nicklaino, brought this up in the 1v1 thread. Do you set-up your teams to exploit matchups? or do you simply set-up in their best positions. A lot of this is theoretical since we're supposed to rotate players. In my case, I have depending on the players I had at my disposal. But now mostly set-up in their ideal positions.
When I coach adult teams, it is all about the matchups. I normally use a 433 and play with 3 "forwards," giving those three total freedom to move around to create matchup problems for the opponents. Short of playing man-to-man, there is no way for the defense to prevent the mismatches. When coaching youth, I manage the matches as circuit training, rotating everyone through the 3 lines. I keep the best players in the spine of the team so that they can influence the game as much as possible. I don't think about matchups because both teams usually substitute frequently. The other thing is that if the kids think you are creating matchups, I believe it will have a negative impact on the majority of the players ("the coach doesn't believe I can do it"). My coaching approach was to focus on improving everyone's skills and getting everyone involved in defending and attacking so that we were effectively always numbers up, with good shape. After about six weeks of practice, all my players were effective in multiple positions, on and off the ball, defending and attacking. When we defended we had a double team pressing the first attacker with cover supporting. By mid-season we dominated and opponents rarely penetrated into our half. I had U10 and U12 girls. I think the key was developing an appropriate mentality, although teaching fundamentals was necessary to success. But I was in a situation where opposing coaches did not teach fundamentals. They taught the players to play kick and run, bunch ball. They also typically divided players into "defenders" and "attackers" and generally relied on a "star" player (the old get-the-ball-to-Johnnie game plan). It made them extremely predictable and easy to win the ball with a high pressure zone defense.
I guess I do in a way. With our opponents most teams crowd the middle of the field so I try to put my "toughest" players there. My girls are pretty small compared to most others their age so it's sometimes easy for many of them to get overrun. It then lets us put the ball out wide to the speedier and more skilled players to isolate defenders. That's about as far as we've gotten with this team. Like rca, I've done the "cover the skill player" thing but that was a very low level league back when I first started coaching. I think most players will naturally try to move to an opponent they can exploit so I don't think too much about it so long as my players understand that they have the freedom to move around as they see fit.
There might be four great teams in your adult league. You might be one of those 4 teams. You might not match up well with one of those teams. If that is the case it is hard to beat that team. You might beat the other two teams most of the time. Now One of the other 4 teams does match up well with the team that you can't beat. They can beat that team most of the time. But they can't beat your team. It is a bitch to try and figure out a way to beat all three teams. So you move players around or sub different kinds players in each of those games that match up better against those other teams. I spent a lot of time trying to make it work. Besides that we always try to build on the game that we already have. So the opponents could not figure out how to beat us. If we stayed the same and you are always playing the same team year after year even if you are the best those games will get closer. Keep the game close they can draw or beat your team. ------ We did try to get good matchups individually and get them isolated close to our attacking goal. It is hard to do the off ball movement. The players have to know what your trying to do as a team and buy into the plan. If they see it worked and your winning it helps. In youth soccer sometimes you will ask even good players to give up their position on the field that they like to be in to help the team create space so other players can fill that space, and score to confuse the opponent. That is asking a lot of young players to do that for the team. That is when you want those players not to be selfish. So there are times to be selfish and other times it s asking them to be unselfish to help the team win. If the concept seems to be hard for your players to understand. It can be that they understand the reasoning behind it, but they just don't want to give up that position on the field to do it.
With my awesome girls teams I could do matchups. I had players who were versatile and egoless. I could tell them to go shadow the opposing star and that star player would get marked out of the game. My boys are not as versatile.