Team defending part 2: Midfield compactness – training analysis

This article represents the second in a six-part series on coaching team defending. This is looking at group tactics, rather than the individual, so whilst individual technique or tactics can certainly be coached if necessary during these sessions, these aren’t the main outcomes of the practices shown in this analysis.

Secondly, as a caveat, these practices shown are just ideas, and may not suit every team, or every age level. However, if they can be used as a framework to generate new ideas or adjusted to make a session, then this article will have done its job. It’s not always advisable to simply “copy and paste” a session plan and apply it to your own team, given that your game model may not suit these practices, or perhaps your team’s current learning curve is not at the level required to run these, or conversely they are at a level where these practices aren’t challenging enough.

Finally, this writer doesn’t claim to be the creator of any practices, however, isn’t knowingly “copying and pasting” ideas himself either. Session ideas and individual practices are, and should be, accumulated over long periods of time, tried, tested, and adjusted, with different teams, age levels and ability levels. As coaches, we should be working collaboratively, sharing ideas and promoting a transparency and openness that helps us and our players achieve our goals. There should be no secrets and it’s so important to share, work together, and support.

The session

This session’s main focus is midfield compactness, but specifically team compactness behind a pressing player, i.e. how we support a press behind the pressing player, rather than in a mid-to-low block for example.

An introductory activity will look to work on pressing with an angle, reminding us of coaching points made in the previous week’s session, whilst encouraging the defender to curve their run and use their “cover shadow” to manipulate where the opponent will play. This will then lead into our second practice, which builds on this, along with working on compactness behind the press, whilst finally we will move into a phase of play that challenges the team in possession to put the session’s learning into practice.

Part 1

Before moving into the practice of course it is important to warm up. WIth tactical sessions that will challenge the players mentally, it can be a good idea to include activities in the warm up that make the players think. This doesn’t need to be anything complicated, but German football appear to use these types of practices more frequently than perhaps other nations do. 

Below is a link showing a simple exercise Hansi Flick used with the German national team last year, initially starting with the players throwing several balls to one another whilst on the move, before then including a ball on the floor and forcing the players to deal with two different stimuli.

Given this session will move onto the players working in teams in the second and third practices, whilst working to stay compact, a game of kabaddi can also be a fun activity to include in the warm up phase, and if this is the first time the players have played this game, it can be a chance to allow them to work out a solution to being more successful in the game.

As for the first-practice, several of these squares can be set up with two goals set up, one as a mini goal that the ball can be passed into, and the other a gate that the players will need to dribble through.

We can see the set-up in the following image. The defender will start by playing a pass into the attacker.

The attacker then has two options, to either play a pass into the goal or dribble through the gate. If they can play a pass into the goal, this is worth two goals, whilst a dribble through the gate is worth one.

After playing the pass the defender needs to close the attacker down and seek to regain possession. If they win the ball and dribble out of one of the sides of the grid, they get a goal themselves.