I guess this week in practice they both teams worked on quick restarts. They went quick restart crazy. At least 4 times or more they had to respot the ball because it was still moving or it was too far up after the foul. It was pretty funny neither team got an advantage from it. As a matter of fact both teams lost the ball more then a few times trying to quickly restart play. They tried quick restarts practically after every foul. It is supposed to surprise tactic against the opponent. Both teams were doing it over and over and over again, that was the surprise I guess. It surprised the hell out of me. Most of the restarts were designed as a long ball in the air from ball side to the less pressured side. No attacking chances off any of them as I recall the game. A poor lowly retired/unretired/retired coach like myself used to worked on it, but not the way these guys do it. I wanted to get my gifted distributor to make that first quick pass, and you wanted it to be a surprise to the opponent. So for those two reasons you don't do them constantly. You want to hit them while they relax which is right after a foul, and not when they expect to see them. If you do them all the time there is no surprise stupid. Plus we never practiced restarts as an aired pass. It was always on the foul mids make runs. Up top players checked to the ball but at angles so the passing lanes were cleared out, then on the ground through passes to try and hit a hole through the defense them score. Have the right guy making that pass on to the right guy receiving that pass and practice sometimes you score before the other team can recover. In practice play when we broke the team up we kept score, and a quick restart pass and goal counted as two goals. Well everybody does things different the "pros" know more then I do I think? Richie
Richie, we've been abusing this tactic all year - as you said, it's supposed to be a surprise move, not a constant. After seeing the multitude of opportunities we've wasted this way over the course of the season, I've got to say that not only is our team tactically retarded, but also not very bright soccer-wise. Stupid, you could say. I mean, no one seems to know what move to make and when, when to head towards space and when to check back, etc. This is particularly evident off dead ball situations, though you could lots of examples in any game. Did anyone think that a short corner in the last couple minutes was going to accomplish anything, other than an easy clear for DC? Did anyone else see the idiocy in not letting the ONE player we have who can deliver a decent corner - Davis - take the corners for the 6 minutes or so that he was on the field (instead of drifting at the top of the box hoping for a miracle ball to pop out to him, so he could drive a miracle ball BACK through 21 players and into the goal)? Our dumb team.
Yes the team tends to be dumb, and we may have lost. But I wake up every day proud to be anything but a DC fan.
The worst example of this was on the Yellow card in the second half where we restarted as the card was coming out of the pocket and St. Suck-A-Lot had to run after the player to show him the card while the play was going on. Imagine seeing that in an EPL game? I would cringe at the prospect of showing this game to a bunch of FA refs. They'd die laughing. They're not the worlds greatest, but they don't often lose control of the game, at least not that badly. I really hate quick restarts, as well as short corners. We seem to be infatuated with both, and neither ever turn into anything. Part of the benefit of play stoppage is that it allows other players to make it all the way up the pitch. If we have a 3 on 2 advantage, sure, play it quickly. We seem to do it every time, and often we are 3 on 6 playing a quick restart- which only speeds up the loss of possession. Just crap soccer, tactically.
"I really hate quick restarts, as well as short corners." I like quick restarts when they are a surpise to the opponet, when it is an on the ground through pass attempt, and when we can score from it. Other wise I agree with you. ------------ On short corner it supposed to produce a shot on goal, and not another service attempt. Short corners other then that are great for 8 and 9 yr olds who can't reach near or far post taking a regular corner. Richie