Basic defensive principles

I know I sound like a stuck record on this issue, but watching us give up goals because we don't understand and/or execute basic defensive principle drives me bananas. How can coaches and players can be so clueless?

To keep favoritism out of it I'm going to use a simple example from another team. Here is Charlotte just before they give up the only goal they allowed Chelsea last night:



Can anyone tell me WHY they give up this goal?

Of course you can - Charlotte's cb #4 made the Soccer Defense 101 mistake of not pushing out with the rest of his back line. This isn't a small mistake; that is a disaster.

Hanging back hurts his team and helps the attacking team in so many ways:

If the DM is beaten it gives the attacker extra time and space. That happened here and the Chelsea attacker found himself open at the top of the circle with no defender with 6 yards of him. That gave him time to gather his composure, get his head up, pick out his target and get off a clean shot, all without worrying about getting stripped. Also, due to simple geometry, the farther away the cb is the less of the goal he can close off. Here he is so far away that the attacker has an open path to score inside either post.

But wait, there's more. What actually happened in this case is the attacker shoots too close to the cb who gets his toe on it, deflecting it to #10 Pulisic who scores. Of course if the cb had pushed up Pulisic would be offside and the goal called back.

Why does this irritate me so much? Because so many things in soccer are hard. Winning 50-50 balls, moving and passing, learning fine motor control to collect 50 yard passes out of the air with a feathery touch, learning how to dribble at full speed with the ball on the string, working hard in the latter stages of games in 90 degree heat - those are incredibly difficult to do. They require years of disciplined training, and reaching deep inside when you body is exhausted and likely in pain from multiple injuries. And most of those things aren't worth an entire goal in and of themselves. It takes dozens of beautiful touches, aerials won, sprinting back when tired, etc to add up to a single goal difference.

What does it take to be aware and push up with your teammates? Almost nothing. Basic knowledge, paying attention and minimal physical effort. It's such an easy skill to learn that even I was able to train young teens to do it consistently in my coaching days. And the cost of that one non-action is a goal, undoing the 89 minutes of effort around it.

Here is the actual play:

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Actually the high line could work for us if properly implemented by savvy defenders. The back line of Edwards-Williams-Sega-Araujo have plenty of athleticism to pull off a high line defense. But of course it’s a disaster because our players haven’t been taught to properly execute it.

For a high line to work against fast opponents a lot of things have to work. For example the rescue defenders need to keep track of and stay close to their threats and insta-foul them if a counter is about to happen. They have to learn exactly when to counterintuitively push up further just before an attempted long counterattack pass to trap attackers offside. They have to understand and execute the principles of pressure-cover-balance positioning all across the entire field. Pressure-cover-balance is a method of hedging your positioning so you can both contain your own mark while also providing cover for your teammates if they are beaten. Say you are on the far left side of field and the attacking team with possession is coming down far right side of field. You drop deeper and drift a tiny bit central so you can provide emergency cover for your teammate in center who in turn has dropped and drifted a bit to provide cover for the far right defender. The whole back line is working as a connected unit, anticipating and covering for each other if mistakes are made. AJDLG was a master of pressure-civer-balance, especially when working with Omar. You can see Williams applying a tiny bit of the “cover” principle right in front of goal: when he anticipates teammate may be beaten by an a dribbler he drops and drifts toward that side so he has a head start for of his patented point blank sliding shot saves.

What you can’t have happen when playing a high line are unaware defenders playing as individuals instead of as a unit, which of course is exactly what we have. They can’t carelessly leave the cb facing a 2 on 1, go for ill advised slide tackles and missing both ball and man when they have no cover behind. And they can’t make the kind of mistake shown above, just further up the field. Several times in recent seasons one of our pushed-up backs gets burned and blamed when the real culprit is his teammate across the field who wasn’t paying attention to maintaining a tidy offside line. So the mis-timed early run of the attacker isn't penalized by an offside whistle — it is rewarded since it gives the attacker a legal head start on the left-out-to-dry defender. Of course it’s the defender who gets blamed for “losing his mark.”. Few notice when the real cause is a lazy far defender not coordinating his movement and allowing the resulting goal to stand.

If I could get Vanney to hire me and somehow get the players to listen to me I could fix our defense in a month! While I’m at it it I guess I should ask Charlize Theron to go on a month long fantasy date with me to Bora Bora.

 

True I might not survive but I would go out with a big grin on my face!