I thought we played possession soccer

You might find Dan Blank's book, "Possession: Teaching Your Team to Keep the Darn Ball," useful. It describes how he trains his college teams. Not that you should expect your kids to play or train like a college team, but he starts with fundamentals and has drills and the coaching points that he uses to develop the tactics. I learned a lot from it.

 

I'm a lacrosse coach, soccer parent, so if what I write is bunk in soccer I apologize.
The better lacrosse teams I've seen, and many soccer teams, have adopted the "triangle" concept of possession from basketball. It teaches players the concept of finding space. As a matter of fact, very few of the better college lacrosse teams even do full field scrimmages in practice anymore. Most of it is small field play. I think basketball and lacrosse drills "translated" to soccer can be very helpful as these are both "possession" sports. There is no "dump and chase" in either of these sports. If a pass is made without a target the ball goes out of bounds. So maybe look at some lacrosse and basketball drills.
Some of the drills you probably use already in soccer, such as 3 v 2 keep away in a box. 3 v 3 games using a small goal. I even incorporated conditioning into drills- my feeling was that if players were not handling a ball the time was wasted. So instead of running laps to warm up, I would break my team into groups of 3 with a ball. They would then jog around cones set up in a triangle working on passing. Instead of sprints I would run a variation of the "West Jenny" drill. Line up everyone at one goal line broken into groups- defenders, goalies, midfielders and attack (strikers). At the whistle the goalie and defenders (minus one or two), sprint down the field to defend the opposite goal. After a few seconds the whistle blows again and attackers are released with the ball. After about 10 seconds the whistle blows again and defensive midfielder(s) is/are released to sprint down and make it even. When the defensive middie makes it down, offense has a set period (I used 10 seconds in lacrosse), to score. If not, whistle blows, next group. We would run this non-stop. Tiring, but teaches other skills.

 

I have never heard of the "triangle" concept of possession in basketball. I only played JV basketball 50 years ago, but we had great coaches. I cannot conceive of a coach teaching, a 5-man team, tactics based on using only 3 players. I also would not describe soccer, basketball and lacrosse as "possession" sports, rather "penetration" (as in invasion of another team's territory) sports. But then a lot of rec soccer coaches teach 11-man team tactics based on using only 5 players. I am not one of those though. Makes it easy to win for a team that defends and attacks with 11 players.

The "triangle offense" in basketball is a 5 man half court offense, with a strong side and a weak side. Perhaps that is what you were referring to.

 

It's called the "motion offense" but still based upon triangles. Four corners, one in the middle. It's very easy to teach three players, then add two more. A little different in lacrosse where I started with 3, then worked up to six, or two triangles in motion. It's gotten to the point in lacrosse where there is little difference on the better teams between midfielders and attackers. Japanese women's team uses the concept where I first heard it called "triangles" versus "motion", so I used that term. Not sure how you missed it. A rather obscure coach by the name of Phil Jackson made it famous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_offense
I would most definitely describe lacrosse and basketball as possession sports. Yes, you penetrate, but without possession there's no penetration. You can't "dump and chase" or "long ball" in either of those sports. You may see longer passes, but outside of time killing or desperation they are always to someone.

 

Motion offense and triangle offense I have heard of, just never heard of "triangle possession."

In soccer, including possession-style soccer, long passes are not only acceptable, but are in fact critical to success. A pass, even a long pass, by definition is intended to transfer possession to a team mate. Simply booting the ball up field is considered a clearance, not a pass. One criticism I have of youth soccer is when coaches unfortunately restrict players exclusively to short passes on the ground, worse still in specified patterns. That will not prepare kids to play adult possession-style soccer or develop good first touch and passing skills needed to play any style of soccer.

 

There is a difference between a long pass and booting the ball up field. Unfortunately what I see too much instead of long passes is just booting the ball up the field and seeing who is faster to the ball. There are cases where this is necessary. For example, if a defender is being pressed and sees no one open, it may well be better to boot the ball up field and hope for a 50/50 rather than lose the ball close to the goal. Too often, however, I see youth defenders who are not even pressed doing this. They have no idea of their looks, they are not trying to pass it to someone just kicking it. Again, it would be analogous to a basketball or lacrosse defender just chucking the ball up court/field for no reason. In the process they lose the possession without even making the other team work for it. It's a gift to the other team as defending usually requires more energy than attacking as the attacker can set the pace. The reason many youth soccer coaches try to instill the short passes is to get away from this. I don't agree with necessarily keeping them short, but I see what they are trying to avoid.

 

The sad thing is that on the U-Little teams I coached at least half the players were well behind in ball skills and not introduced at all to most fundamentals. I was training U12s like they were U10s. But if I didn't, chances are the kids would never get a chance to learn the fundamentals. The focus on U10-level training, was repetition for the better players, but I felt it would serve them well in the future as long as the training challenged them. There is no point in teaching intermediate tactics to players who don't have the skills necessary to successfully execute.

This lack of a progression, however, was tougher on the coach.

 

A 5 yard pass is definitely easier than taking on a defender but it's the off the ball movement that makes possession soccer so tricky. Every practice I see kids screaming for a pass when they are in the shadow of a defender. A drill I like for this is rondo with cones. Make a square with 4 cones, 3 players on the outside and 1 in the middle. After the player makes a pass they have to run to the open cone.

 

This is a better drill than the one I described..
Players move to create the angle rather than move after passing.. both serve a purpose.

 

That school of thought only considers ball handling skills. An organized zone press and defense in depth will beat an unskilled short passing attack every time. The key to successful possession style play is the long pass to shift fields. From what I have seen, most coaches don't teach U-Littles how to press. I think that school of thought assumes they won't face a zone press. To beat a zone press, you have to have mobility. Five yard passes won't do it.

The clip showed a successful penetration because the defending was poor. Defending is 20% technique, 20% tactics, 20% mental, and 100% physical At any level it is easier to teach defending than attacking.

As an aside, I think the rule changes with the new "build-out lines" will encourage more U-Little coaches to teach a high pressure defense using the "build-out line" as a literal line of confrontation. They won't have to deal with "line of confrontation" as an abstraction. Without accurate long passing skills, the play may well break down to kick and run.

Regardless, the issue is not whether low-skilled players can play possession style using short push passes, but rather the issue is whether the coaches of the low-skilled players should be focused on improving skills for future success in competitions or on improving tactics for immediate success.

 

Not sure how this is an improvement on simple keep-away games. The equivalent would be 3v1 in a defined area. The weakness in a structured drill like this is that players are not making decisions about when and where to move, rather they are following instructions.

 

I was just about to mention the 3four3 guys, is anyone a paid member? Any thoughts? Dan Blank has a nice little book out called Possession- some good stuff in there. I'm holding some practices at the local deck hockey rink this Spring with the intention of teaching wall passes and how effective they can be.