What is “Hybrid Pressing” and Why is Everyone Using It?

Jon Mackenzie

If you were to distill most pressing systems in football into their most basic constituent parts, you would quickly find out that they can be classified as one of two fundamental approaches: zonal systems or player-oriented systems. Interestingly enough, however, these two fundamental systems can be conceived as opposite sides of the same coin.

For zonal systems, the conceit is that structure is paramount. If you can retain structure throughout the various phases of play, so the logic goes, then you go a long way towards preventing the opponent from making inroads toward your own goal.

But this approach has its downside. By prioritising structure, the disruptive aspect to pressing systems is downplayed. In making sure that structure is retained, then, the opposition will generally be allowed to possess the ball in certain parts of the pitch unhindered, with engagement only occurring when the opponent advances too deep into the defending team’s territory.

These zonal approaches, therefore, are on the passive end of the spectrum — even if the engagement phase is aggressive. They are about handing the initiative to the opponent and being well-set to respond to them when they do encroach.

Player-oriented systems exist on the opposite side of the same coin. By using individual players on the opposition team to orientate your pressing, player-oriented systems are generally much more focused on disruption of opposition possession phases. Although player-oriented pressing moves may start off passively, the idea is to move the opponents into situations called “traps” where all of their players around the ball are marked or covered, making them vulnerable to a turnover of the ball.

But this, too, comes at a cost. With individual opponents prioritised over the retention of any structure, player-oriented systems have the opposite problem to zonal systems: the lack of a coherent structure can be exploitable by the team in possession especially if they have press-resistant players and so the proactivity of a player-oriented system can equally be its undoing.

Two systems, then, which look to prevent the opponent from scoring but in very different ways: the one through a reactiveness that makes them hard to break down but easy to manage; the other through a proactiveness that makes them dangerously disruptive but at the same time potentially fragile.

But why not both? Why not bring together the best of both worlds here to enjoy the benefits of both pressing systems. This is what a lot of teams have done in recent seasons and which I have attempted to bring together under the heading “hybrid pressing”. In the rest of this article, I want to explain what I mean by “hybrid pressing” and show you some examples of it happening on the pitch to give you a sense of what it might look like.

What is Hybrid Pressing?

So what do I mean by “hybrid pressing”. Well, in its simplest form, hybrid pressing systems are those systems which are going to try and enjoy the benefits of both zonal and player-oriented systems. That is: it’s any pressing system which is going to try and balance a structured zonal approach with a more disruptive player-oriented approach.

We’ve already talked about how zonal and player-oriented systems are opposite sides of the same coin. Zonal systems are more passive and tend to cover space in the defending team’s own half. Player-oriented systems are more “front foot” and tend to begin in the opposition’s half trying to disrupt their build up. The trick is going to be to develop systems which allow these two approaches to co-exist: a structured zonal approach in your own half with a more disruptive player-oriented approach in the opponent’s.

Let’s take a look at a basic example of a pressing system which uses this sort of hybrid approach:

Manchester City are a team who use a 442 midblock shape as their basic set-up out of possession. This gives them a structure out of which they defend zonally but they can also press out of this structure into a more player-orientated approach which can put opponents under pressure.

Here’s an example of what the 442 shape looks like against opposition build-up:

From this 442 structure, City will try to put their opponents under pressure in their build up firstly by cutting the field in half. They will do this usually by advancing one of their forward line to close up the opposition’s first line of build up to make it hard for them to switch the ball to the other side of the field:

As the image above shows, Erling Haaland has closed off the passing lane (dotted line) between the first line of Manchester United’s build up. In so doing, he has cut the pitch in half, forcing David de Gea to play on the left hand side of the field as he looks at it.

With this done, the rest of the City players have to go player-to-player on the Manchester United team to make sure they have no easy outs. You can see that Kevin De Bruyne is closely marking the Manchester United pivot (yellow circle) and Phil Foden (white arrow) is pushing up on Lisandro Martinez, the LCB.

Without any easy options for a pass, Martinez goes long and Manchester City win the ball back:

In the course of this pressing action, Manchester City have moved between a zonal approach and a player-oriented approach to give themselves the best situation through which to win the ball back. By picking the opportune moment to “break” their structure, they’ve actually ended up winning the ball back and in a counter-attack situation.

Categorising Hybrid Approaches

As we’ve already said, the risk of taking a player-oriented approach is that you allow weaknesses to enter into your pressing system. By going player for player and making it hard for the opponent to build up, you’re also breaking your own structure and allowing areas that can be exploited to appear within it.

One of the best ways of categorising hybrid approaches, in my opinion, is by identifying where the pressing team is allowing the weakness in their structure to exist once they press out of their zonal system. I like to distinguish between vertically-weakened hybrid presses and horizontally-weakened hybrid presses. Let’s look at both types with examples from each.

Vertically-weakened hybrid presses

Arsenal are a great example of a team who allow weaknesses in their pressing system to appear “vertically”. In certain phases of play, they will force their players to push up the field to make sure opponents are covered player-for-player, thereby introducing weaknesses behind them. The gamble is that by pressing forward, they will rush the opponent into making mistakes or, if not mistakes are made, only allowing difficult passes that they should be able to defend comfortably.

Here’s how Arsenal generally set up in their high press phase:

As you can see, they set up to go player to player across the field except for two areas: one is the centre back area, where they have double coverage; that means there has to be a “weakness” to compensate for it somewhere else which, in Arsenal’s case, is the RW spot. For Bukayo Saka (usually) he is tasked with two marking responsibilities — each of which he will pick up in different phases of the game. I like to call players with this sort of dual responsibility “hybrid players” — they allow teams to move between zonal and player-oriented approaches without the structure breaking down altogether.

If the ball is over on the opposition’s right-hand side in build up, Arsenal will simply press player-to-player as normal, with the CF closing off the passing lane back to the other side of the pitch thereby splitting the pitch in two and making it much easier to focus the player-oriented press in that half of the pitch.

Because Arsenal are player-oriented, the theory is that they should make it difficult for switches of play, meaning it’s less important that opponent’s are free on the other side. In these sense, ths kind of press does allow weaknesses horizontally but as we’ll see, there is a more vertical weakness build in here.

When the opponent are building up on the other side, it’s a different matter. If the goalkeeper plays the ball to the LCB, the CF will still curve their run, this time in the other direction, closing the pass back to the goalkeeper. But now the RW has to give up their hybrid position and jump onto the opponent LCB. This leaves the LB free and so a series of jumps occurs by Arsenal so that there is no free player. Firstly, the RB jumps onto the opposition LB. Then the RCB jumps onto the opposition LW.

This vertical pressing chain introduces a weakness for Arsenal at the back. Where previously, they had two CBs guarding the opposition CF, they now only have one. The gamble is that the aggressive jumps prevent the opponent from being able to exploit this weakness.

So when Arsenal’s opponent’s try to build up on their left-hand side, Arsenal go player-to-player, allowing a CB weakness through a series of vertical jumps. This is why I would call this a vertically-weak hybrid press.

Here’s what it looks like in practice. In this sequence from the Arsenal vs Manchester United game, Bukayo Saka can see that the pass is going to come in to Lisandro Martinez and so jumps.

This leaves Luke Shaw free because Saka is responsible for both of them and so we can (just about) see Ben White making the jump behind Saka in the next screenshot:

Who then tracks Luke Shaw for the next phase:

Because Ben White has jumped, the Manchester United LW (Marcus Rashford in this case) is being tracked by William Saliba out of shot here.

Arsenal use a form of hybrid pressing. By using Bukayo Saka as a “hybrid player” they are able to retain a zonal structure which can then shift quickly into a player-oriented structure. When that happens, Arsena institute a series of jumps which introduces a vertical weakness with the idea bein that the gamble is worth it because the aggressiveness of the press makes it hard for the opponent to exploit that weakness.

Horizontally-weakened hybrid presses

Andoni Iraola’s Rayo Vallecano use a form of hybrid pressing which allows a weakness to open up horizontally in the course of the press. For Iraola, the same sorts of principles are in play as are there for Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. In certain phases of the game, they will go player-to-player. They will do this by using a “hybrid player”. But they will locate the weakness in a different area to Arsenal.

Here’s the basic set-up that Iraola uses:

As you can see, the set-up is similar to Arsenal’s, with a chain of jumps in place in certain situations. Like Arsenal too, the “hybrid player” is the RW — for Rayo Isi Palazon. If the opponent tries to build up on their right-hand side, Rayo will jump their 10 onto the opposition RCB, using the right-sided DFM (usually Santi Comesana) to then jump onto the pivot.

This leaves the opposition left-sided 8 free and this is where the “hybrid player” comes in. Isi will drop onto the free player, leaving the LB unmarked. The weakness is allowed to exist in the LB space because the LB spot is considered low risk and the ball from the RCB to the LB is unlikely. If the ball is played, the reverse series of jumps will be played and Isi will press the LB.

Another team who likes to use horizontal weakness in their hybrid press is Manchester United under Erik ten Hag.

Ten Hag often matches up his midfielders player-for-player across the middle and then goes with a front three against a back four. In this situation, the two wide players are effectively “hybrid players”, responsible for their nearest CB and the FB on their side.

With the ball on one side of the field, the ball-near wide player will go player-to-player on the FB. The CF will go onto the ball-near CB. And then the far-sided wide player will remain hybrid — sitting between the two remaining players in the opponent’s back line.

In these situations, the far-sided hybrid player will often have a choice to make: should they jump onto the CB and leave the FB free or not? If they do jump on the CB, then the opposition will often have an easy “out” in their build up, to escape the pressing trap.

Here’s an example of how this looks in practice from Manchester United’s game against Barcelona in the Europa League. In this moment, Manchester United are pressing high and you can see that their front three is oriented according to the three members of the Barcelona back line closest to the ball.

With Andreas Christensen on the ball, the CB looks up and sees Jules Kounde open.

The Dane plays the ball into Kounde who then has time and space to run onto it and carry it forward.

In these situations, most hybrid pressing teams would push their full back up to pressure the opposition full back (as we saw Arsenal do with Ben White previously). However, for whatever reason, Erik ten Hag would rather encourage a horizontal weakness in his hybrid press than a vertical one (pushing a player up out of his back line).

Conclusion

What is “hybrid pressing”? We now know that it is any pressing system which:

• Seeks to get the best of both zonal and player-oriented pressing systems
• Often through the use of “hybrid players” who can take up a number of marking responsibilities in order to protect a team’s zonal structure even when breaking it in certain phases
• Will introduce weaknesses into their zonal structure either “vertically” — usually allowing a weakness in the back line — or horizontally — allowing a weakness to open up in the wide areas of their own team.

But as time goes by, no doubt we will see more of these sorts of systems appear as they allow a “best of both worlds” approach: they give you the defensive structure offered by zonal systems whilst allowing for the disruption afforded by more aggressive player-to-player presses.