As some of you might know, South Africa had one of the strictest Corona imposed lockdowns in the World. Even as we speak, although restrictions are at a lower level, lockdown remains ongoing throughout the country. Due to this, competitive football training was prohibited (for anyone outside of the top two leagues) for about 200 days. For young players this was obviously a massive thinking challenge, as they went from doing what they love every single day to nothing from one week to the next without knowing when things would return. Great credit must go to our boys, who executed their home-program/socially distant training with great diligence and discipline. This helped us in maintaining and building a strong general fitness base. However general fitness is not football fitness but it is nevertheless possible to increase efficiency in your home-training when using the game as a starting point. As football is an interval sport, interval training with high intensity in short bursts was our preferred method.
Managing external factors
It is clear that several of our players played social street football games as well as casual 5v5 tournaments, however the intensity of that is clearly below the intensity one can expect in elite junior development. Consequently, we expected players to be significantly overloaded physically when returning to competitive training after such a long period, one that was much longer than any regular off-season. Luckily our junior season was not scheduled to continue in 2020 which meant we only played some friendly games towards the end of the year. This was helpful as we could schedule these ourselves and spend some weeks training before going back into games. Another advantage with these friendlies was that we could make games much shorter; for instance in our first game back we played 2×20 minutes and then brought on an entirely different 2nd team to also play 2×20 minutes.
There are roughly 3 types of football conditioning games, big ones (11v11-8v8), medium ones (7v7-5v5) and small ones (3v3-4v4). The big ones are obviously closer to the normal competitive match. However, with all the street football and 5v5, players had only covered very small distances, if at all prior to this. Consequently, we felt that it would be too big of a jump to go from 5v5 straight into full field 11v11; a sort of over-overload if you will (big increase in playing tempo and big increase in playing size). 4v4 games are obviously very intensive with players performing many actions per minute. Here we were weary of players struggling to perform many explosive actions and causing unnecessary fatigue that requires long recovery periods. We therefore opted for medium sized 7v7 games. These medium sized games are the perfect balance as they do not have the massive number of actions per minute of smaller games and they also limit players from covering the large distances of bigger conditioning games.
Conditioned 6+3 v 6+3
One of the games we played during this time was this 6+3v6+3 shown below. We found this game quite useful, as it lends itself very easily to both a possession and out of possession focus. One could even have two coaches’ coach either team simultaneously on a theme, or have the assistant coach focus particularly on coaching individual possession aspects with players. All while the head-coach focuses on pressing, or vice-versa. The points beneath are mainly centered around pressing to illustrate an example of principles and constraints that could be used to focus the activity around a certain theme. Having said this, when certain aspects are highlighted within a session, aspects on the ‘other side of the ball’ are overloaded. Something to make a use of.
Each team sets up with a goalkeeper, two central defenders, a central defensive midfielder and 2 attacking midfielders/forwards. Additional to that they have a forward playing outside the field next to the opposition goal as well as two fullbacks playing outside the main field on the other side. For learning more about the benefits of utilizing deeper fullbacks in the build-up I recommend this excellent piece.
The game would always restart from either goalkeeper when the ball went out. This means that the defensive side had to set up a coherent pressing structure in these moments. Players outside the field only played for their own team in possession. They were not limited to a certain number of touches either. However, opponents were allowed to press them outside the field when the ball was played to them. They were able to join play inside the field, or dribble in if they deemed the situation suitable, making their initial position outside the field more of a starting point.
This starting point gave us good repetition of similar pressing situations. It made sense for the forwards to cut of the passing angle from the central defenders to the fullback outside of the field. When this was still played or the outside player received via the 3rd man, it made sense for the opposing fullback to press forward aggressively. A nice picture can be painted for players here that if the ball goes outside it should either be won there or the pass back to the inside should ideally be intercepted or at the very least pressed aggressively. Backwards pressing towards the fullback by the forward should also be encouraged, ideally cutting off the return pass to the central defender at the same time.
Behind that we look to defend aggressively looking to secure (shift) through (something that has been an issue before for our central defenders) whilst also maintaining flexible pressing access to several players in the midfield. The far-side fullback (the right back above) outside the field should be allowed to step in and secure the switch of play incase the opponent manages to escape the pressure and switch play. A possible constraint to highlight these moments is to reward a point/goal for winning the ball in the wide area, in which case I would count regular goals as double.
The player next to the opposition goal serves the purpose of overloading the securing and cover-shadow aspect of the defensive team, making sure that the furthest possible forward pass is covered whilst pressuring the ball. If this player receives and goals are scored of his layoffs into the field then these goals count double or even triple. This ensures that the attacking side is constantly looking to play the furthest possible vertical pass and also supporting forward passes by pushing up as soon as they are played, thus enforcing that we continue working on our relevant attacking actions in the game.
Coaching the game
Several potential constraints (reward switches of play from one side of the field to the other with points, touch restrict wall players or insiders receiving from them, add zones for reference points in pressing etc.) could be employed to vary focuses during this activity. When coaching this game, I found it particularly useful to start with very little constraints (perhaps only the starting positions) and to play several short rounds with generous rest in between as RM highlighted in this recent Tweet as part of his brilliant personal Advent Calendar. This approach makes quality (and intensity) of play the priority over long duration/quantity. When playing several rounds, constraints can easily be added or taken away as one goes along. A coaching technique I have used recently is to ask players certain questions in the break between rounds. This guides the conversation into a direction about a certain principle of play. An example of a question pertaining to pressing principle could be: Is it easier to continue play on attack after a tackle or an interception? To further encourage repetition of this principle, one could add a reward rule such as goals scored after interceptions count triple. By aligning reference (questions) and situation coaching (rules/constraints), one will hopefully guide players to perform desired actions and behaviors without forcing them to do so in every arising game situation. The ultimate aim of training and this method of coaching is to get players to understand why certain behaviors might be more desirable than others. It is this deeper understanding that will allow them to apply a principle or concept more flexibly and creatively on game day.
Once we are able to get players to understand why a certain behavior might be desirable we have achieved a deeper understanding of a certain concept, which can then hopefully be applied flexibly and creatively on game day!