Creating numbers up... the wrong way?

My youngest son, Lance will sign his National Letter of Intent next week. As part of the recruiting process, we have watched film of how each college that has pursued him plays on the pitch.  As regular readers of this blog can attest, I am a huge fan of watching match film. There are great learning opportunities to be found in how others approach the game.

Over the course of Lance's high school playing career it was frustrating to watch his team attempt to attack. They were very much about playing in the (right) outside channel. Predictably so.  Now, I do not have a problem with channel play, per se. No, the problem I have his high school teams form of channel play is how they go about attempting to create numbers up situations for play in the channel. After watching film of a certain local college side who has had considerable influence on the high school program I have a deeper appreciation for why the high school coaching staffs attempted to play as a they did.

The danger lies in isolating the creation of numbers up situations to the exclusion of other facets of the game, namely playing in space to allow for playing with pace.  With the high school side, the weak side wing players were either instructed to come ball side or were allowed to do so when the team attacked. Ostensibly this was to help create numbers up situations around the ball. 

If we refer back to Sun Tzu Soccer we find there is some validation for manipulating an opponent to move numerical strength to one side of the pitch. The advantage is in opening space and weakening the opponents ability to defend in another area of the pitch.  However, if the intention is not to exploit the space and weakness created, then all that is accomplished is to self-deny space and time in the ball side channel thoroughly negating any numbers up situations created.  And this is indeed what we saw from the high school side as they struggled all season long to generate any sustained offense - they were their own worst enemies in that they self-inflicted pressure to an extent they were not capable of playing securely from it.

Creating Numbers Up for Combination Play.

The reason to create numbers up situations on the attack is to allow two (or more) attacking players to isolate a single defender.  This is where the recognition and execution of the cues for combination passing come into play.  A key element in combination passing is having space for the ball carrier to engage the lone defender.  Making the defender commit to defending the ball opens teammates to be used to help defeat the pressure defender.  If the ball side is overloaded with attacking teammates the space required to execute combination passing is severely limited and restricted.  This is exactly what happened throughout the high school season for Lance's team.

Now, there is value to cluttering the space in one outside channel ... IF this is done so intentionally to be able to cross the ball to and play in the other outside channel.  This is something our club team did often and with great success.  No so much for Lance's high school team. Whereas our club team would often run two players to ball side in front of the action in a purposeful attempt to manipulate the opponents defense, the high school team seemed to purposefully run players to ball side at or near the level of the ball which allowed opposing back lines to stay relatively stationary in their comfort zones within their preferred defensive shape.  This is why the high school team struggled with early crosses while the club team excelled at early crosses. 

It's all about having proper space and time to allow attackers to dictate the pace of play. The club team was the maestro in dictating not only where on the pitch the ball would be played, but also by whom and at what pace.  The high school team, through self-inflicting pressure via their own player movement allowed the opponents defense to dictate the pace and rhythm of the game.

Ball movement is predicated on player movement.  I 100% believe this to be true. We might expand on this by saying intentional and purposeful ball movement is predicated on intentional and purposeful player movement.  It is not enough just to be in constant motion on the pitch.  The high school team had 3 or 4 players who were exceptional at being in constant motion, but so much of their motion, their effort, produced little in the way of positive team results. In fact, they were the prime perpetrators of self-inflicting pressure on both themselves and their teammates.

Another way of stating the need for intentional and purposeful player movement can be found in the old basketball / soccer adage that mandates making your movement benefit a teammate - playing for your teammate or making a run for your teammate.  Every attacking movement on the soccer pitch should be purposeful.  A run into open space. A run to create space. 

A run into open space will draw a defender to that run.  The consequence of the defenders movement is creation of space or a seam somewhere behind him.  When attacking, the club team emphasizes passing to the second man running.  That is a second run being made on the heels of the first runner who is drawing the defender away. That second runner is often open when cutting up field on the heels of the defender following the first runner.  It is a simple and easy means of creating a numbers up situation by forcing a defender to respect the first runner / threat and then passing behind the defender to the second runner.

In effect, the first run into space purposefully created space for a teammate to run into / be played the ball into and through.  When runners are brought to the ball side channel in front of the ball and engage the opposing backs the space being created is to the weak side or outside the width of the opposing backs - the early cross.  The ball side runners ultimately benefit from their own selfless runs. Upon an early cross the defense will shift back across the pitch to deal with the changing threat leaving those runners free on what has become the back post side.   Again, the cub team was very adept at this while the high school team never did find this solution to their attacking problems. 

Is it any wonder why the club teams averaged 4+ goals per game against some of the best competition throughout the Midwest while the high school team struggled to score even one goal per game against an average high school schedule? 

It has been posited to me that the club team had a roster of all-stars, that it was the talent that made the difference.  We did have a roster of all-stars on the "A" team. We also took on all comers.  What of our club "B" team?  The overall talent on the "B" team was no better than an average high school team and they still managed to score 3+ goals a game and defeated some very good opponents using the same attacking philosophy of the "A" team.   The idea that a high school team cannot employ the attacking strategies being advocated here is a product of one of two things; 1) Lack of knowledge on the coaching staffs part and or 2) Laziness to implement the attacking strategies on the coaching staffs part.  I know, for I implemented these attacking strategies to turn around a moribund high school program and turn them into a powerhouse in under 2 years time. 

The point of relating these teams stories to you is rather simple, a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  It is foolishness to emphasize one aspect of play in the belief it is the answer to the overall level of play.  Each part of play is dependent on all other parts of play.  Simply creating numbers up can be achieved by flooding a channel of play, but to what end?  If the bigger picture is not seen and the whole of the pitch is not used, why bother creating numbers up situations in the first place?  Effort alone is just not enough. Intelligent effort is required.  Purposeful effort is required. 

Lance's high school team was infected with Ballwatchingitus and the efforts and movements of many of their players reflected this.  The majority of their movements were made for the ball with far too few of their movements being made for a teammate or for one another.  They allowed the focus of opponents defenses to remain on the ball and too rarely challenged opposing defenses to account for player movement away from the ball, player movement outside the defenses direct line of vision to the ball.

When coaching / teaching a team how to create numbers up situations I encourage you to focus on the broader concepts involved in being numbers up; 1) it's a great way to defeat a single defender and 2) it forces other defenders to move to compensate for their beaten teammate as well as 3) creates space to be exploited in other areas of the opponents defense, especially on the back side of the opponents defensive shape.  Make sure your team is prepared to utilize and exploit all valued gained from creating a numbers up situation for if it is not the resulting self-inflicted pressure surely defeats the purpose of creating numbers up situations, does it not? 

Lima Senior 8 Van Wert 1

I traveled to Van Wert tonight to check in on the Lima Senior Spartans.  Conceive Believe Achieve Soccer has conducted the Spartans team camp the past couple of summers and it has been a wonderful experience for us. A great group of hard working young men with a dedicated coaching staff of Mitch Monfort, Phil Vermillion and Matt Berney. It has been a most rewarding experience to witness the progress this program has made in the past 15 months.

Lima Senior plays one of the craziest schedules around. They battle the big boys of the TRAC conference - Findlay, Toledo St. Johns and Toledo St. Francis - and also mix in some WBL, NWC and WOSL schools.  Lack of consistency in the Spartans play has haunted them a bit during the first part of the season. They had stellar stretches of play against St. Johns and Findlay where it looked like they were ready to break through and then have had head shaking performances against other teams that left one wondering if they were ever going to get it right?

The Lima Senior Spartans got it right tonight at Van Wert against the Cougars. This was one the best team performances I have seen this fall. The Spartans were dominant from the opening whistle through the final whistle.  It was pure pleasure watching them play this evening as they really moved the ball side to side, forward and back and forward again. There was a steady stream of diagonal passes and crosses came from anywhere and everywhere. Talk about manipulating a defense?  WOW!  Just, wow!   This was beautiful soccer. The beautiful game at its best.

Senior Alex Ehora got the scoring started in the games 4th minute when he chipped the Van Wert goalkeeper from slightly right of goal at distance of about 27 yards.  The Cougars failed to get pressure on the ball and Ehora made them pay the price.

In the games 7th minute sophomore Caleb Grundisch playing as the holding midfielder pounced on  loose ball deflected off the Van Wert goalkeepers hands passing it into the back of the net from a distance of 12 yards out.

Nine minutes later junior Jayden Weltmer was left attended just right of goal at a distance of 24 yards and did what any good soccer player would do. He shot and scored the goal for his team.

The Spartan defense was instrumental in starting these attacks especially in switching the ball and making the initial passes to the feet of target players.  The outside backs also made well timed forays into the attack further pressuring and stretching Van Wert's defensive shape.

It was after the Spartans third goal in the games 19th minute that their defense made its one serious blunder as a center back was caught stepping to the ball when he should have been giving ground with his back line mates. Cougar midfielder Eric Yeung chipped the center defender playing Jacob Williamson in on goal. Lima Senior goalkeeper Eyon Berney was able to deflect the ball but not prevent it from trickling into the net for the Cougar's lone score.

Freshman Colton Fry scored next for Lima Senior when in the games 26th minute he struck a ball from 30 yards out on the left flank that found its way over the Van Wert goalkeepers outstretched arms and below the cross bar to put the Spartans up by a three goal margin once again.

The final tally of the first half came in the games 32nd minute when Caleb Grundisch played Alex Ehora in for a shot from 22 yards out just to the right of the arc. Ehora finished to the back post side netting to make it 5-1 Lima Senior at the half.

The Spartans began the second half of the match as they had finished the first half with strong possession play backed by rock solid defense. It took less than 5 minutes to put goal number six on the board for the Spartans. Senior center back Levi Quintero played a long diagonal cross forward to Nicky Shauf who defeated a defender and drove towards goal before placing a shot into the net from a distance of 9 yards.

In the games 58th minute it was Alex Ehora playing a short through ball for an assist of sophomore striker Luis Mendez's goal from 15 yards out.  Mendez is one of the really good young players in the area and it was nice to see him get rewarded with the goal. He is not going to get mentioned nearly as often as he might, but the havoc he wreaks on opposing defenses with his movement and one touch play should not go unmentioned.

Lima Senior's final goal came in the games 76th minute when senior defender Taylor Mericle got onto a loose ball in front of the Cougar net off a deflected Colton Fry corner kick.

The final was 8 - 1 in Lima Senior's favor, but I want to point out that the Spartans could have named their score tonight such was the dominating performance they gave. Head coach Mitch Monfort should be credited with playing a lot of players and mixing up his line up over much of the second half of this game. The Spartans continued to play their possession style game but the final pass and finishing touches were a tad less efficient than when the front line players were in the game in their preferred positions. A nice display of sportsmanship by the Spartans.

It should also be noted that 7 different Spartans scored goals tonight. Only Alex Ehora scored twice. There was no running up the score or padding individual player statistics here tonight. This type of balance is a product of the system of play the Spartans have embraced. Versatility in the attack and balanced scoring are trademarks of this system of play. When ran properly it is extremely difficult to defend against.

In closing I just want to reiterate one final time what a pure pleasure it was to watch this Lima Senior team play this evening. The way they went about their business this evening is why we can call soccer the beautiful game. Well done Spartans!

Crossing the Soccer Ball.

What I am about to write will seem sacrilegious to soccer purists, but if you bear with me I think you will eventually understand the point being made.  The traditional crossing of the soccer ball is the most inefficient tactic for scoring the soccer ball in the game today. 

For years I have taught my teams to deny the opponents cross. The foundation of any good defensive scheme is to take away what the offense wants to do. In soccer finishing off crosses has long been a   staple of training around the globe. So, I have for years instructed my outside defenders to turn the ball inside toward their center backs thus denying the opponents the traditional cross.  This simply makes sense and I have noticed ever increasing numbers of teams adapting this strategy.

My own teams rarely practice crossing the ball in a traditional sense - driving the ball down the flank to the 18 extended and crossing into the space directly in front of the face of the goal. We do practice taking the ball to the end line and engaging the goalkeeper then slotting it back between the penalty mark and the top of the 18 - the bangoo.

I always try to stay ahead of developments in the game. My teams played zonal long before it became popular to do so. As I just stated, my teams rarely cross the ball in a traditional sense. We are different yet highly successful. Perhaps we are successful because we are different?

The traditional cross was viewed as a fundamental strategy when playing against a diamond man-marking stopper / sweeper system. It was intelligent play to shift the diamond towards one side of the field and play back against its grain to generate scoring opportunities. With zonal defenses being the staple of todays defending schemes that strategy is not nearly as effective unless a team over shifts its entire back line to ball side. If the backs remain in their channels it renders crossing the ball far less effective.

Changes to combat zonal defending schemes are driving todays game like never before. This is something I noticed 4-5 years ago and resulted in a different approach for our offense being developed. As I said, my teams have never been ones to spend much time in training on finishing off crosses. I have always considered this to be an inefficient means of generating quality scoring chances. We have always looked for different means to advance the ball into scoring position.

The head high school coach I worked as an assistant under was the first to utilize a zonal defense in our area. Our school was way ahead of the game in that regard and it was ultra effective. He was also a possession style coach for attacking the opponents goal.  Those teams were great defensively and struggled to score. A typical score would be a 1 - 0 victory and we were the dominant team in the area.  I remember countless discussions with that coaching staff on how to generate more goals.

Possession in those days and on those teams saw a primary focus on the number of passes a team could string together. Training games were built around this and those teams became pretty impressive in building up the number of consecutive passes they could make in playing keep-away. That was also the rub - playing keep-away doesn't do much for you if the intent is to score goals.

As a head coach in both the scholastic and club ranks I have stuck with zonal defending and a possession style attack, but it would be unrecognizable to those old teams. The foundation for our attacking philosophies are rooted in my love for basketball. I remember legendary coach Bob Knight instructing at one of his camps that you had to move the ball from side to side to open seams in a moving defense through which to attack.  Attacking zonal defenses in soccer works the same way. The beauty of this is it also works extremely well against man marking systems of defending.

So while traditional crossing of the soccer ball has been increasingly looked at as an outdated low percentage means of generating quality scoring opportunities the value of intelligent crossing of the ball has actually risen.

A 2010 study of the UEFA Champions League saw that while 16% of goals scored came from traditional crosses only 1 in 92 crosses resulted in a goal being scored. An efficiency rating of .01%. Yikes! Here's another interesting statistic from that study, possession was lost 73% of the time a traditional cross was made. In fact, the study suggests the cross is so inefficient teams would score .57 of a goal more per game if they abandoned the cross entirely. 

Comparisons between qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup and qualifying for this summers World Cup also bolster the idea traditional crossing is becoming less prevalent in the game. There were over 3 fewer crosses per match in this last round of qualifying than there had been in the previous.

Tiki-Taka or touch-touch is surely responsible for some of this as possessions became longer and by extension fewer over the course of a match. Yet, tiki-taka was exposed in this summers World Cup for being nearly as ineffective as the traditional crossing style has become. So, what's going on?

To begin with, tiki-taka is basically what those high school teams I referenced earlier played in the late 1990's and early 2000's.  Those teams won games with typical scores of 1-0 or 2-1. They possessed the ball. They made opponents chase the ball. That is tiki-taka soccer. The underlying premise being the opponent cannot score if you possess the ball. However, the priority in tiki-taka is not about possessing to attack.

Over the last half dozen years I have directed and urged my teams to find the path of least resistance to goal. We do not work on traditional crosses at all. We do still work on the bangoo cross. And we work on early crosses as if it were a religion.  I provide two simple templates or patterns for advancing the ball up the field with both relying heavily on having at least two complete changes of field. If we can change the point of attack with one huge cross, I love it. If it must be done by 2 or 3 shorter passes, I still like it. But then the ball must immediately begin it's journey back across the pitch as we enter the final third. This can be done by another cross or by a player carrying the ball across. The entire premise is to force a defense to move to one flank then catch them moving in recovery to the other flank.  Flat or square passes are near useless as they do not force a defense to change its vertical positioning on the pitch. The key is for diagonal crosses. This is heretical to traditionalists who have long viewed the flat or square cross from the 18 extended to be the option of choice in attacking the oppositions goal.

Today's crosses must be diagonal, early and repetitive to be effective in moving zonal defenses not only channel to channel but also vertically up and down the pitch. Moving zonal defenses vertically is the key to opening seams to attack through.  And you know what?  It works against man-marking systems as well!  I do not have a formal name like "tiki-taka" for what we do. I call it possessing to attack although possessing to score might be a better description.

Now that the game seems to be catching up with our defensive philosophy I am strongly considering inviting the opponents to cross the ball in a traditional sense. We have the results and the stats to prove we can win convincingly by possessing to score through intentionally manipulating a defense. From what I am seeing the game is moving in this direction on the world stage right on down to the club and now high school ranks.  This is the driving force behind the ever more popular 4-2-3-1 formation we are seeing - opening flank play for the purpose of early crosses with an emphasis on intentionally orchestrated versatility in the attacking third of the pitch.

Traditions are great but like everything else in life they must also change with the times The new traditional cross is the early and repeated cross before reaching the attacking third.  The 4-2-3-1 formation opens the space on the flanks for this to occur. Whereas early penetration followed by successful use of width was once the accepted formula for attacking, the modern game sees utilization of width to open seams through which to penetrate as the emerging norm for attacking play.