a few times of training teams to play out of the back from their spots, I made it a little more dynamic. I had my entire team start as a tight group around the PK spot. On my cue, they would explode out to their spots. A ball would be waiting on one side of the goal for the keeper to track down, set up, and get in play.
There are tons of other details you can eventually start talking about. I mean, little things! Like, once the keeper decides to play to the left center back, the right side center back should start coming over immediately. That back 4 shift should start happening as soon as the keeper makes up their mind to play the opposite way. No sense is sitting out there in la la land, right? Things like that are very easy to over look, but can be so crucial when the time to execute perfectly comes.
To keep it going, we would start almost all of our pattern play from a small huddle. On a cue, we would expand and ‘find our shape’ and then play. To me, it makes sense to start small because when you’re defending you’re in a small group. And as soon as the ball is won, BOOM! like a fuckin explosion the team gets bigger. I always related it to the big bang theory.
Then you get into HOW they are expanding. Do they just bury their chin in their neck and run to their spot? Or do they keep an eye on the ball and then turn to back pedal when it’s the right time? When is the right time? Yada, yada, yada…
Paul-
Choregraphed pressure can be a bitch to teach and execute if everyone doesn’t buy in. It’s doable though, man!!!
This was my team from two season ago, long before the 3four3 content was made available. I was humbled to find out that Brian runs a very similar exercise to what I do when it comes to pressuring from the front. As a coach, I decided to not have our team pressure inside the other teams penalty area when we were at risk of getting too stretched out. If we were already in the area, then yes, of course, go get the ball. But I didn’t want my girls chasing down a ball by themselves for 20+ yards and leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the field for a counter.
This video shows a little bit of it in action. You can hear my cues as well.
Let me know if you want to talk more about it!
Got any video of these guys you’re coaching? If not, get some and start compiling highlights of all of their successes in training and games. Visual proof is undeniable and when you present that, along with your curriculum, it will be very hard for people to write you off.
It’s all about repetition. After hundreds and hundreds of times… they’ll naturally start backpedaling to the right spot as soon as the ball crosses the end line. You have to have a dedicated group willing to work though. Tactical work can be boring if the kids aren’t down to put in the necessary work to become badasses. It’s worth it though! Trust me.
Check out a couple of videos of my team training and some games:
Even worked at our Junior Varsity level:
Dude, it’s a fucking war! You just need to decide when to start dropping the bombs.
If I were you, I would get all my shit organized and ready to present, then call a meeting. Come up with a little curriculum, a set of sample exercises, and a basic framework for other coaches to follow. Invite your team out to the training field and go through everything like you would in a coaching clinic, with all of your coaches in attendance. Show them why ‘Drill X’ works and fits into your philosophy. Same thing for ‘Drill Y’ and ‘Drill Z’.
Then, sit your coaches down and say “This is my vision!” Follow it with questions, answers, and debate. Expect resistance. People haaaaaate change.
Drop bombs!
Right on, Paul! Keep the videos coming. It’s important for your girls to see themselves doing things right, and wrong. It’s also important for you to see everything as well. You should invest a lot of time into reviewing your games. Let me know if you ever need an extra set of eyes.
Thanks Alfredo!
My captains came up to me last night after practice and said they want to battle each other at practice more often. I’ve always kept the starting 10 together for the most part and put them against a mixed bag of players and played 10v6, 10v7. My forwards said they want to go against our starting defenders more often… which makes sense… we literally have the two best defenders for 100 miles and one of the best keepers.
Your suggestion + my captains comments have sparked some ideas for me. Exactly what I needed. Thank you!!!!
Makes sense, Alec. I’ve never described it like that, but I totally get what you’re saying. The ‘launch pad’ terminology is something that my girls might grasp.
Part of this whole coaching education journey is learning how to communicate differently/effectively/appropriately with my teams. I remember watching the little Barca boys play and hearing Brian use the phrase ‘rocket pass’ when they were playing around the back. I was like whoa… that makes total sense! It’s those little itty bitty things that I like picking up on. ‘Launch pad’ is another one I’m probably going to start using. I like it a lot 🙂 It’s things like that which I can’t pick up on when I’m watching games on TV or online. I love hearing communication. Watching only gets me so far.
And follow me on Twitter you jerk!!! I follow you 🙁 haha But seriously it won’t let me respond to your direct message until you follow me.
