My (abridged) style-of-play philosophy

After my last post, I had a bunch of people ask me what the 8 drills are that I use. You missed the point. The specific 8 drills I use are tailored toward exactly how I want my teams to play. I would use a different set of drills if I were coaching my teams to play differently. In short, the drills I use are, and should be, different than the drills you will use to mold your players to play your specific brand of soccer.

Simply having my set of 8 drills is useless to you unless you completely understand my philosophy about how I want the game to be played. You will never get to that level of understanding unless you coach with me on a daily basis. (pssst, your philosophy should be that detailed too!)

So, what I decided to do, is to give you the extremely short and summarized outline of how I want my teams to play. That should give you enough understanding to grasp why I emphasize specific areas of focus for skills to learn. That was the basis of choosing the drills I use. I had to ask myself, "What specific skills do I want my players to learn?" Then it was a simple process of researching drills I could use to teach those skills, trying them out in sessions, and eliminating the ones that weren't effective in teaching the skills I demand of my players.

The following is a document that I review with and give to my players each season. Without providing any additional context, it is largely a bunch of buzzwords that are thrown around by coaches all over and at all levels. This is what I give my players on day 1 and provide the details and context throughout the season.

Key tenets for our style of play

1.                  Pass with purpose

a.       Maintaining possession until we can create a chance is of utmost importance. Simply playing kick-and-run is not good enough.

b.      We must be decisive with who, where, why, and how we are passing the ball.

2.                  Penetration

a.       We must look to penetrate the defensive lines by either dribbling or purposeful passing.

b.      When we penetrate a line, recognize visual cues of offball movement.

3.                  Containment/delay

a.       We must not dive in to win the ball and cause our entire team’s defensive shape to be thrown off balance.

b.      Containing their attackers allows our teammates to track back and apply additional pressure on the ball.

4.                  Communicate

a.       Communicating what runs you’re making and where you are helps us make the correct decision more often.

b.      Letting your teammates know what to do when you pass to them helps us play quicker and maintain possession better. “Send a pass, send a message.”

5.                  Off-ball movement to create space for self

a.       A man standing still is a man easily marked out of the game.

b.      Dynamic movement (check away/to, curling run, overlapping runs, etc.) will create space for you to receive the ball.

6.                  Recognize pressing triggers

a.       We press high up the field to win the ball quickly and in dangerous areas.

b.      If the first defender recognizes a visual cue to press, everyone must press.

7.                  Everyone defends

a.       No matter your position, you have a job on the defensive side of the ball.

b.      After your line is penetrated, it is your responsibility to either apply additional pressure or eliminate a passing.

8.                  Utilize drops / play the way you face

a.       This is part of the means to maintain possession.

b.      Playing the way you face allows for your teammates to use their better vantage point to pick out the best pass to move forward.

9.                  Off-ball movement to create space for teammates

a.       Sometimes we are just marked too closely to receive a pass for ourselves.

b.      Clearing yourself and your defender out of the space allows for a teammate to move into that space to receive the ball.

10.              Switch the field of play

a.       Switching the play allows us to attack with an overload.

b.      It also allows us a good opportunity to let the game breathe and slow the tempo down.

The broader framework I hammer into the players is a possession-based style that is heavy on short, quick combination play. We aim to keep the ball on the ground while utilizing visual cues that tell my players they're supposed to make specific movements to either open up space with movement or find space with movement.

The importance of a small set of drills

First, this post is all entirely useless if you haven’t clearly defined your philosophy: How do you want to create your chances? How do you want to penetrate opponents’ lines? Where do you want to win the ball? Where is your initial line of confrontation? What visual cues tell your players what action they’re supposed to take now? What are the responsibilities of each position in each phase of the game?

If you haven’t detailed out exactly what you want your team to be doing in the various phases of the game, do that NOW. Otherwise, you’re just teaching the kids random pieces of soccer without teaching them how they fit together. That results in sloppy play, poor decisions, and a slow speed of play - jungleball, kick and run, pickup soccer.

Once you have your philosophy and style of play detailed, you have an actual end-point for where you want your team to end up. That makes it infinitely easier to identify and utilize drills that are relevant to accomplish your goals. I’ve seen coaches (the select few who have a detailed philosophy) waste an incredible amount of time explaining rules of the drill. As the imparter of knowledge, we are collectively throwing away so much opportunity for our players to get in repetitions and also to layer on additional coaching points (which are usually the higher-level and most important ones for player development!).

The simplest way to eliminate your wasted time is simply to identify drills that you can use to teach multiple components of your style of play. After once or twice through the drills early in the season, the kids understand exactly what’s going on which allows the coach to just say “go to Drill X” and the kids start immediately playing. That’s about 2 minutes saved each drill, 6 minutes each practice, 18 minutes each week, 72 minutes each month, or about 3 hours each season. You just bought yourself two entire training sessions worth of time. That doesn’t even touch the even greater benefit of time saved from the players trying to figure out the process and how to actually succeed within the drill.

I have narrowed my set list down to 8 drills for U12-14 for the entire season. It takes the kids two weeks to learn them all and then we can really get started on learning the soccer part – layering on crucially important pieces that will make them better soccer players. Verbal communication, visual communication, checking shoulders, creating space for themselves, creating space for their teammates, finding space created by teammates, recognizing when to get forward with or without the ball, and a million other bits of information top-level players need to have imparted to them.

Each drill allows me to teach at least two aspects of our style of play on each side of the ball. I’ll use the simple 4v1 rondo with a rule of no passing across the square as an example. Many coaches simply use it as a generic passing drill to warm up, but it has the potential to be so much more:

Offensively, the two key points for my style of play are receiving across your body (and passing across a teammates body) and quickly getting into angles of support. These are key to moving the ball quickly and keeping it on the ground, the absolute core of my entire philosophical framework. On top of that, I layer on moments of communication like asking for the ball, telling them not to play to you, and telling them to play a specific teammate. All of those hinge on players learning to read the defender’s positioning relative to the ball and the available passing options.

Defensively, the two key points are channeling play to the desired direction and recognizing the visual cues of when to press the ball to win it or force an error. On top of that, I layer on selecting what type of tackle (block tackle or poke tackle) to use in specific situations and the importance of intensity for being decisive to take advantage of opponents’ errors.

The small drill set is about more than just being able to layer on more complex ideas. It is also about allowing your players the time to absorb what you’re trying to get them to learn via the drill. Repetition creates calm players. Repetition creates consistency. Repetition creates recognition of situations and increased speed of play.

Welcome to the new location!

I decided to switch the name of my blog and remove the "MLS" portion of it for two reasons.

1. This allows the space to be more of a catch-all for my thoughts about tactics and coaching.
2. MLS doesn't need what (extremely) little publicity I gave it via the old name.

Additionally, the purpose of the blog is more for my own learning than it is for teaching others. I'm challenging myself to write out important pieces of my coaching philosophy and style so I am forced to think through them and be critical of myself. Any feedback you want to give is welcomed. We can always learn something from every coach we meet, even if it is how exactly not to do something.

If you want to check out my old posts, you can find them here.