Coaching Diaries #5: Penetration — Final third — Creating and exploiting an overload in zones 1/2/4/5
The session plans from now on will follow a slightly different format to allow for a more structured approach in planning and goal setting of the session. It will be in the form of asking questions and providing answers to them — WHAT?WHY?WHERE?WHO?HOW? — in that order.
WHAT? and WHY?
In the last couple of training sessions we have covered together with the team switch of play. When to do it and how to do it. We have covered the positional arrangement and the technical demands of the execution.
The boys did very well. They grasped the concept very quickly but that was more down to the fact that they were already been doing it throughout the season. We play a 3–4–3 which gives an emphasis on overloads in wide areas since that is where most of our strengths lie.
We won 7–1 our last game, not too bad. The opposition did not have an answer to our overloads in wide areas and we created a lot of chances. Even though the score suggests that we had a dominant performance it was far from perfect. The execution was poor at times and most of the chances were not taken. Decision-making was the reason we gave the ball away on many occasions. As cheesy as it sounds, I knew we could do better if we had instilled some protocols of penetrating when in a specific situation.
For the reasons outlined above, we are going to look into a session which emphasizes on the protocols that we will be looking to implement when penetrating in wide areas.
WHERE?
Before we answer the question lets talk briefly about the zones on a pitch. As mentioned in previous articles the pitch is split into 5 zones longitudinally. 1/5 are the wide zones. 2/3 are the famous half-spaces and 3 is the central zone as shown below.
We will be focusing our efforts today on the wide areas. More specifically we will emphasize on zones 1/2 as that is where our winger/wing-back duo has been performing very well and we want to build on top of their other great qualities.
WHO?
As briefly mentioned above. The session will focus on our wing-back No3 and our winger No11. Their partnership will determine the suceess of the practise. We will be looking at different starting positions, various runs and the overall coordination and communication between the two. The supporting cast for this performance will be the No8 — also very important player in the transition of the ball to the focus area and our No9 — the player making sure that he occupies defenders and allows space for the two out wide to do their thing in an overload.
HOW?
As always the team starts with a warm up consisting of a rondo and stretches to get warm and build a feel for the ball.
Afterwards the players will go into a 1v1 practise as follows.
This techinical practise has the objective to get the players into the state of attacking space. Set the tone of being aggressive and fighting to get ahead in their 1v1 battles later on. While doing this practise, the players are encouraged to pay attention to the following technical details:
- Body shape — low to allow for a quicker switch of direction, hips should be open and pointing to the direction of the switch
- Faints/ disguises — making themselves difficult to read by the defender. By varying their movement they always keep their opponent guessing of their next move.
- Switch of pace — Similar to the previous point, another tool which the player can use to make himself unpredictable.
- Triggers to attack space — defender is unbalanced, poor body position, catching him in a wrong step. All different triggers for the player on the ball to attack space
- Movement to gain space — Last but not least when the player has done one or all of the above and has unbalanced the defender. His movement should be aggressive. When getting an advantage over his position on the pitch respective to the defender, the striker should put his body in front of him — either completely leaving him behind or forcing a foul.
Once the technical practise is done. We move into the lead practise.
The goal of this practise is to team the players to recognize opportunities for penetrating the defensive line. Since the topic is about penetrating in an overload, the players should know how to best utilize the numbers advantage. And there are a couple of ways in which they could do so.
Lets say the defenders remain compact, as they should, if the players spread wide and use the entire width of the provided area, then the widest player should in theory be far enough from the closest defender. If he gets a decent delivery into space, he can attack the space with pace and leave his defender behind him.
Secondly if the players in possession are patient and control the ball from one side to the other, the defenders might get careless and leave space between them. Thats when attackers can use the opportunity to penetrate through the shortest route to goal.
Third option is similar to the first one. It however clarifies that its not only the wide players who should look for opportunities to penetrate but the midfield also, if there such situation presents itself.
To finish off the session, we do a functional practise which takes all that has been learned from the previous two and implementing it in a game scenario.
Players 3 and 10 from the red team are optional. I planned it like this just in case I get 11 or 12 players. If we get more than that, the remaining players over 10 will be taken separately into a SSG/technical practise depending on which position they play primarily.
The objective of the functional practise is to see if the players can understand the triggers that were outlined in the lead practise and perfrom them to a desirable level, implementing the technical detail that was given at the beginning of the session.
Things to look for on top of that are:
- Overlapping/underlapping runs that the wing-back/winger decide to do
- Position of the striker — start offside, make defenders think about him
- Attacking movements from the second line — observe if midfield players look for opportunities to attack the box when the ball is in a dangerous area
- Any penetrative actions through the middle — given the setup of the practise, it is expected for the attacking team to look for penetration in wide areas. If they however find success in exploiting pockets in the defense while catching it being unbalanced, then that is a sign that they understand the topic and the triggers.
That concludes todays session. After exploring the detail surrounding switching and penetrating. It is time to look at finishing the attack. Over the course of the next 2–3 sessions we will look at different situations that arise during the final phase of play.
