Understanding Long Line Passes Like Thomas Tuchel – Tactical Theory

The long-line pass is probably one of the simplest passes in football and is, therefore, a common pattern for progressing the ball further up the pitch in wide areas.

However, this kind of pass has some advantages and disadvantages and this tactical theory piece will try and identify them.

Additionally, this analysis will explain why Thomas Tuchel wants his players to avoid this kind of pass and how he simply eliminates the long-line pass from his training sessions.

Why Long Line Passes Are Used

Nowadays, commentators, fans, experts, and everyone else talk a lot about compactness in defending.

This word describes how little the distance between the players is and, therefore, how much space a team occupies.

We can also split compactness in horizontal and vertical compactness to be more specific.

This was now a very short and simple explanation, but we need it to understand the basic idea behind the long line pass.

Now, you may wonder what compactness has to do with the long line pass, but that is quite easy to understand.

Within the last years or probably decades, teams focus more and more on staying compact when they are out of possession.

The vertical and horizontal compactness are both important.

However, while vertical compactness is a central factor when we talk about the space between the lines, many squads have as one of their main goals to give the opposition not only no space between the lines but also generally take away from them the chance to get through the centre.

Therefore, horizontal compactness comes into play.

Due to that, the defending team occupies the centre of the pitch with a lot of bodies to give the opposition in possession of the ball no space to get through this area.

Atletico Madrid are probably the most well-known example of these tactics with the focus on staying compact and giving away no space, neither between the two banks of four nor in the middle of the pitch.

As a consequence, the defending team gives away a lot of space on the wings and the squad in possession see a chance to progress the ball to the final third and create something dangerous.

The image below shows an example of a team defending deep and staying compact (horizontally and vertically).

Due to that, it seems like the wide areas would be the perfect area to attack for the quad in possession.

Therefore, one of the simplest and most effective ways to progress the ball (at first glance) is to play it to the wide area and then play a long line pass.

Considering this, the one who plays the ball is mostly the full-back or wing-back, and the receiver is normally the winger, as we see in the graphic below, which illustrates the theoretical idea of the long-line pass.