Just curious if any one has any insight to this. I never played soccer growing up. I have coached rec but mostly took what I know from the different club teams my son has played on and most play what I call a zone 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. His H.S. played man to man. He played foward or mid. But from what I understand they were to mark a player and then they would have to chase them around the entire field. He said as foward he was to mark the sweeper and if need be mark him all the way the the other end of the field if he made a run. This is very contry to what he has seemed to be taught at club. They seem emphisis not getting out of position. What are the advantages / disavantages to man to man and why play it?
A zone takes more time, coordination, communication and coaching expertise than man-man. With man-man, it's pretty simple: there's your guy, cover him. There's a finite amount of time in practices, maybe the coach wants to work on developing other areas. But think of American football. Most teams play zone defense, the most popular now being the Cover 2 where the two safeties play a zone. Most long touchdowns are scored when the safeties and corners blow the handoff of the WR from one zone to another. If a player thinks that the attacker is another zone's responsibility, he'll in essence, just stand aroud. That's deadly in soccer.
However, there are reasons that every defense you will see in a World Cup is a zone. In a man to man defense, you are a pawn in the hands of the other team. If they want to clear you out of an area, they can just have the man you are marking make a run somewhere else. I have seen a U-13 boys travel team master the zone defense in a single fall season, to the point where they never gave up more than 1 goal a game any more. A subject about which much more could be said, but time does not permit.
To play Man marking you need a libero or a sweeper whatever you want to call it. Among the best team to play man marking with a libero is Italy of course. Especially during the Gentile era and the likes. To play man marking you need your CB's to mark the attackers where ever they go. Italian coached back then used to say "If he goes to the toilet, follow him". But doing this means that there will be a gap in the defence, which is why Italy had liberos so they could cover the gaps. Libero in fact comes from the word liber which means free, so he is the only one in the backline that is free from the duty to mark somebody. Everybody else has to mark their man, REGARDLESS of where their opponents might go. Nowdays though, Zonal is more "in". To play zonal you must have pacey CB's and one or two good DM's to interact with them.
Did nobody catch this? The coach wants the forward to mark the sweeper and chase him to the other end of the field if need be???
Well that's the point of man-marking. . It's just like I said. A man-marking tactic is dependent on a sweeper(or libero however you want to call it). Alot of teams today use some kind of man-marking/zonal play. The CB's mark their opponents only when they're on the verge of attacking. But proper man-marking is when you have 2 CB's that do NOTHING but mark their man constantly. While having a libero to clear off any gaps and such.
Maybe I'm missunderstanding the original post, and I certainly understand when a forward is expected to mark the sweeper, but follow the sweeper everywhere he goes even if it means to the other end of the field??? And all this time I thought the job of the forward was to look for opportunities to shake whomever was marking the forward and score goals.
Maybe if the sweeper is nutty enough to push forward 80 yards to the top of the opponent's box, maybe the forward needs to follow in a pure man-to-man defense so as to avoid his team being numbers down? It doesn't make sense to me, but my kid has never played a pure man-to-man defense in his life, in any format soccer from 3v3 to 11v11, with any coach, so I'm out of my element here. Except to say that such extreme man-to-man defenses are certainly not common at the club level.
Woah, I just saw that. At first I thought it said something different. Yea it's crazy, who in hell puts an attack to mark a sweeper? That's stupidity at the highest level.
Perhaps in corners otherwise I see no reason for an attacker to mark a sweeper. it must be the only logical explanation.
Perhaps the HS coach is exaggerating his instructions to make his point, but I can assure you that there are actually HS coaches that give some pretty bizarre instruction such as this.
Yes, that was my understanding from talking to the coach later. The sweeper made a run down the field. The coach immediatly took my son out of the game for most of the rest of the half. After pulling him he yelled to the other foward on the field that my son did not mark the sweeper are you going to? The coach said after the game one of the fowards was to mark the sweeper (and they were to work which one out between the themselves) and mark him all the way down the field if necessary. I thought the fowards should try to stay away from the sweeper when the ball on that side. Never seen man to man played before until HS but this seemed very odd. I can see the defense marking offenisive player so they do not get kinda lost in the zone but never the fowards marking to such an extreme. Of the two starting fowards (he is the leading scorer and assit leader) He also played some center mid and played some defense in club. The other foward tends to hang out with the last defender waiting on a long ball. He once while playing foward ran the entire field and sweep a goal. He should not be this far out of position - but it appears that was what was expected. I never seen a real man to man ran in soccer and wanted to know if this is normal. It seems not.
And my poor kid thinks it's going to be cool to play high school soccer next year. I think the team is a bit better coached than that, however. They'd be better be, or either he or the coach will soon explode.
Depends which HS you go to. Some HS coaches are very very good. For my HS we ran a man defense and were very succesful. It's mostly 10 guys marking and the sweeper organizing everything. Of course, to do this you'll need talent and a very talented sweeper whos not afraid to run the team. If you have a kid who had knowledge and can read the plays go man to man and he'll organize everything.