Barcelona’s Jordi Alba, Marcelo of Real Madrid, Lucas Digne, and David Alaba are just a few full-backs who are famous for their typical sprints down the touchline to support their wingers with overlapping runs. Nowadays, overlapping runs are a tactical pattern which is used extremely often, especially by squads who dominate their opponents and mainly face teams who try to defend in a low-block and so they often try to break up the opposition’s formation with the aid of overlapping runs.
In this tactical analysis, Ill explain why overlapping runs can be an important part of a teams tactics, talk about the aspects which the players need to understand, and then show you three drills which can help you as a coach to practice overlapping runs with your team.
The importance of overlapping runs
We saw several times within the last couple of years the same scenario in many Barcelona games: Alba overlaps the left-winger, gets the ball and delivers a low cross towards Lionel Messi who then scores. Now, of course, not every team has got a player on the level of Messi in their squad who is incredibly talented in finding free spaces in these situations to receive the ball and then strike it home.
However, with the right explanation and some practising, an overlapping run can be done by almost every full-back and its hard for every single defence to defend against. But before we talk about what exactly the players need to understand or in which situations these tactics can be useful, I want to make clear why overlapping runs can massively help a team.
Well start now from scratch. As everyone knows, the goal of every single game must be to win it and due to that that we want to score goals. To do so, we must create situations in which we use tactics and patterns (or an individual action) to bring a player into a position in which he can score a goal. An effective way to get there is to force your opponents to make decisions. Whenever you can bring one, or ideally several, opposition players into situations in which they have to decide between two or even more options, they will make mistakes which will probably lead to something.
Generally, you can provoke such situations with movements and runs, and an overlapping run is one of the preferred ones since it’s on the wing and there are neither many players nor many opponents involved which makes it easier to practice it.
The raw and basic idea is illustrated in the image below. The player on the ball (mainly a winger) finds himself in a one-on-one situation on the wing against an opponent (mainly a full-back). As he gets supported by a teammate who makes an overlapping run, the player on the ball has three options which are all shown in the graphic in three different colours. He can pass the ball down the line, he can cut in to the play the ball through (both times to the overlapping player), or he can cut in and do something else like a dribble, a pass, or a shot.
Now, as a consequence, the defender also has several options for how he could defend this situation. So we force him to make a decision as he could follow the player who makes the overlapping run or stay near the one on the ball. Its not possible for a defending player to always take the right option and he will make mistakes which can lead to a dangerous situation. Two players who were outstanding in such situations were Arjen Robben and Philipp Lahm back in the years when they played together on the right side of Bayern Munich.
Of course, in some situations it’s also the goal to even create a one-on-one situation as the player on the ball is usually facing two opponents and then the overlapping player pins one opponent which creates a new situation. But we can see that the basic idea is always to support the player on the ball by providing an additional option and forcing the opponent to a decision or create a new situation.
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