Football analysis journal #1: Counterpressing to empower playing through the lines

Football analysis journals is a ‘series’ I’m starting to help get my ideas, gathered from reading, watching and general life out publicly.

I’ve struggled to find ways to do this in the past, giving myself time limits and looking to write longer form articles which peter out, above all, due to me trying to make them perfect.

Looking to embrace my journey and education — and as part of this, mistakes, accepting my old work will become ‘worse’ as I progress and being able to change ideas over time — I’ve decided to collate my ideas into these short articles.

Some may end up being the topic of a longer write-up — I’m not really sure how they will proceed — but, for now, this is simply an outlet for my footballing thoughts.

I appreciate any debate, comments or feedback, and feel free to respond here or message me directly on Twitter.

Playing through the lines can be the most dangerous way to progress the ball.

Going over the top and going wide means that the ball is further away from goal, and allows the team’s central, defensive core to focus on a possible transition rather than progressing the ball.

In addition, all cohesive defensive teams will look to remain compact between the lines, and as a result, will allow for space out wide, making that the safer option in build-up.

Many teams, as a result, avoid playing through the centre, but do so to their own detriment, with the lack of diversification giving the opposition easier, more basic problems to solve.

When watching sides who don’t usually play through the lines, it’s interesting to see that even when the space is there to progress centrally, the ball-carrier will often deny the opportunity, as it’s out of their usual norms and therefore their comfort zone.

The centre, rather than presenting itself as a grand opportunity, becomes a perilous area, which is ironic considering teams are taught that this same definition applies when defending.

The natural step towards playing through the lines would be to either:

• Create a better system to access the centre
• To sign players more comfortable playing into the centre and operating between the lines

But the original motive against playing into the centre comes from a conservative, defensive standpoint; coaches are afraid of losing possession in the centre and conceding counter-attacking opportunities.

Now, the solution becomes having a good rest defence, but more vitally, counter-pressing.

It would be incorrect to call Austria a lacklustre technical side, but they are objectively technically inferior as a squad to, for example, the Netherlands.

Despite this, when taking them on, they looked supremely confident in their ability to progress through midfield, because they knew that when losing the ball, they could counter-press effectively, with a good support structure behind.

Thus, the worry of losing possession is eliminated, because playing between the lines becomes a double opportunity — either the pass and subsequent move are successful, or the ball is lost in the attempted attack, but Austria can counter-press with intent and a good structure behind them.

Through this, they create what is in their eyes a ‘win-win’ situation, which frees players to take calculated risks and play through the centre.

Negating the natural fear of playing centrally can come through empowering players from an in-possession standpoint, by creating training methodologies to improve their technical and psychological abilities to play and receive between the lines.

But the use of counter-pressing flips the original panic of losing the ball centrally on its head, by encouraging players to view a dispossession as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Like anything, the theory is a lot simpler than building the necessary intent and execution, but using counter-pressing to encourage central play provides an interesting blueprint to teams that struggle to play through the lines, and those that are relatively mid to low-quality in their respective leagues when looking to diversify their attack and pose more challenges for opponents in possession.