Last season we ran into 2 really good teams in our state tournament that played a diamond back really well. We normally played with a single striker in a 4-2-3-1, we won the first game in a shootout and got beat in the 2nd game. But we didn't find much luck attacking this system. How would you approach this?
Make the sweeper play - make him/her have to mark somebody instead of laying deep and picking off balls. Get the middle player in the 3 AMs up high playing off the striker. One coach I know has the striker "mark the sweeper" - get all the way to that last defender to open space and make the sweeper work.
That's right. That is why you need your stopper to be a disciplined player besides being a beast of a defender. If he isn't sweeper can be beat. To play good man to man a good part of your practice should be devoted to 1 v 1 defending and group defending and the switching that you need to do in a good man to man defense.. No one does that at any level any more. That also helps keep the sweeper free. Plus if he has to leave the center of the field the far side back becomes the new sweeper. So your outside backs has to practice being a sweeper as well. If you can play a great man defense and you get a lot of intercepted passes, and you quick strike on attack. It is pretty hard to beat. Marking the sweeper can work. The better question for another thread is how to beat the zone.
Push the sweeper back as far as you can with your target player. Then play your second forward about 10 yards underneath that. Target player has his back to goal. Then he lays the ball off for the second forward. No way will the other team let the second striker hang out on his own. He has the time to run to receive that pass while losing his defender, and moves towards goal and shoots.
In one of the issues of the NSCAA journal last year they discussed the death of the sweeper. I think this is one of the reasons—teams figured out that they can force the sweeper to be a marking back essentially making him less effective, if not altogether useless as a "free player".
The classic way to beat a sweeper defense is with mobility. Make a wide attack, forcing him to commit to the strong side, and then switching the point of attack to the weak side which is coverless (since the sweeper is the only covering player). In other words: diagonal balls and crossing. The flat back four found favor because it was easier for the backs to adjust to the switches. The other problem is the sweeper is usually the best defender, so it makes it easy for the opponents to identify the weaker points in the defense. I guess diamond back defenses have become so old-fashioned that players today don't know how to break them down. Maybe I will bring back the WM and man-to-man defending I bet no one else here has played against a WM system!
"To play good man to man a good part of your practice should be devoted to 1 v 1 defending and group defending and the switching that you need to do in a good man to man defense.." Defending against diagonal runs. Part of that is a defender who is in a better position swithches with the marking back. He picks up the man crossing the field if he has got the inside on his marking back.
Overload a side to beat the sweeper Try this as an example when your left wing mid has the ball. Have one of your strikers make a diagonal run in front of the wing. That triggers the other striker to also move to that side. Hopefully that may pull the opponents sweeper more to that side. Then the left wing mid who has the ball moves more to the center of the field. While that is going on the far side wing moves to his near post. Then then left wing passes on the ground to that right wing for a shot on goal. A wing to wing pass. We have scored tons of goals doing the wing to wing pass. Practice it functionally and tell me how it went.
rca/ranova gets it again. (dude, don't you have a job or something?) a sweeper/stopper set-up is going to be more compressed (side-to-side) than a flat four. (if it isn't, then the passing lanes [between defenders] are going to be wider--and thereby vulnerable to dangerous through-balls.) you take advantage of this by playing to and overloading one side. as defenders shift to cover, you then switch the ball to the other side, which should be open. (so you can keep a 4-2-3-1... just make sure that your weakside outside mid knows that the switch/cross is coming to him.)
I have a job, I have soccer, I eat, I read books, and I sleep. Sometimes I work and eat, sometimes I read about soccer, and sometimes I dream about soccer. It is the rest of my life that loses in the competition for my attention, but I am at the grandparent stage of life so family obligations are not as time consuming as they used to be. And of course my family is a soccer family
This is how we do it with our HS girls. The last few teams we've played have use the sweeper/stopper formation and we love playing against it. I have our center mids look outside first and then we cross it back in. If a forward doesn't get to it then the other outside mid can usually catch up to the cross. One of the teams we played against kept their sweeper a good 30 yards behind the rest of the team. Fun times were had.
I'm resurrecting this, because two weeks in a row now my team has played against a sweeper or "sweeper". There weren't really "marking backs" in front of a sweeper per se. They play 3 in the back with a triangle pointed back to their goal. No stopper though. This week was particularly blatant as they kept their back line on their 18 regardless if the ball was at the other end. I started researching it on google and this thread came up from 8 years ago. We had a nice discussion on it. I don't see nicklaino here anymore. I know he was older 8 years ago—hope he's doing well. apart from playing diagonal balls I may experiment with setting up a target player on the strong side wide area, instead of forcing the sweeper to mark someone like discussed above. My thinking is that I want to distort their shape, pull that triangle away from the front of the goal, get them to look to one side and create blind spots behind for runners to meet a cross.
@elessar78 If they are defending in a zone rather than man to man, then it isn't a sweeper. This sounds like a 3 man back line instead of the standard 4 man back line in 11 a side. If they are playing in a zone, then you attack it like a zone. You either beat it on the flanks or you spread it out and attack the gaps between the FB and CB. What was different this week was the back line staying on the 18. That is going to 1) disconnect 4 players from the rest of the team, 2) create space in front of the back line, and 3) minimize the influence of the off sides law. I would just beat them with sound play, rather than any special game plan. Look at it as an opportunity for both exploiting wide open space in middle third and for playing in tight spaces in front of the opponent's goal. What I expect is that players that age are not ready to manipulate the opponent sufficiently to attack in tight spaces. But what do I know. You may have a team of futsal freaks. Have fun.
I just thought of another way to look at it. The Dutch/Barca objective as developed by Pep was to occupy the middle of the field and then attack the goal directly. The objective was to get the ball to the best 1v1 player on the team isolated (1 marker) in the gap between the FB and CB and let him do his thing. Obviously it is better to have 2 great 1v1 players threatening the gaps on each side of the field. One way to get 1v1 matchups is to bring midfielders forward until you have 3 players for the opponents to mark. By my experience, it is always more effective to have a midfielder running forward than to turn him into a forward. Some players are absolutely deadly attacking like that.
I am seeing a lot of 3 back defenses this season. The last one I saw was the triangle that elessar mentioned, with the outside edges man-marking against the opposition's two forwards trying to leave the center back free to roam. Sort of sweeping I guess.
How'd you attack it? Anything work? I'm thinking of playing with a false 9. Pull my striker/9 back into midfield and have my two wide players play as the top most players out in the flanks. If they want to mark those two, then we'll have a 2v1 vs the sweeper and huge gaps down the middle. or Keep my 9 high, but have her starting position be out on the flanks. If we get the ball to her, Her goal is to try to get to the end line to try to cross it in.
We've either done the false 9 (finesse) or swapped up to 3 up top (brute force). Which we have chosen depends on the team we are playing and how we match up.
When there is danger of a through ball, a good defence (in any system) should have at least one player anticipating the through ball giving depth automatically, leaving the markers to deal with the ball to feet/head. Penetration requires a combination of movement, angled runs, anticipation and variety from the strikers. There are infinate options to combine these. I have found that when there is an assigned 'Sweeper' this player often drops way too early which is much easier to penetrate. All the strikers need to do is respond quickly to spin their defender and sprint towards goal in different directions and their markers will be left chasing. Due to the early Sweeper movement, the strikers can stay onside and catch up with the sweeper giving them an effective 2v1 at pace. Whereas when the sweeper's movement is just before the ball is played, the strikers won't have enough time to catch up. I disagree with a diagonal ball to beat the sweeper system, unless I'm missing something. A good sweeper should be positioned centrally as a base position. So if they anticipate to drop towards their goal, they'll get to a central diagonal ball first, whilst a diagonal ball out wide gives the defence time to regroup and is less dangerous. However, if the sweeper naively anticipates a straight line ball to the near side, then their positioning leaves them open to the diagonal ball. I use this game to help practice dealing with through balls: More are available at engagingsoccer.co.uk.
What you are "missing" is the assumption that the sweeper has moved to the strong side to provide cover. Then switching sides away from the sweeper with a long diagonal ball works well. Nearer the opponent's goal, the sweeper's movement opens space to be exploited by a cross. If there is no cover for the strong side penetration, no switch is needed for attacking success. The attack turns to goal looking to finish. Creating chances this way will soon have the keeper screaming at the sweeper to provide cover.
Thank you for clarifying. I agree if the sweeper commits to cover the ball down the line, they are vulnerable to the diagonal through ball. The sweeper doesn't need to move away from the central position until after the pass is released. By dropping centrally in anticipation, they cover the central danger and should get to the ball first. If the ball is played to the near side, they can then move across. Even if the striker gets there first, by dropping early and starting central the sweeper covers the line of the goal. Then they are able to cover both a straight line and diagonal pass. An exception would be if there's only one striker, then covering the run to anticipate the pass down the line, doesn't leave the defence exposed. Quick question, when you say the strong side, do you mean the side of the ball carrier or where the runner is moving to? I'm trying to learn the terms. Thank you.
When the attack is wide, the strong side is the ball side. Usually more players are on that side of the field as well. It is an English language term, but I am not sure how much it is still used. I am a bit dated. I have a 70s and 80s view point, and relate what happens today to that knowlege base.
Resurrecting this thread again... My team is now constantly playing against other teams who run a stopper/sweeper system - with the sweeper being 10-15 yards behind the stopper. My team does have speed up top (4-3-3), but we struggle playing against stopper/sweeper due to occasionally playing too direct. I've had some success encouraging short/quick combination passing when in the attacking 1/3 to draw the opponents out of their positions. But I remember seeing earlier in the thread to have the wide attackers start as wide as possible and make diagonal runs towards the middle, receiving the ball between the outside back/stopper, which would draw the sweeper up to challenge, thus exposing the opposite side for a through ball into the wide attacker on the weak side. This scenario would obviously only work when recovering the ball in our defensive and/or middle 1/3. Any more tips, tricks, information to beat a stopper/sweeper system? Maybe something I'm missing or could improve upon. For context: I coach HS girls soccer.