U17 - The art of Defending

Today with the U17 boys we reviewed defending.  Because it was a review, we piled 1v1 , a functional exercise and a small game into the same 90 minute session.

We are not training that often yet and most of these boys play High School soccer, so we want to give them as much info as possible to take back to their school sessions.

For the 1v1 it was a simple serve and play exercise.  Coaching points for defending were:

• Goal side of the ball
• Speed and angle of approach
• Don't lunge into 1v1 battle
• Body balanced
• Threaten ball
• Think of what you will do if you win the ball

We reviewed some different scenarios during the drill but kept it basic and informative.   It's interesting to see how some players give up so easily when they are beat, yet others will run over their grandmother to get the ball back.  It was new for some of them to be told that they need to take off and attack once they win the ball.  We all see it, a team wins the ball and holds it instead of looking for a counter attack.

Then we set up a playing area with 4 lanes roughly 7x25yds each.  The diagram at the right shows 8v8 but we only had 12 players today and put 3 players in each lane.  I always adjust the lanes according to age and # players.

The goal of the game is to move the ball to your teammates of the same colour in the other lane.  So Blue 1 to Blue 2, Yellow 1 to Yellow 2.  The opposing players between the lanes are trying to prevent you from putting the ball through and if they intercept it, they try to connect with teammates in the other lane.

This game can be used to work on so many different things: possession, defending, counter attacking mentality, etc.  Today I used it for defending.

Before you progress, all players must stay in their own lane.

BUT, before you can do anything with this game, you have to let them play for a bit to figure it out and get into the spirit of the game.  It's a very competitive game once it gets going.  Once the flow was there we got into defensive shape (pressure, support, cover, balance, etc).  Coaching points were:

• Immediate pressure on the ball
• Teammates move into support position
• Player pressuring does not follow a pass
• Stay focused on team goals and do not chase balls 
• Lots of movement and co-operation between players on the defending team.

You do not want players chasing the attacking teams'  passes.  Instead a defensive support player moves up to pressure and original defender drops and tucks behind the pressure guy to take away forward progress.  If you chase the ball sideways and a teammate steps up to pressure you temporarily create a situation where you are square and vulnerable to a pass splitting the two of you.

Once the game was moving and we were happy with the movement we progressed it to where a player on the defensive team can step into the other lane to apply more pressure on the ball.  Only one defensive player can enter the lane at a time.

When we got into our 6v6 game (5+GK) we reviewed the principles of play for team defending:

• Pressure the ball
• Support
• Communication
• Recovery runs (get back!)
• Deny forward progress and goals

I was happy with their work rate and intensity today.  These boys are older and competitive so when a training session is going well it's a lot of fun.  The number of players made it difficult to keep the pace of the final game at a good level so we took a few breaks to review.   We also put off-sides into the game as well as saying it would be 2/3 height pressure on the ball (no pressuring ball in attacking third of the field).  I did not stop the game at all to coach as they were enjoying themselves and adhering to the theme of the day. 

Next time I would:

• Ensure there were more players (call ups?)
• Ask more questions during first warm-up to gauge their knowledge of defending
• Keep a better eye on the clock and provide more breaks so they have more energy left to give at the end of training