Offense and Defense
Offense and Defense
Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today’s subject deals with playing offense and defense.
First, the Full Season Training Sessions are back for their third year with a major twist! Instead of showing how an older, college program runs it’s training sessions, this years sessions will be with two youth teams (one girls and one boys). To learn more about the new Full Season Training Sessions, please go to http://www.finesoccer.com/full_season.htm. If you are more interested in the older ages, the 2002 sessions are still available from this page as well.
I have run a number of camps this summer and the one thing that always amazes me is if I ask young players what position they play many respond by saying either “I play defense” or “I play offense”. Until we can break people of this mindset that they either play offense or defense we will continue to struggle to develop total soccer players.
With most high-level teams, the forwards establish the first line of defense. They are the ones who will dictate what part of the field the team will defend in, whether the team will play high pressure or low pressure, whether the ball will be forced wide or towards the middle and much, much more. However, if the forwards think their job is simply to play offense, the team will be unsuccessful.
True keepers know that they are frequently their team’s first line of attack. When they make a save or have the ball in their position, rather than thinking that their job is done, they realize that they simply make the transition from being the last line of defense to the first line of attack and work to try to either penetrate the opposition with a pass or they look to maintain possession in some way.
Teams who separate their players in training on a regular basis so that the defending players work on one thing and the attacking players work on something different will struggle in games because they wont know how to work together as a team. An example might be that if the forwards are wanting to receive the ball with their backs to the goal by checking back to the ball and the backs on their team weren’t involved in this type of training, how will the backs know when or where to serve the ball into? There are different skills involved in playing in back vs. playing upfront (for example, the forwards might spend more time working on turning with the ball and getting a quick shot than the backs and the backs might spend more time working on driving a ball to the feet of a player checking back to the ball) but if they don’t do this type of training together they will fail as a team.
Also, one of the best ways for a marking back to understand how to defend against a forward is for her to play some as a forward. A great way to learn how the opposing player will react in a given situation is to get the opportunity yourself to play in that given situation. A back that is an accomplished dribbler with the ball will know what the opposing forward might do when the opponent is dribbling at her. A back that has never played up front won’t have as good an idea.
Lastly, the player who is a back for her current team might be asked to be a midfielder or forward for her next team and the absolute last thing a coach wants to hear is “I don’t know how to play up there”. The well-rounded soccer player will, in most cases, be the successful soccer player.
Give your players the opportunity to succeed by exposing them to various roles on a field during games and in training and start to really develop the total soccer player.
Any questions, comments or suggestions should be sent to Lawrence@finesoccer.com or they can be posted on the FineSoccer forum at http://finesoccer.net
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Have a great day!
Lawrence
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