Coaching Rest Attack Tactics: A Tactical Guide With Principles And Examples

What Is Rest Attack?

Weve all heard of rest defence.

While it dominates conversations on tactics, and there are many pieces of analysis on the topic, the inverse is less readily available.

Rest attack finally gets its spot in the limelight.

This tactical analysis looks at the other side of the ball.

We want to look at the principles of a strong rest attack; in other words, how do teams situate themselves to enhance the efficiency of their counterattacks?

Well start this tactical theory piece with a general look at our starting ground: how teams organise their press.

We’ll then connect rest attack to the opposition and how to find gaps in their rest defence.

Finally, the conversation turns to finding outlet passes.

Ultimately, this analysis will lay out a holistic approach to rest attack.

Setting up the defence

Any conversation about rest attack naturally starts with the defensive setup.

Just as rest defence is the attacking structure that lends itself to defensive transitions, rest attack puts the defensive tactics in relation to attacking transitions.

In other words, its defending with attacking in mind.

There are a couple of ways to go about the topic, such as the use of pressing traps to create transitional moments or how a team funnels play into specific spaces before engaging.

That latter point connects to the positioning of outlets to initiate the counterattacking sequence.

Since were not looking specifically at a single club’s philosophy, will use this analysis as a brief survey on rest attack examples within different presses.

Starting with a high press, the example below shows Värnamo tightly connected centrally while also cutting off any passes into the wings through the first two players in the press.

This is an excellent example of a pressing trap.

With the wings cut off and a little more than a rushed clearance available for the goalkeeper, Värnamo initially presents the defensive midfielder as an option to play out.

But it is a trap.

Once the pass is played in, its quickly read and the ball stolen, leading to a shot against an expansive opponent.

In the mid-block, we have