Tactical Theory: How To Train Vertical Build-Up Passing In Football – Tactical Analysis

What Is Vertical Passing In Football?

The aim of the game of football is to progress the ball forward and move as close to the goal as possible to create the best goal-scoring opportunities.

Within this, different teams have different principles, patterns of play and philosophies on how best to do this.

There is no one correct way how to progress the ball but the role of the coach is to ensure that the methods chosen are executed so that they are effective and can thus lead to a side being able to progress the ball consistently.

Vertical passing is no different from any other method of ball progression in this regard as without certain sub-principles and actions supporting the method, a team will consistently lose the ball and fail to progress further up the pitch.

This tactical theory article will provide a tactical analysis of how the tactics and actions of certain teams allow them to be able to use vertical passes effectively.

In addition to this, it will also provide examples of how to train these actions to progress the ball and potentially create goal-scoring chances.

The key actions that support vertical passing

The term vertical passing on its own is somewhat of a loose term.

Regardless of the principles and the type of passes a team chooses to employ in the build-up, at some point they will play vertical passes if it helps them execute other facets of their game model.

In the context of this piece, vertical passing in build-up will be in regards to teams that are positioned and move specifically either within a structure or to create structures that gear them towards playing and receiving vertical passes.

This already implies that vertical passing does not exist in a vacuum, and must be accompanied by other actions that are used in order to make the passes effective.

Some of the most important actions in this regard are overloading the centre of the pitch, players being aware of where best to receive the ball, knowing when to play the ball and how best to support the player receiving the ball (supporting as the third man) and lastly, one of the most important, off-the-ball-runs.

To fully explain how these actions are useful, it would be wise to provide examples of how different teams use them.

De Zerbi’s Brighton and Sarri’s Napoli 

Roberto De Zerbis’ Brighton in the Premier League as well as Maurizio Sarri’s Napoli five years ago provide examples of how two teams can have two different approaches with how they try to create vertical passing options.

Nevertheless, the actions mentioned in the previous paragraph can still be observed on both sides.

At this stage in time, much has been written about De Zerbi’s box midfield structure and how his teams utilise this in order to create numerical superiorities across the pitch.

Within this structure, as soon as a backwards or lateral pass is played, the players ahead of the ball are triggered to drop deeper and support the ball carrier, which can be seen in the image below, with Pascal Gross and Moises Caicedo dropping deeper in order to support Jason Steele.

This in turn also acts as a trigger for the player on the ball to play a pass to the dropping players.

What makes this particularly effective in progressing the ball is that players do not look to stand on the same horizontal lines when receiving the ball, which is particularly the case for Brighton’s double pivot as well as their centre-backs.

This automatically gives the recipient of the vertical pass a player to lay off the vertical pass to, with this player able to receive the ball facing forwards.